Busy Week

Last week I left on Sunday for a conference in Ohio. It wasn't too bad I guess after all of the stress of planning and packing for the show. I really did not want to have to go for the 4 days it would require me to be gone but what can you do right? Driving down was boring and uneventful. Setup and wiring went pretty smooth, I really can't complain if compared to years prior. After setup, a co-worker and I went out to grab some dinner. It's funny because it was somewhat late on a Sunday night and it was hard to find something to do on a Sunday night in an unfamiliar city but we managed. We found an Irish Pub that sounded like it was hopping so we went in. The guy at the door asked for a $7 cover. We asked why and he stated that there was a buffet and salsa dance thing going on. Salsa? at an Irish Pub, who knew? After a little bartering we lowered the cover to $4 and went in. Too bad for our hungry appetites because the buffet consisted of Mash Potatoes (No gravy), buffalo wings, and chicken tenders. Some buffet! We proceed to grab what little we could and drink the rest of our dinner. After a few hours and a lot of drinks we headed in for the night. We were able to secure a suite at the hotel but since our company is on the cheap side we had to share the room. Since I am the younger of the two of us I opted to take the pull-out sofa bed and gave the queen size to my co-worker.

The next day we had a great show although standing on carpet with no padding underneath for 8 hours or more straight is not easy on the legs and feet. We were exhausted and decided to head back to the hotel which provides each patron with 3 free beverages every night. So we headed towards the beer line and grabbed our 3 free ones and sat down. We proceeded to hear about an open bar party that Cisco was providing at a local brewery and figured we would crash it. Again, drinking on someone elses tab we spent a few hours enjoying the free beverages and hanging out. We then sat down and had dinner at the brewery which was good. We went out and played pool and then went back to the hotel. Then next day was the same only this time it was an Apple provided open bar and that was pretty entertaining as well. Finally, on the last day it was slow, we were worn down from staying out late and just tired of standing. It really stunk because we couldn't pack up until late afternoon all the while the 4 hour drive home for me was lingering in the back of my head. I was dreading it and just wanted to be home, but instead we still had to wait. From 8:30am until 3:00pm I continued to look at my watch every 2 minutes hoping that more time had passed. It felt like forever and my legs and attitude were starting to feel it. Finally we started packing up and I had asked my co-worker to go to the truck to get the boxes for packing. He came back and said that he was sorry and had a distressed look on his face. He had broken the key to the master lock on the truck door off in the lock. Right then my blood started to boil. I contained my anger and just kindly asked him to find some bolt cutters and get to cutting. He found them but was unable to cut through the 1 inch lock. I gave it a whirl and found that I was actually breaking the bolt cutters instead of making progess with the lock. Luckily we were able after about 1 hour, to use needlenose pliers to turn the little of the key that remained stuck inside. I started to calm down only to realize that now we could not pull the truck up to the conference center because it was packed with other people loading their vehicles. So again we waited. This delayed my return by about 2 hours but all in all it was fine. I was just starting to feel under the weather so I think all of the combined factors caused me to be more pissed off at the situation than was really nessicary. It's kind of a boring story but that's what happened last week.

Anyways, my fiance and I close on our house tomorrow and if I could just explain the anxiety and impatientness that I have right now you would understand my melodramatic storytelling. Hopefully once all of this is done and I can just focus on moving out in the next 5 days, I can get into detail about the mortgage and the construction people and how I believe that neither of them can figure out how to wipe their own asses let alone close a deal.

Check back later this week.