Thanks Giving

Thanks Giving week is here again.  I love this week because Americans are so excited about it.....and my experience to date is that there is always some place to go!  This year Pete and his wife invited Irene and I to their house.  This is very sweet (well Irene is a long time friend, so sweet for me as they invited me too!).  Thanks Giving also means a short week with Thursday/Friday a holiday.
NY and Dublin were grand adventures and it's also nice to be home.  It is Saturday and I am lounging in bed.  It feels like the first time in a long while that I've been able to just start my day at leisure without feeling driven to do "something".  All helped by having woken to rain - although the day has now cleared up.  Irene and I are going for a run later today in preparation for her race the first weekend in December.  Irene's not usually a runner but took on the idea a few months back so we registered for a 4 miler (she is a gun cyclist - I am not taking that on).
Work is busy as the boss is on two weeks leave (really I arrived home Saturday and the working week kicked off Sunday with a hand over conference call and then clearing some emails).  I have had several 630am starts with my days ending around 8pm a couple of days this week.  Concurrently with that I have been talking to a few folk about my next project (I roll off this one the first week of December).  There is one I am really interested in (still at Cisco but not a tool change, now that would be a welcome change of pace).....this one is about Voice of the Customer i.e. streamlining how Services communicates/engages with partners who sell their products and services.  I would be a good fit for it as I know all the players already and it's building something from nothing....anyway, I won't know for another week I don't think.  This is the way my world rolls these days, project to project and learning something new at every turn.  Makes me very happy.
I feel incredibly settled and happy here as I feel my working life is affording me huge opportunities and, at last, personally I have found an easier place in the world.  The marathon has given me a huge sense of personal achievement and feeling fitter brings with it all the very positive endorphins that come with exercise.  I am continuing to focus on keeping my life simple while knowing myself well enough to know that if I don't set one or two outlandish goals I will become bored and unsettled.
The longer I am here the more I see or feel that the US does itself no favours in how it is reported in the global press.  I am overwhelming surrounded by people who work incredibly hard, care hugely about the world they live in and are not, by any means, indifferent to the plight of others.  Americans are not entirely crazed, although it may appear that way.  This is a HUGE continent and remarkably diverse.  Corralling the views of 4 million people and gaining alignment is a walk in the park by comparison (e.g. about 1 million folk live in Manhattan, 3 million commute in everyday.....).  Yeah, get that, the entire population of NZ lands in one city here every day.  My world view has changed hugely since I arrived four years ago.  There is a video of me crossing the finish line in NY....I sent a link to a friend and she commented that there were actually three finishing lanes.  It struck me that I had got conditioned to BIG.  Can you imagine 44,000 people running a race in NZ?  There were 30,000 in Nashville and 12,000 in San Jose.  An event of 10,000 (Lake Taupo Cycle Challenge) is iconic in NZ - I don't mean to make flippant comparisons so much as recognize how the benchmark for "normal" has shifted for me. It is simply a different world and one I have adjusted to and enjoy.