Intermission with a cold

Today on the schedule was a free day, so a chance to catch up on a backlog of email and writing which is getting beyond stressful.  Sod's law however has laid me out with a bad cold: no female jibes about man flu please I have limited my claims.  The early signs were there on the weekend so I came well stocked with chemicals.  These however simply suppress the symptoms so you are no longer a social embarrassment.  They do however make it difficult to think and write. I did the essentials, or rather the essential-unavoidable-essentials which is a significantly reduced subset and found an excellent cafe for coffee and a whole consoling spicy wrap (anything less spicy would not have penetrated my taste buds).  I then got a last minute request to go and talk about our work at the local community college so I decided I could do little and fresh air might help.   

I ended up walking through the sea port, out to the naval memorial at the tip of Point Pleasant Park and then back in time to be picked up for the Community College session.  I always like walking through docks and this is a mix of the old and the new.  The industrial shot to the right illustrates the fascination of the images with that iron stair case almost tacked on to the side with rusty rails in foreground.  To the right is a modern container point and as I moved into the park the multiple remnants of British and Canadian naval history.  Martello Towers, Batteries to protect the harbour and several war memorials.  I was particularly impressed by the memorial to those in the Canadian Navy who had died in service during peace time and its pictured in the header.  As you can see this was a blue skies and bright low winter sun with snow forecast for the morrow.   The full picture set of that walk shows those various artefacts of history.

Now I admit that I agreed to do the Community College meeting out of a sense of obligation, but it turned out to be an inspiring session.  Fascinating people and the conversation stimulated me to think of new applications of SenseMaker® for competence mapping and creating the type of narrative ecology that was an essential part of older apprentice schemes.   I returned to the hotel in a buoyant mood to run the final session on the introductory course.  When you are flying on ideas colds are forgotten, especially if you have an appreciative audience.  A good meal and conversation at the Henry House (two days in a row, but the beer is good) followed by an open session for Cognitive Edge practitioners all served to take my mind off that cold.  Adrenilin is a wonderful thing and my thanks to all those who stimulated it today.  However that email backlog is still there and I have a course to teach tomorrow so I am retiring to bed, with patent medicine and whisky to prepare for the morrow.