Tag: Pain

Holidazed

This is specifically written to make me feel better, because I’m about to have my annual panic attack. Read this, and you will probably understand why. This is all just self-reflection, and not designed to insult or offend anyone who may be mentioned or thinks they may be mentioned. So, apologies in advance, just in case.

I hate the holidays. I will admit that. I used to deny it, but even I realize I really dislike this time of year. This has been true for so long that my first wife warned my second wife about it while we were still dating, and I’ve been married to my second wife for fifteen years. I was never sure why, but I’m pretty sure I know now. I’m beginning to recognize some of the annual patterns, and they may have something to do with how I feel.

First of all, for anyone that is even tangentially connected to a sales organization, Christmas is really the end of  fourth quarter and the end of the year – when the sales guys are either going to make their quotas or not. Not making end of the year quota is bad, since reviews are coming up, and you’re about to get a number between 1 and 4 attached to you that is not a ranking (Really. No, it’s really not. It’s just everyone with low numbers is better than people with high numbers. But it’s not a ranking.) So, if you’re a technical resource like me in a sales organization, you can get called into anything that resembles a sales opportunity no matter how hopeless – and the hopelessness will be matched by the desperation of the salesperson. Unfortunately, their bonuses are riding on my performance, so they will expect me to work 80-hour weeks. I don’t get a sales bonus, and I know desperation when I smell it. Usually, once it is apparent that the sale is completely lost, someone will start suggesting that a visit on-site would save the day. The site will be in a remote area, prone to being snowed in, with crappy air service. The only customers available will have no purchasing authority.

I will begin crying at stupid things, especially commercials, starting at Thanksgiving. It may be that I’m really sentimental, it may be the crushing disappointment of never getting a pony for Christmas, it may be the realization that my extended family will probably never get together for an event again – no matter how much we talk about it, or it may just be I gave up drinking too soon in life. So, please just ignore me if I’m crying. It’s probably not you, and it will be over soon.

I will have my annual theological issues with the commercialization of Christmas. These feelings start at the Fourth of July when the first decorations go up. This then leads me to the realization that I’m quite possibly a really, really bad Catholic. However, I’m not especially welcome in the Church since I’m divorced and remarried. Or maybe I am welcome. It depends on whom you ask, and what you mean by “welcome”. Also, I have a fundamental issue with the Church hierarchy who lately seem much more interested in being popular with people and fixing global warming than actually saving souls, which I thought was their job. I understand politicians pandering to the masses, but the Church should be keeping people on the straight and narrow. So, trying to be religious this time of year is very difficult for me. The Catholic Church is a lot like most big corporations – there’s somebody in charge somewhere that has a vision of what should happen, but they keep hiring incompetents to implement the vision.

The Spousal Unit does not want to be home on Christmas. This has been true since her Mom passed away seven years ago. That’s fine, I can live with that. So, logically, we have to go somewhere. In 2009, for lack of better ideas, we went on a cruise, and survived – actually, it was fun. So, now, we take a cruise over Christmas. Interesting point – Christmas Week is the second most expensive week to cruise in the entire year (only New Year’s is worse, and one year, we had both holidays in one cruise.) So, as with anything you have been paying for since at least February, the expectations are high. Anything with high expectations is pretty much doomed, at least on some level, because the expectations amplify minimal imperfections – for some hilarious examples, just read the CruiseCritic website. Also, since the cruise and accouterments (airfare, hotels, excursions, drinks, souvenirs, pet sitters, new clothes, camera gear, insurance)  cost quite a bit of money, anything that can threaten it (work, injuries, pet issues, family issues, travel issues, possible divorce) is made that much worse.

Since we’re gone for Christmas, my family will want to have a Christmas gathering (much like the one the Spousal Unit is avoiding) some time before we leave, since nobody in my family wants to go on the cruise with us – the Parental Unit wants to stay home just as much as the Spousal Unit wants to leave. So, Christmas will be between the 12th and the 23rd and then again on the 25th. If the Spousal Unit’s family ever figures this out, I could end up with three Christmases a year, which is more than my son had as a child of divorce.

Now, ket’s look at what always seems to occur within a few days of Christmas, usually a week or so before – i. e. when I’m trying to close out work projects and get out of town for vacation. When most of this happened this week, I realized it was time to document it.

Some time during the week before we leave:

  • One of our dogs will have a minor to major medical issue. (This actually happens before most vacations in addition to Christmas.) This week, Ripley spent an $845 day at the veterinarian’s. So much for my bar tab on the ship. (On this day in 2011, Bubba crossed the bridge, so I am very glad Ripley is home in one piece, but I wish we didn’t have to spend almost a grand to find out he’s old and temperamental.)
  • The Spousal Unit or I (maybe both) will have a very painful, short-term medical issue that has the potential to derail the entire vacation. Last year, the Spousal Unit had stress-induced vertigo the night before we left that was so bad, I moved our flight eight hours later to give her time to recover (and pack). This year, I managed to slip on a pee puddle in a dark hallway and sprain my ankle. (Yes, pee puddle. The dogs don’t always wait until they’re outside.) I’ve almost finished limping.
  • Someone in the family will start a very distracting project that will then keep the Spousal Unit very distracted until the absolute last minute – to the point where I assume I will be sailing naked, and even though nobody said the project was actually her problem or that it had to be done before Christmas. My Parental Unit will have house repairs or insurance paperwork. Someone somewhere will be ill. Someone needs desperate pet advice, whether they know it or not. My sister-in-law will have some of the carpet in her house replaced. One of the dogs will have a new medication, which requires a sixteen-hour rewrite of the ten-page pet manual for the pet sitter. Something. (One year, it was an actual death, so carpets aren’t so bad.)
  • There will be a major crisis at work. I will be one of three candidates in the Universe that can solve this issue, even if it is not in my job description, my department or even my field of expertise. I will be the only one of the three available. It will blow over eventually, but it may be January before it’s fully resolved. Usually, because of the way annual budgets and finances are designed at work (“Fall Plan” starts in May and ends in February, if you’re lucky), there will be a wee question of whether I will have a job when I return. One year, I had a paper for a conference rejected and found out about it on the ship. So it goes. Then, they said, “No. You have to rewrite it. By Monday.” I redid the paper from my Spousal Unit’s aunt’s house via a T-Mobile hotspot we bought at Home Depot. (She didn’t have Internet access, but she did have a fax machine.)
  • The pet injury and family projects will be the number one, single most critical issues for the Spousal Unit, which make my work problems seem trivial in comparison to her, even if my work crisis is helping management figure out how best to phase out my own job. Having to hear about a Chihuahua’s possible ingrown toenail or how difficult it can be to choose tile while I’m trying to find an extra half million dollars somewhere or I’m patiently explaining for the third time why if a job is necessary in December, it’s probably still necessary in January tends to be slightly annoying. Possibly stressful. Just saying. Maybe it’s just me.
  • I will be told by at least one manager to “forget about work and enjoy your vacation.” I know this is a trap, because I just spent a week trying to figure out where to cut the budget. So, $250 for Internet access on the ship, and I need to watch my email.

On Christmas Day itself, I will not realize it’s Christmas, because we’ve already had the celebrations, I’m still stressed from work, and I will probably be snorkeling. On the bright side, there will probably be rum.

Some years, the calendar is particularly cruel, and I will have work days between the end of the cruise and the end of the year. That’s the case this year.

I don’t really know why I hate the holidays.

These are not my peers

So, I had jury duty this week. I had postponed it once, but when I tried to postpone it this time, the automated system said there were no more dates available (wow! that many people want to go to jury duty?), so off to the courthouse I went.

I tend to take anything involving the law fairly seriously, given that I couldn’t talk my way out of any number of traffic tickets over any number of years, so if I get a form letter from a judge that says I need to be somewhere at 8:30am, I will be there. In fact, I will be early.

Monday

I arrived at the courthouse at about 7:45am, because I got an early train, because I left my house too early. I was afraid of over-sleeping, so I couldn’t really sleep that well.

Yes, I really get paranoid when the law is involved.

8:30am. After finally signing in, I just read books on my iPad until the introductory film was shown. Wow. Local TV news anchors explaining why jury duty was a good thing to do. We’re here, don’t try to sugar-coat it for us.

In a way, it’s like the seat belt film on airplanes – you really should know all this stuff by now, but somebody in the back isn’t going to know that a jury decides the facts in a case, so everybody watches the film.

9:15am. I am juror 109 on my summons. The first group called was forty-something to 180-something. Off to the courtroom we go.

We found the courtroom, but it was closed. Well, occupied. Eventually, the bailiff came out and explained we were going to be in a temporary courtroom down the hall. So, we all moved down the hall. And waited. And waited. Luckily, there were sixty of us and seats for about forty. The bailiff gave us placards to identify us. I was number 35. Since there were twelve jurors in a district court, that seemed pretty far down the line.

I love the placards. It helps the attorneys call on you without mispronouncing your name or having to say, “Excuse me, the old black guy in row three” or “The chubby woman in the a Grateful Dead t-shirt.” “Hey, number 35!” is much better. (“Hey 19” is a Steely Dan song.)

11:00am. Finally, we entered the courtroom, and sat down. Everybody stands when the jury enters the room. We’re important! We’re also two hours behind and we haven’t done anything yet.

I looked around. There were six attorneys in front of the judge. Three per side. This is not a good sign. Teams of lawyers mean somebody thinks there is a large amount of money at stake.

The attorneys introduced themselves. The plaintiff’s side had a jury selection specialist, as well. Ruh-roh. How big a case is this? How long a case is this?

The judge said the attorneys had designed a questionnaire to help speed up the voir dire process. Voir Dire is a French term that means “pry into your private life to see if you will vote against us.”

Then, the judge said it would probably be about a two-week case. Panic filled the air.

Now, my job is pretty flexible on time and space and my boss looks at results instead of hours – I work at home, I get my email on my phone, I can work 24×7 from just about anywhere, but there were some people in there who were not looking forward to a two-week enforced vacation in a courthouse. A couple of self-employed people mentioned the $40 per day wasn’t enough. I was just trying to figure out if it was going to interfere with my business trip to Vegas at the end of the month. Sometimes, it’s good to be a white-collar dude.

The judge said he would adjourn so we could fill in the forms, and after we did that, if anyone had a reason they couldn’t be on the jury, he would meet with them “after lunch.” His idea of “after lunch” was 2:30pm. It was 11:20am. He said if we didn’t have a reason we couldn’t serve, we were done for the day. Be back at 9am tomorrow. So, my first day of jury duty ended before noon.

Tuesday
I gave myself an extra half-hour of sleep, since I had been so early on Monday. I even stopped at 7-Eleven for coffee on the way to the train station. I still managed to get to the courthouse by 8:15am, so there was time to kill. Again. I should have gone downstairs for more coffee.

9:00am. Time to start. The bailiff said five people had been dismissed yesterday, so we had 55 people left in the panel. At 9:30am, we were still missing people.

Now, as I was walking over from the train station, I noticed a lot of traffic. Then, I remembered they were filming yet another JFK miniseries, so the roads were all blocked. Now, I’m sure as a photographer, I would want to shoot in early light, but early light in downtown is called “rush hour” and people are bitchy.

I wondered how many people didn’t know about the miniseries.

The answer? At least ten.

9:30am We’re still missing people. Now, they’re making a judge and attorneys wait, and a guy with a gun is in charge of finding them. This is when I realized these are not my peers. My peers would have been here at 8:15am, fully caffeinated and ready to go, and wondering if they weren’t possibly guilty of whatever the case was.

The bailiff walked through with Juror badges, for those who forgot theirs. I had mine.

Seriously? How many people can’t follow directions? Be here at 9:00am. Wear your Juror badge. We’re on the sixth floor. (Ironic, with the JFK filming. I just realized that.)

9:54am Still missing two people. WTF? We’re now waiting just to get started waiting.

10:24am The last one staggers in. Apparently, the traffic is bad. Did no one else know they were filming in downtown?

10:33am Lining up with our placards. The bailiff says, “If you need a restroom break in there, just signal me, and I will let the judge know.” Six women signal him immediately. We’re not even in the courtroom yet! We have been waiting for an hour and a half to get started, and now you want a pee break? What have you been doing for the past ninety minutes, other than filing your bladders?

After all the ladies (and the three gentlemen who bowed to peer pressure) returned, we finally enter the courtroom. Now, the day can begin.

The plaintiff’s attorney questions the group and specific people until ten after one. No lunch break. One potty break. There is an insane amount of questioning. How do you feel about mental anguish? (Many say there’s no such thing, it’s just life. This has the potential to be a “put your big girl panties on and get over it” jury, which would be great for the defense.) How about loss of consortium? I tried not to laugh, because if these people don’t think mental anguish is a problem, loss of income and a bit of nookie is not going to be an issue for them, either. It wasn’t, even after consortium was explained. Actually, everyone was just thinking sex until somebody mentioned loss of wages if the injured party couldn’t work. How about punitive damages? A few were against them, because they went to the person, not the State. Wow.

I’m getting worried. I’m surrounded by people giving honest, truthful answers that are going to get them tossed, and I don’t really have an issue with any of the questions, because the prefix to every question (as in every voir dire question) is “Will you follow the judge’s instructions as to the law?”)

I’m actually impressed that they’re going to get tossed by being honest and not because they’re trying to get tossed. I was thinking of all the answers to give that would put me on the “bad” list, but I just can’t do it. Besides, the case was beginning to sound interesting.

So, these are not my peers. I will follow the judge’s instructions. I will be open-minded. I’m not making a bunch of pre-judgements. I would grant a mental anguish award if I thought the case was proven. I could understand a loss of consortium claim and I had actually heard the term before. I understood the concept of punitive damages. Unlike one rather loud woman in the back of the room, I do not watch Judge Judy “because she is so wise.”

1:10pm. Lunch break – we need to be back at 2:20pm so we can get started with the defense questioning. There’s a Greek diner in the basement of the courthouse that is really good. I was back by the courtroom by 2:00pm, and I was concerned about being late. Naturally, we get started at 2:45pm. Oy vey, people, there are clocks everywhere in here.

2:45pm. The defense asks similar questions, but from a more defensive position. Obviously. The same people who said “No, I can’t” now say, “I can.” Both sides of attorneys are taking notes furiously.

I’m wondering how I’m going to like getting to the courthouse at 9am every day for two weeks. I’m wondering if the case will be done before I have to leave for Vegas.

4:45pm. The defense is done asking questions and receiving assurances. We’re all sent outside so the grownups can chat. (It’s like all the game shows where you have to go slightly off-stage so the judges can decide who to send home. Actually, that’s exactly what it’s like.)

Waiting some more.

This may be an interesting time to point out for those who aren’t following closely – this is day two of jury duty and the case hasn’t started yet.

5:30pm. The bailiff comes out. Are we done? Are we picked? No, of course not! However, if you parked in the garage or any of the local surface lots, those attendants go home at six o’clock, so if you want your car to drive home, maybe you should go move it to the street and come right back.

I’m wondering how long this will take.

We’ve outlasted the parking lot. I am so glad I rode DART. I have until 2am or so, before the trains stop running.

It’s almost ten to six, we’re all back, and we’re lead into the courtroom one last time.

The bailiff had said earlier in the afternoon the jurors with low numbers go first, unless they were struck, so if you have a high number, you’re probably safe. Each side has six peremptory strikes, so that’s only twelve people dropped, right?

They need twelve people. I’m number thirty-five. Can I just go home? There’s a train in six minutes.

First juror called was number four. Then, number six or seven. Hmm. How many other strikes are there?

Wow. They’re leaving a lot bigger gaps in the panel that I would have thought. Twelve, you say?

I realize the woman next to me was one of the ones who was honest. Ruh-roh. I wonder if she was too honest.

The twelfth juror called? Number thirty-four. I thought juror thirty-six was going to collapse into my arms, sobbing. She was sweating bullets.

Spending two weeks at work has never looked so good.

Good luck to the twelve. I’m with you in spirit.

Colonoscopy

A man’s life goes through stages, some fun, many not. A lot of men will end up melancholy, depressed or angry. It’s like the stages of death –

  • Playful (Childhood)
  • Studious (School)
  • Overworked (Career)
  • Melancholy (Mid-career)
  • Stressed (Late career)
  • Angry (Very late career)
  • Resigned (Retired or dead)

As a man progresses through the stages, people around him notice the changes. Most will not comment directly to him, since that may just trigger the next stage. However, people go from “Wow, Kevin’s annoyed” to “Jeez, Kevin’s in a foul mood” to “Holy crap, what got up his ass?”

Sometime after you get to the age where many people are asking “Holy crap, what got up his ass?”, your doctor says, “Hey, I know a guy. Let’s find out.”

How do they find out what’s got up your ass? A colonoscopy.

Mine is Wednesday. I’m supposed to be at the hospital at 6:30am. I’m not looking forward to it.

I don’t like any procedure where the prep work starts five days in advance, you have a specific diet to follow, and you have to drink a half-gallon of some toxic fluids – twice – including one dose at 3am. Yes, three in the morning. So, poop all evening, then poop first thing in the morning. I guess it will prepare you for old age, but still.

They have a camera that can be inserted in the body and show your innards. Technology is wonderful! Why can’t they add a flash, so it could just see through any poop on the walls?

I don’t like any procedure that requires me to write “poop on the walls.”

Someone is going to knock me out, and then someone is going to stick a probe where the sun doesn’t shine. In college, that’s called “date rape.” In the business world, it’s called an “all-day meeting.”

Also, how should I trust a doctor who went through all the preparations, successfully graduated from medical school, studied the entire human body, and said, “I’ll take the poop chute. That sounds like fun to me.”

Horrors.

Furosemide Blues

My doctor found excess water
In my ankles and my feet.
He said, “I have a cure for you,
Here’s a pill that can’t be beat.”

I never used to exercise.
My feet were made of clay.
But now, I take Furosemide.
So, I run around all day.

I’ve located every bathroom,
Between my office and my home.
I’ve panic stopped at most of them.
I’m never far to roam.

I’ve found the shortest distance
To every rest room on my floor.
I know how to avoid the talkers,
I’m not distracted any more.

I’m running more than ever,
From sea to shining sea.
I’ll complete this in a moment,
But first, I have to pee.

Death and Taxes

I prefer death.

(What? Too short?)

We should be able to
Earmark our tax dollars.
Pick the programs you need.
Pay for what you believe in.

Pick what you want.
Pay for what sounds sexy.
Defund the wasteful.
(Since Congress won’t.)

I bet NASA and the military
Would get fully funded
(from the fly-over states.)
We like guns and astronauts.

Welfare would get slashed,
Because people in power
Just want to help the poor
With your money,
Not with their own.

We’d have less bridges to nowhere.
We’d have less weird studies.
We might have more security.
We might get out of debt.

Do you know why they passed an amendment
For the government to collect income taxes?
Because only an idiot would give
The government his money voluntarily.

A Eulogy, Of Sorts

My brother-in-law Jack passed away just over a week ago. His services were this week, so it has been a little bit insane around here.

We’ve had enough deaths in the family and extended family over the past few years where the rituals all seem very familiar, but not any less painful. Call the funeral home, schedule the Mass, pick the readings, set up the website, etc. It’s the business of death, and you’re on a timer. It’s ugly, and you don’t get a lot of time to reflect.

Jack was the one person in my collection of in-laws that I should have been closer to – and I don’t really know why I wasn’t. He lived only twenty or so miles away, he was an IT manager (like me – but his role was much more important), he was middle-aged (like me), he was married to a Pesce (like me.) The list goes on and on. I guess I didn’t make enough of an effort. Plus, he was always busy, helping someone somewhere – either at work or Church.

Something that occurred to me after he was buried this week – When my Mom-in-law passed away, I thought, “No more pain.” When my Dad passed away, I thought “No more arguments.” When Jack passed away, I thought “That should have been me.”

Not “could“, but “should.”

I’m not sure why I thought I should be dead instead of Jack. Possibly because I had a Doppler test that showed my carotid arteries were blocked 20 – 30% the day before he collapsed at work. I was told that nothing was done until you hit 70% or so. My doctor changed my blood pressure medication, and that was it.

So, I may have bad arteries, but not bad enough to fix.

Jack had a bad heart. The physical one. It was functioning at 45% at his last test, but his doctor didn’t think he needed a pacemaker. So, he had a bad heart, but not bad enough to fix.

I am a bit concerned about doctors and their advice now.

While Jack had a bad physical heart, his spiritual heart was larger than almost anyone I know.  He had at least three families – his biological one with his wife, daughters and relatives; his spiritual one, as he was a Deacon at his Church; and his business one, since he was a manager at Verizon.

All of his families came to pay their respects. In force.

It was selfish, I suppose, that one of my thoughts the day after he passed away was, “Please, Lord, don’t make me do another eulogy.” Luckily for me, there were plenty of people who had spent more time with him that stepped up to the challenge, from all of his families.

Not that I wouldn’t have done one. I would have talked about arena football and baseball and statistics and cruises and Mojitos, which were not covered at length by those who knew him from Church or work.

There are times you realize you are close to someone from a familial sense, but not close at all in another. Jack managed a test lab at Verizon – his team validated equipment before it was placed into service in the Verizon network. I finally found out what he did after he passed away. I started my career in telecom almost thirty years ago, helping run a small long distance company’s computer center. We had that in common, and we never talked about it, because I never found out about it.

If you don’t know what your relatives do, go find out. You may be surprised.

Jack and I had baseball in common, but you just don’t talk much during baseball games – and I’m not sure I ever heard him curse, and if a game was playing somewhere, it was probably also on the TV at Jack’s house.

My wife and I had season tickets to the Grand Prairie AirHogs for years, and we never got him to a game. I feel guilty and disappointed at the same time about that.

I will always be grateful to Jack that my wife knows as much about sports as she does, and it’s because he taught her by taking her to games while she was growing up. I have to explain very little to her, which has saved me a lot of time and stress.

I could have asked him how to survive an Italian-American wife, because if he could have explained that, it would have been one of the miracles he needs for Sainthood.

When I got promoted to manager at IBM last year, Jack was the one person around me that had a similar title and experiences – and he had been doing it for years.

Jack had a team that loved him (which was demonstrated at the vigil and funeral.) Jack was my best possible source of information and advice on how to survive Corporate America as a newly-minted manager – especially since all of the managers who worked with me were busy rearranging deck chairs during our latest reorganization.

I let that opportunity just pass me by. It just never occurred to me to ask Jack to go have a cup of coffee (or three) and have him explain how the world of management works.

I am really disappointed in myself for that.

So, now I can just hope Jack will watch me and guide me from above. I think a manager’s greatest accomplishment is to be genuinely missed by his team. Death is the most sudden way to leave the corporation, but I think every manager should aspire to having his team think, “What are we going to do now?” and not just “Who do we get stuck with next?” whenever he moves on to the next challenge, either here or in the next world.

Jack’s team is wondering what they are going to do now.

I’m wondering what I’m going to do now.

I miss you, Jack. Thanks for all the times you were there. The times you weren’t are on me.

Annoying People

Why are people so annoying? Seriously, what has happened to us? Where are our morals?

Annoying is actually not a strong enough word. Both of these items that really annoyed me involve petty theft. Why do we have people who think stealing someone else’s resources is a reasonable thing to do?

Spam Users
I created a new website called Cruiseaholics – my wife and I are addicted to cruises (Latitudes Platinum on Norwegian), so I thought it was a cute name. I’d like to have people join and discuss their cruise preferences and experiences. Now, I’m not planning to be CruiseCritic (although some of their restrictions are just annoying and some of their users tend to be very argumentative), but I thought it would be a nice alternative for what I assumed would be a very limited group.

This morning, I had over 200 users registered for my site. 200! Wow! You know what they all had in common? They were all spam users. Not a valid one in the bunch. While this should not surprise me (I’ve had web sites since the dawn of the World Wide Web), it still pisses me off. Why are you wasting time registering fake accounts on somebody’s website? I suppose the only hope is that the default user limit is set to “contributor”, so they can try to sell shoes or Viagra or whatever.

I turned off user registration on the site this morning. So, I’m not building a community any longer. If somebody wants an account, they will have to email me. It’s sad, but I just don’t have the time to weed out all the real users from the crap. If it were a money-making site, then, perhaps, but for a hobby, it’s just not worth the time.

Warnings That Shouldn’t Be
I learned about a self-service library system this weekend from a neighbor. It’s called Little Free Library. Basically, you have a large bird house (go look at their site – it’s the first thing that came to mind) full of books on your front lawn, and anyone can take a book or leave a book. I see this as a way to build community – if I had one in my lawn, most of the books would come from neighbors on the cul-de-sac. Also, I don’t think people would drive to one, so you will have foot traffic, which means people are walking in the neighborhood.

Here’s the issue – the first thing someone mentioned was preventing people from clearing out the library and going to Half-Price Books for some quick cash. (Having sold an obsolete record collection and then an obsolete VCR tape collection, I can tell any potential thief that it’s barely worth the time.)

It distresses me that something that should share the joy of reading and build community would have to protect itself against theft. I know there are bad people everywhere, but this also pisses me off.

Both of these cases involve community and how easily that community can be broken by someone taking advantage of openness. Seriously, can’t we just have good in the world without having to worry about someone taking advantage of us?

Business Travel

I don’t care what anyone thinks. Business travel sucks. I’m in my third city this week and I’m in the airport, waiting to go to another continent.

Ten years ago, this may have been exciting, but I’m too old and tired to feel that way any more.

I went to Chicago Sunday, back to Dallas on Tuesday, to San Francisco Wednesday, and somebody told me it’s Friday today, so I’m off to Kuala Lumpur.

That’s right. The place CNN won’t shut up about, because a plane is missing from there.

The Spousal Unit is not happy.

CNN is actually on ithe TV in the Admirals’ Club, so you can have a relaxing drink and learn about how a plane can be sabotaged before you get on your plane. Piers Morgan is interviewing someone, so by the time I leave for my gate, at least we’ll know it’s the Tea Party’s fault.

Lovely.

(It’s still better than March Madness.)

I’m flying to Los Angeles, then to Hong Kong, then to Kuala Lumpur. It’s Friday now, I’ll be there Sunday afternoon.

I’m coming home next Friday.

I’m traveling 30 hours or so each way for a two-day class. This does not seem an efficient use of time to me, but I don’t have an MBA. Luckily, since our management has found cutting costs is somewhat easier than making money, I’m flying in coach.

I’m hoping the family with their precious (and cute) family goats are at least a few rows away from me.

The last time I flew to Hong Kong, it was from Europe. So, this is a first. The last time I flew home from Hong Kong is when I crossed a million miles on American.

So, I’m currently waiting in San Francisco (and listening to plane crash theories), so I can fly to LA and wait, so I can fly to Hong Kong, clear customs and wait, and fly to Malaysia.

Then, I can collapse in the hotel.

One partial day of rest (and a couple of meetings), another day of nothing but meetings, two days of workshops (teaching alone, since my co-instructor couldn’t get a visa) and then home. Also known ad another 30 hours in coach and airports.

Funny thing about the workshop: US logic says if the classroom holds 25 people, you stop registrations at 25. Asian logic says when you go over 25, you just find a bigger classroom. So, there were 40 students registered as of yesterday. The largest class I’ve done by myself is probably 20.

How can business travel not be fun?

So, the next person who says, “You’re lucky. I never get to travel!” is getting punched in the head.