There’s No Place Like Home

I spent the week before last in Washington DC for work. I “kind of” flew home on Thursday, attended a wedding on Friday, packed over the weekend and drove to Chicago, where I spent last week. It’s been a long two weeks.

The trip to DC began with a flight (yes, flight) to DC through Dallas. While trying to make my connecting flight in Dallas I got turned around and ended up in baggage claim, which forced me to go back through the TSA line a second time. The second time I had already filled my water bottle (and forgot about it), which led to a 15-20 minute diversion as I had my bag removed and searched and received the coveted “invasive pat down” from a genial fellow named Raul who, for all intents and purposes, is now my boyfriend.

I spent three days in DC. The first day was spent at an awards ceremony where my team was presented with an award by the FAA Administrator for our work on the e-mail migration project I’ve been working on for the past two years. The next two days were spent in a “lessons learned” meeting, where everyone shared what went wrong and what went right with the project in hopes of helping future projects.

My flight home on Thursday was scheduled (I thought) to leave Baltimore at 6am. To make sure I didn’t miss the flight, Super Shuttle picked me up in front of my hotel at 2:45am, and dropped me off in front of BWI at 3:45am. When I checked in at the gate around 4am I learned that my flight wasn’t scheduled to leave until 8:40am. I found a place to sit and killed 4 hours waiting to board. After the plane was boarded, the pilot announced that due to storms in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area, “we might be leaving in two hours, or not at all.” At that point we all exited the plane and awaited further updates. Around 10:30am we reboarded the plane and made it to DFW, only to find that all flights heading north from there (including Oklahoma) were either full or had been cancelled. Based on that knowledge I rented a car (it’s only a 3 1/2 hours drive from DFW to OKC), only to learn that I-35 (the interstate that connects those two cities) had received up to 14″ of rain in some areas and was closed. I upgraded my rental car to something big enough to sleep in and began working my way home. A couple of detours and roughly 6 hours later, I arrived in OKC only to discover that no one was home, my keys were in the house, and the garage door keypad no longer worked. Exhausted, I slept in the back of the rental from 6:30pm until 7:30pm, when Susan was able to get home and let me in.

On Friday Susan, the kids and I attended our good friend Jennifer Martin’s wedding. Susan and I served as unofficial photographers and documented the entire evening from beginning to end. Susan took almost 1,000 photos while I only took 400. Susan and I had a good time taking pictures and the kids had a good time eating cupcakes and dancing the night away!

Saturday morning, Susan, her sister, and the kids hopped into Susan’s car and headed out west to San Diego. That gave me the weekend to hang out and rest up for my own to trip to Chicago.

Monday morning Dad and I hopped into the Avalanche and drove north to Chicago. We had the traditional White Castles for lunch and some delicious Aurelio’s Pizza for dinner with my Aunt Linda and Grandma O’Hara. At 85, Grandma O is suffering from moderate dementia. From what I understand some days are better than others. I arrived on a bad day. I only see her a couple times a year and the change between the last time I saw her and this time was dramatic.

I spent Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday in Des Plaines, Illinois (near O’Hare Airport) loading servers. My small team loaded roughly 40 servers in two days. Each server weighed approximately 75 pounds and had to be moved several times. By the end of the week my hamstrings, arms, knees and back knew exactly how many servers we had moved. We ate lunch at Giordano’s Pizza one day and had dinner at Harry Carey’s Steakhouse another night, but for the most part we just worked and slept. And drank. A lot.

Friday morning at 5am I hopped in the truck and drove down to Springfield, IL to pick up Dad (who was visiting his cousin) before hitting the trail and finishing the drive. It wasn’t the fastest trip ever, but after slamming a few energy drinks and cups of coffee we rolled into my driveway just after 8pm. Susan and the kids got home from their trip around 10pm.

I slept in this morning and took two additional naps throughout the day. I’m almost caught up on rest now. Hopefully my back stops hurting before I head back to work on Monday.

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