The trouble with travelling is you're never guaranteed an internet connection. This is why I haven't blogged all week. I had no internet. It was a nuisance.
However, I'm back now. Unfortunately, my brain is a wee bit fried having just arrived home a short while ago. Thus, I won't be too deep tonight. In fact, I'm going to be a little bit of a cheater. I'm going to simply make this a list of things I learned on my trip this week.
1) Flying sucks. This is NOT a new revelation. It is, however, a renewed one as it inevitably is whenever I fly. My first plane was cancelled. I was supposed to be rescheduled the next day. Fortunately, I got rebooked for a short while later than my regular plane. Unfortunately, this led to a 3 hour delay in Detroit and arrival at my hotel room six hours later than originally scheduled. However, two of my coworkers who flew out on the morning flight I was originally rescheduled on ended up having major engine trouble. Instead of landing in Chicago, they had to be rerouted to Milwaukee and then were driven down to Chicago in a bus. Moral of this story? There's always someone far worse off than you.
2) A bistro is a cool little cafe. They belong in France, really but you can find nifty bistro-type places all over the place. A bistro is NOT a vending machine. Sticking a sign over a vending machine that says "Bistro" does not make a vending machine anything other than a...vending machine.
3) Travelling with a 23 year-old-coworker is rather like travelling with a child. I had to check him in because he didn't know how. I had to guide him around the airport and tell him what to do for security. Then I ate dinner with him and watched as he drank several long-island iced teas and a beer. I'm glad I'm not 23 anymore.
4) It's nice to like 99.9 percent of your coworkers, including ones from all the branch offices of your company. The .01 % is a woman who was a wee bit intense, scary and very much "LOOK AT ME, I'M FABULOUS" in all of our sessions. Also, she had REALLY scary eyes as in "I'm going to focus on you now and make you think I'm fascinated by what you're saying but, really, I'm planning on how to rip out your heart and eat it."
5) When you're served a five course Italian meal, it's actually relatively easy to avoid eating like a pig. Family style helps because you control the portions. Also, if you don't keep scarfing the appetizers, that helps. However, it's really nice to go out to dinner and have a five course Italian meal.
6) No matter how much I learn, how nice the people are and how comfy my hotel bed, I still miss my dogs.
7) When you're in a hotel room and the TV in the bedroom doesn't work, that sucks.
8) When you have another TV in the hotel room (because it's a suite), that's nice. However, the sad thing is that once upon a time, staying in a hotel room with a flat screen and cable TV was a luxurious treat for me. Now, I have a TV similar to those in hotels and I now have DirectTV. Thus, hotel TV is just...normal. There's something sad and jaded about that.
9) Having an Amazon Kindle makes air travel fabulously easy. It's just a bit of a nusiance to have to turn it off for takeoff and landing but it's a small price to pay for having a ton of books in one handy little gadget.
10) I have to do my job really well this year because if I meet a certain quota by the end of August, I get to join the company all-expense paid trip to London.
12) Even though a hotel claims to offer "free wireless", when you have to pay $14.95 for 12 hours of usage, that's not really free, is it?
13). Meetings in Chicago in January...not the best idea. It was freezing-raining and ice. When you have to wear 'business casual' which includes high-heeled boots, that's a bad plan. Note to my company: Next time, can we have a 'casual' attired affair? Snowboots, chunky sweaters and jeans are way more practical and comfortable for sitting in a room for eight hours and learning stuff.
and, finally...
13. There's not place like home. When you land at your home airport and know your car is only a short distance away which will, in turn, take you home....there's something lovely and comforting in that. Absence makes the heart grown fonder and so does travelling on any airline...
I'm sure there's a lot more things I learned but for now, that's all my brain will allow me to type. It's back to work tomorrow, as usual so I'll be back to my regular blogging schedule. Thanks, as always, for reading!
Happy Thursday!
Showing posts with label business trips. Show all posts
Showing posts with label business trips. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Sunday, January 16, 2011
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!
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!
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