Where in the world?

I'm leaving tomorrow morning (Thursday, 8/11) for an extended mostly-business trip, to Tallinn, Estonia and St. Petersburg, Russia. Blogging will be intermittent, and probably mainly on the weekends.

Those of you who know me also know that these are places that I have been visiting often (usually at least two or three times a year, sometimes more) since 1994 — Tallinn more often than St. Petersburg. I'll be spending a working week in each city, in my employer's software development facilities.

This coming weekend I'm going to spend a couple of days alone, sightseeing in southeastern Estonia near the towns of Võru and Rouge. With luck, the weather will be good and I'll even have a few photos to post.

The following weekend I'll be traveling by car from Tallinn to St. Petersburg, with two or three of my fellow workers. We'll be taking the long way, down through the same southeastern part of Estonia and then back up through a part of Russia that will be new to all of us.

Then after that second working week (in St. Petersburg), I'll be traveling back to the good old US of A — but not quite back to California. I'll be stopping in to see my folks for a few days, at their home in south-central New Jersey (yes, I'm related to someone who lives in New Jersey — get over it!). This will be both a for-fun visit and an "IT upgrade" visit — my mom's computer is badly in need of an upgrade, and I'm going to be hooking them up to a broadband Internet connection (via Comcast cable).

And then at at long last I'll be heading home. I'll be "boots on" to Jamul late on 8/31...