Today is the first unstructured, no-appointments Saturday I've had in weeks. I went from Gay Days, to a Saturday afternoon getting my car worked on, to Dan's birthday, to the Chorus concerts... to now. Add to the mix a couple of late work nights, an early work morning, and a surprise business trip thrown in the middle for good measure.
"Never blog about work" is normally a rule of thumb, but my late night on June 7 was so out of the ordinary it's worth bending the rule. Never before have I been at work until 11 p.m., editing other people's work for publication the next day. In all the whirlwind of the evening, I learned I would be traveling to California on business a mere 12 days later. Considering my only other business trip in 11 years with the company was to St. Augustine, Florida (a story in itself, made even more entertaining when fellow traveller Chris and I found we were expected to share a room — except SHE and I didn't exactly appreciate the cost-cutting, policy-violating gesture), this was good news.
The timing of the trip meant I would just barely make it through Dan's birthday weekend, but miss the final Chorus rehearsals for this season. Lots of love-the-husband butt-kissing that weekend, including a lovely dinner-with-friends at Benihana. (We now wonder why we've never gone there. Easier to get to than the Japan pavilion at Epcot, better food than Kobe.)
I don't do sleep deprivation. And yet, the night before my flight to LA, the neighbors decided to watch an action movie on their new big-screen TV with all the windows open. I think I finally fell asleep at about midnight... and the alarm went off at 3:30 a.m. so I could make it to the airport. The trip was uneventful, save two liquid-based issues. First, someone had turned off the potable water valve while the plane was being serviced, so there was no water for coffee, nor for handwashing. (Fortunately, the toilets still worked.) Second, someone had placed milk in their carry-on... and the container leaked from above even before taxi and takeoff. Fortunately, this was not my row, but we did see people trying to catch drips coming out of the overhead compartments with blankets and towels. Ugh.
Three hours doesn't seem like a a lot of time, but it can make a big time difference (between Pacific and Eastern time). More than once I found myself excusing myself after ordering dinner to try and catch Dan as he headed home from work, before he went to sleep. The time difference also played havoc with my brain. I realized that normally, I set my own schedule when I travel west. Trying to maintain a workday schedule, though, I would lay down at night exhausted and not be able to sleep, and then wake up overnight. I think I finally adapted Thursday... and we flew home Friday.
I learned the hard way my new sneakers have a metal heel. I've never had to take my shoes off to go through security at the airport. My bad. I got the full treatment — right down to a hand pat-down around the apparently oversized zipper on my cargo pants. (!) All this while my two travel partners — both managers above me — got to watch. At least the guard could have been cute... or had better breath.
24 hours after getting home, I was onstage at the Chorus concert trying to sell season tickets — a speech I wrote just the hour before speaking. I went back the next night to do it over, and enjoy the show as an audience member.
Next time I travel, I'm remembering to take my Airborne tablets. I've had a cold that won't go away ever since Saturday night — lovely cough, stuffy head, the works. I think I'm finally on the downhill side, although I'm not sure if the couple of days of NyQuil/DayQuil combinations helped, or hurt.
To finish out June, I had an early morning Thursday (report by 7:30), and another late-ish one last night. Remember that three-hour time difference? I stayed at the office until 7 last night, waiting on a West Coast executive to make a decision that might require my action. I then came home, and watched the company email and pager until 9, at which point we decided nothing was going to happen "after 6" of a holiday weekend. If only he'd realized that before our 6:00 p.m., I might have had something of a normal evening. All in a day's (or night's?) work, I suppose.
So I'm planning to enjoy today and tomorrow, and plan to do almost nothing. It sounds so attractive I can't even explain it. I wish the Florida weather were more like the California evenings I was enjoying just a week ago — nothing like dining al fresco on humidity-free, 75° evenings — but I think I'll manage just fine. Especially if I ignore how the next three weekends already have Chorus-related appointments in them...
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