Wow. A friend just messaged me the news that actor Heath Ledger was found dead in New York. I thought he did great work in A Knight’s Tale, Lords of Dogtown, The Brothers Grimm, Brokeback Mountain and Casanova among other roles, and was looking forward to his portrayal of The Joker in the upcoming Batman movie. Man, what could’ve been.

If you’re a subscriber to the JEFBOT mailing list, you may have recently read that I’ve been in Parsippany, New Jersey for the past couple of days on a business trip. The business aspect is nothing to speak of, just helping to evaluate some software for the company I work for, but it has been more fun than I was expecting (except for the six hours worth of meetings we had today), mostly because of some cool people here and the fact that there’s snow all over the place. Now, I haven’t been in real snow for like, 10-15 years, so to step off the plane and see snow piled up on the tarmac, snow piled up on the sides of the freeway and small blankets of the stuff outside my hotel room has been pretty cool. It’s not a deep snow, just a couple of inches or so, but cool nonetheless.

My boss and I arrived here late in the day Wednesday and after landing in Newark, a company car took us to the hotel, we grabbed some dinner, then had drinks with some members of the evaluation team we bumped into. By the time I retired to my room I was completely exhausted and the hotel was pretty dead, but when I looked out my window and saw the pool was frozen over, I had to go check it out. The night was so still and quiet. There’s definitely something different in the air on the East Coast. Older. Eerie. Reminds me of the way I felt when I was a kid and read Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes the first time, like something magical and sinister could happen at any time.

There’s not a screen outside the window of my room, and I keep sliding open the glass to let the cold air hit my face. It’s a brisk, sharp cold, but it feels good and it smells like snow and asphalt. I find it comforting.

No more meetings tomorrow, so I’m taking a train to New York to hang there for a couple of days. I’ll report in over the weekend.