Beignets in NOLA

A weekend in the French Quarter… C’est ci bon!
We dined on beignets and fried foods every day, putting our digestive needs on hold for a long weekend, reveling in the excesses of a city of excess—po’boys, oysters, gumbo, red beans and rice, fried everything, and a couple of hurricanes and bottles of champagne. I pulled out my feathered headband for our night on Burbon Street, and enjoyed the crazy as much as I could, although one night was more than enough for me. We had our eyes on some guys, but they turned out to be trapped playing a gig for a private frat party that we were less than interested in attempting to crash. Krista, Kirsten, and I stayed in a fairly lux room at the Westin (thank you hotwire!), reveling in our plush bathrobes and swapping out who got to sleep alone for each of the three nights. We slept long hours in the daylight, wandered miles throughout the Quarter and Garden districts, and ogled the amazing architecture surrounding us. The weather was decent, giving way to a lovely afternoon on Monday when I went to just sit by the river watching people walk by and boats float up and down the Mississippi.But best of all, I got to leave my tech case at my hotel in Northern Virginia, as I ended there Friday and started my next week in the same location. It was nice to travel like a normal human being, although I had one southern guy comment on my carry-on sized suitcase, “I don’t know how you can fit everything for 3-4 whole days in something that small.” To which I replied, “3-4 days? This is two weeks’ worth.”

Master packer status: Achieved.

In-N-Out, or Furthering the Fast Food Agenda

What does one do when a 7pm flight gets delayed even further? Go to the airport at 4pm like normal? No. Not in Phoenix.

In the vein of my Chick-Fil-A epiphany, I made a bee-line straight for In-N-Out burger in Tempe by the ASU campus (thanks to MJC's awesome directions :)). Definitely still just fast food, but the fries alone made it worth it. The freshness was definitely a startling discovery... especially watching someone make fries from POTATOES. Who would have thunk it? Really, it was more fun to be able to say I finally ate at In-N-Out than anything else, but it made me giddy all the same.

Then I was off to Popagano park to wander around. I found out the Botanical Gardens were there, and headed over only to find that they were closed early for a luminaria display tonight... that started at 5:30, exactly when I needed to be dropping off my rental car. I glanced through the gates though, and was sad I had to miss it. The cashier directed me to walk up to Hole in the Wall trail, and so I did. I watched most of the sunset from this glorious rock formation, before heading back to the airport.

It's days like this, when I've ditched my presenter (even if they're a great one) and have some time to myself that make me so happy and remind me why I have this job.

Vacay for a Day

[So I wrote this Sunday, but lacked decent internets... Here ya go anyways]

My weekends at home are often one big rush to squeeze in as much as I can into one little day. As if I spent the whole time from Friday afternoon to Sunday night in an airport, I end up hurrying up to wait. Even when I’m not traveling, I’m either cramming in seeing as many friends as I can, doing as much laundry and re-organizing as possible, or rushing from errand to errand, inevitably still forgetting one or two. This is why stayovers can be so much better than going home, unless I find myself in a city where I want to see everything in the 36 or less hours I typically have on the ground.

I’m sick of this pattern, so I’m changing the arrangements. This weekend, I really didn’t want to have two long, pointless flight days. Baltimore to Seattle to Milwaukee would inevitably be broken into at least 3 shorter flights, and flying out for a week at a time is painfully inefficient. So instead, I went almost all the way home, and spent the weekend in Phoenix with another PM. It didn’t really save me anything in flight time except that I had two non-stops and didn’t have any packing to do on Saturday.

We agreed to splurge on a hotel and stayed at the Fairmont Princess in Scottsdale thanks to a friends and family discount from a connection. It cost us under $300 each for the entire weekend, including rental car (yay points!) and food. We spent the entire day yesterday lying by the pool doing absolutely nothing and then met up with some of her family friends for a family dinner and a movie rental. It was so nice to be warm (75-80!!) and to finally see some real sun (yes, I’m a little bit pink and crispy today, even with SPF 55).

Then I got even luckier: a non-stop flight from Phoenix to Milwaukee in First Class!! When the only seat left on the only reasonable flight is in first class the company evidently books it for us. There are definitely some creature comforts that make it worth it, but more on that later. I just really enjoyed having a chance to really have a vacation, even if it was only a day.

My latest goal is really to find friends all over the country so that I can have more mini-vacations like this. Anyone who wants to donate a friend to the cause is more than welcome to suggest folks who wouldn’t mind a couch crasher who LOVES to bring wine and cook dinner for her host :).

I Hate My Job/I Love My Job

I hate my job when... the presenter treats me like a personal assistant, asks me to go get her heavy box out of the car for her, and has a tone in her voice that simply says she thinks I am beneath her.

I love my job when... I basically say, "Peace out!" and go for a run on the sunny and sandy boardwalk in Virginia Beach during my lunch break. Don't you dare give me crap for it, I'm driving your snoring and drooling butt almost 4 hours tonight, so damn straight I'm taking an hour and a half for lunch.Damn Straight.

Warm Fuzzies

We had some extra guests at today's seminar in Dallas: two ten-day-old cottontail bunnies being nursed by two participants who regularly do animal rescue work. These little guys had just opened their eyes, and were residing in a cozy basket lined with a sweater for most of the seminar. They were so absurdly adorable! It made me miss Zoe terribly though... King sized beds are definitely big enough to accommodate her nighttime sprawl and I think I could use the snuggles.

Disconnect is a part of this job. I've walked away from everyone I know and have to forge what I can out of transitory encounters. Luckily, my friends are amazing. The number of people who I'm in touch with on a regular basis surprises me honestly, but I guess I'm making more of an effort myself as well. I feel like I can see into the future where I'll be sitting at this registration table and feeling so incredibly alone and lost in the world... unable to even remember my room number after so many room numbers have passed through my head... but what I know I can count on is that there are a lot of people back home and other places that are still there, waiting for me to call and talk about each and every crazy thing that's happened.

There's program managers that I can share the nitty-gritty complaints about hotel staff that won't bring the banquet bill unless chased up and down three long hallways; girlfriends to squeal about the cute waiter that brought my dinner and stayed around to chat since I was alone and it was long past the rush; and then there's the guy friends who insist on worrying about my safety and are there to talk to when I'm walking somewhere a little sketchy or in a strange taxi (even if the solace I get is from what I see as their unneccessary anxiety). Mom and Dad are a constant... and my lil' sis, who's getting her own place, has me all excited for her!

Really, I've got all the warm fuzzies I need and I'm discovering that I'm resourceful enough to find whatever I'm lacking while being on the road. Well, at least for the first week and a half...

Boredom Hits Critical Mass

Well, doing nothing is fabulous until you hit a point where it ceases to be so any more. Then it becomes stifling, confining, depressing, immobilizing and just plain annoying. You spend a whole entire day sitting at your computer, commenting on your photos, fiddling with facebook, youtube, and any blog you can find. Then you look around, realize it's dark out and you haven't A: gotten out of your pajamas or B: left your apartment.

YES.

How long have I been dying to hit this point? I want to see what happens now, once I'm good and bored and needing to figure out what part of my life I want to focus on. Here's what I can come up with with an extremely bored brain--

• Option 1: go finish reading the book I'm working on.
  
• Option 2: pull out the art journal and make a huge arty mess.
  
• Option 3: go clean my room and the kitchen for the people who are coming to look at the apartment tomorrow morning.

Obligations schmobligations... I'm going to put on some loud music, put on some dancing shorts and dance-clean my room and do my dishes. I'm going to get a semblance of organization to gear up for the big move and clean out some of the cobwebs floating around in my head. Then I'll probably collapse on my bed and read for a few more hours before waking up tomorrow and finding a solid purpose.

I've done nothing for a week, with a few minor acheivements... the greatest of which was buying a pair of grown-up pants (technically: a designer pair of grown-up pants that weren't eggregiously expensive but were definitely more than I had initially counted on spending. of course, I think I thought I was going to get nice tailored tweed pants for $30. wrong.) Doing nothing to the point of absolute boredom was what I wanted to do, but now tis time to enjoy being unemployed. Really enjoy it.

at the end of a long, dark tunnel

Evidently, there is more going on in my life than I want to admit to myself. Yesterday, about an hour after arriving at work my vision tunneled, my right hand tingled, and my hairline felt like it would split open. Luckily (if you can call it that), this time I knew what was going on. A migraine. This time I was not alone in a foreign country, 9 hours off of the time zone of everyone I cared about, and separated from everyone around me by a language barrier (although, "migraine" is the same word in both English and French, and carries the same sympathetic weight no matter where you say it). Instead, this time I simply left work, took the bus home, and huddled under the covers of my bed with a heavy dose of Advil and caffeine until 6pm, when the pain finally subsided. Happily, I'm well rested now.

What surprises me about this episode is how rarely I get migraines. I can only specifically recall 3 instances that were distinctly migraines: after high school graduation, in Paris, and yesterday. The previous two I had attributed to the denouemont of a climax of stress. Only problem with this theory: what the heck have I been stressed about? I suppose if you really look at it, I've been stressed out ever since I graduated from UW. Finding a job, learning a new job, buying a car, christmas, getting the car tabs and ensuing processes... I've really never stepped off of a roller-coaster since last December. So no wonder really.

The question is how the heck I'm going to manage to deal with my stress, since the sources aren't actually going to go away. I still have to deal with working, having and affording my car, and day-to-day life. This summer I'm hoping to make a dent. Hopefully a few backpacking trips will ease the pain of the daily grind. Snowboarding is making a big dent in the Real World growing pains, while adding in the stress. Maybe I really need to find a source of relaxation that I'm not trying yet... like doing a short yoga practice on a more daily basis, or at least meditating. Where I'm going to find time for that, I'm not sure seeing as how I've failed to find the time to merely clean up my room for ages.

At the very least, I think Saturday is going to be for me. A little cleaning, a little coffee shopping, a little farmer's market and tasty cooking. Definitely wine.

Yes, that will make the migraines stay away. Perhaps migraines aren't that bad... they give me a chance to remember, every year and a half or more, that I'm pushing myself too hard and not taking advantage of what I do actually have going for me.