The Garden of the Blind

Another week, another trip.

Last week, I went to the City of Brotherly Love, assuming that those brothers love each other like husband and wife. We had scheduled five days, including two travel days, for a two hour one-way plane ride and what we planned on being a two day meeting at the most. I was planning to have some spare time to spend doing some meaningless work. I didn’t want to see the sights. I had been to San Fran back in ‘99 and was thoroughly unimpressed.

So, our flight which was just late enough in the morning to make it pointless to go to work before hand got in at noon, which was too early to check into the hotel. So, we headed into town to get some lunch and chocolate. We parked in a very public parking garage and locked all of our things in the trunk and set out. Afterwards, we went to the hotel where we found two of the four suitcases that we had put in the trunk and none of the other three bags. I was lucky though. My suitcase was left behind. Two of us had no luggage spared and one of them had left his wallet in the trunk as well, with all of his credit cards and ID.

Thought question: How do you fly home when you do not have any photo ID to show at the airport? Discuss.

So, short a lot of clothes and two laptops, including the one issued to me (also my MP3 player, headphones, key drive, jacket, and book) and all of our paperwork for our meetings, we set out to try to negotiate with some intransigent people. I don’t want to go into it, but we did finish our work at 7:00 Thursday night. So much for a two day job.

One funny thing is that one guy on the trip was my second cousin, once removed. I’ve never met him before.

Anyway, it was a long trip. I’m glad to be home, even though the inquisition has just started. Apparently if you lose a computer, people want to know all about it.

And to the Rainbow City, I gave you another chance, and this is how you treat me? We are so not talking.