A Puppy-less House for the Week

My house seems very quiet tonight. Without the two little warm bodies of my puppies running around, I'm feeling rather alone.

Sookie and Rory will be spending the week with their 'grandparents'. I have to go to Chicago tomorrow for a business trip and won't be back until Wednesday night. My parents are kind enough to pup-sit for me which means I don't have to stress about finding a boarding kennel and leaving them with strangers.

Nevertheless, I still had to leave them. I'm glad they're in safe hands but I've never left them overnight before and I'm feeling the quiet already. I think I'm going to feel it especially when I go to bed and I don't have a dachshund curled up under the covers on either side of me.

Ah well, distance makes the heart grow fonder...right?

And I do get to go to Chicago. I find it rather amusing that I've been at this job three months and I'm already getting to go somewhere. I never got to go anywhere for my last job. While my former coworker got to go to meetings all over the state of Ohio, I was left alone at my desk, staring at a computer screen.

So, naturally, I'm rather excited to fly somewhere. Well, I'm not actually excited about the flying part. I'm so over flying anywhere. I'm jaded and I've had some horrible travel experiences. I'm now waiting for teleportation to become an option.

I get to stay in a hotel which is always rather fun. I get to go out to a nice dinner. I get to meet coworkers from other branch offices. I get to sit in on some training sessions.

So, puppy-seperation anxiety aside, this is going to be an interesting week, I think. Business trips are always fun because you're getting to travel and you don't have to pay a penny for it. I used to have a job where I travelled a lot. That job took me to London, New York, San Diego and Los Angeles when I was still living in Indiana. That was a lot of fun. Well, except for the fact that I worked for a crazy lady, it was fun. The crazy lady was generous though and would always take us out to super fancy restaurants. It's just that you had to deal with her and she was a bit of a drinker. Several times when I travelled with her, I had to take the keys from her rental car and navigate us back to our hotel because she'd had several glasses of wine too many.

There will be no driving on this trip. We get to be 'chauffered' around. I have a strong feeling there will be some drinking although not too much from me. No matter how relaxed I feel around coworkers, I have a little rule about making sure I don't drink too much because I still have to go into the office. I'm not the type to be standing on top of a copy machine waving my underwear around after having a few cocktails.

Perhaps life would be more interesting if I was that type. I'm not sure I'd want to be, however. For one thing, my underwear isn't very exciting and, two, I don't really like waving it around in the air. It's bad enough when Rory gets hold of a pair of my underwear from the laundry and drags it outside to the back yard. I'm not likely to be tossing any of mine around in near future. At least, I don't plan on it.

No, I have a feeling this business trip won't be that wild. If it is, I shall be a spectator rather than a participant. We do get to play and inter-branch game of "Family Feud" during our meeting on Wednesday. I have to admit, the nerd in me is quite looking forward to that. I'm rather competitive and I really enjoy board games and trivia types of games. That's the sort of thing I think makes meetings fun.

So, for me, tomorrow, it's off to Chicago. In the meantime, I'm trying to keep myself busy so I don't miss my pups too much. Even though I've had them for less than a year, I can't remember life in my house without them. I've already taken the opportunity to clean the house a little bit. It's nice to be able to run the vacuum cleaner without them cowering on the sofa or, when she's feeling brave, watching Sookie run after it, boldly giving a yip as though she's going to attack it but then running off every time it moves even the slightest bit nearer.

Yet even that makes me miss them. Ah well, it's only five nights that I'm away from them. I'm sure they'll be ok without me.

I just hope I'm ok without them!

Happy Monday!