Life as it should be

  • These are the days of work­ing from home that they put in the glossy brochures. Greg and I just got back from pitch­ing some new busi­ness, so I’m still in my “go any­where and fit in” jumper. (I need to replace it as my First Impres­sion out­fit, but I’m loathe to. It’s a won­der: what­ever the level of dressi­ness is in the peo­ple around it, it blends in.) We stopped off at the store for some lunch­able food, I made lunch for Greg and lunch plus after­noon tea for me, star­ring the new assam tea that Greg found for me in Chicago. Now I’m sit­ting around in my bare feet con­tem­plat­ing my next move (if Clemen­tine gets a vote, the next move will be to take her on walkies).

    That’s the pic­ture as it’s meant to be. What they put in fine print on the brochure (or leave off alto­gether) is that the flight that I picked Greg up from this morn­ing was actu­ally sched­uled to get in at 10:15 last night, but after two hours of delay­ing it, they can­celled it. I won’t even go into the rest of the story, other than to say that it fea­tures a city with­out a sin­gle hotel room to be had, a Motel 6 where the wake-up call didn’t hap­pen and a skank wife that got mixed up about the times and was still home in bed when his plane got in.

    Greg stays chip­per in those kinds of cir­cum­stances. Or … well, maybe “chip­per” is over­do­ing it, but nei­ther does he scream or think dark, graphic-novel-like thoughts about the inevitabil­ity of his own suf­fer­ing and the utter use­less­ness of every­body else. Which would be my incli­na­tion in that kind of sit­u­a­tion. But Greg trav­els a lot more than I do, and he’s devel­oped an abil­ity to put up with almost any­thing with­out going insane.

    So any­way, that’s the state of things right now. I’ve taken the last of the after­noon tea and re-located to our North­west Office (gone upstairs). We capit­u­lated to Clem’s mute appeals and took her on a walk, so the neigh­bor­hood has been sniffed at and she can begin to unwind after another fast-paced day of sit­ting on the couch, bark­ing at dogs out the win­dow and get­ting fussed over.

    There’s life in the home office for you. Pretty good deal, huh? I just wish that darned clean­ing crew would show up. The place is a pig sty!


    Related posts:

    1. Decem­ber 26
    2. Decem­ber 20
    3. Life report — good news and bad
    4. Lovely San Diego
    5. Give us this day

    June 22nd, 2006 | Grace | 3 Comments |

3 Responses and Counting...

  • Greg Brooks 06.22.2006

    OK, if we’re going to *tell* the story of The Awful Trip™, let’s tell it. ;)

    After two days with a client in Chicago, I take a cab to the air­port last night at 5:45 for a 7 p.m. flight – already way too tight, but I’m com­forted by the fact that there are a few other flights that evening and my ticket is fully refundable/movable.

    I get to the air­port (along with the 10 bil­lion other peo­ple there) and find that my flight is delayed – and a good thing, since all the other flights I thought I’d hop over to are sold out. My flight is delayed until 9:10, then 10:40, then 11:55 before being can­celled altogether.

    “Hotel,” I think to myself as I call South­west and book pas­sage on the ear­li­est flight out the fol­low­ing day. Turns out that, due to sum­mer travel, the late hour, con­ven­tions in town or a com­bi­na­tion of all three, there are vir­tu­ally no hotel rooms avail­able in the greater Chicago metro area. Clos­est room hotels.com would spit back? Forty (!) miles away. Orb­itz, BTW, won’t even let you search for rooms after 9 p.m. the day of the reser­va­tion you want to make, and chain-wide (i.e., they ser­vice all the sub brands) reser­va­tion num­bers for Mar­riott, Hilton and a few other big chains turned up Exactly two rooms: The Renais­sance in down­town Chicago ($459 for one night) or a Hilton room down­town @ $285 a night. I pass on both of those.

    “Car” becomes my next thought – I’ll get in a car, drive over the state line into Indi­ana, and stay at one of the many fleabag hotels. I use Orb­itz to rent the car and then walk over to the other part of the ter­mi­nal where I’ll actu­ally hand over a credit card for the reser­va­tion. Uh-uh – turns out their reser­va­tion sys­tem has had an inex­plic­a­ble, 30-minute lag in it all day. “This never hap­pens!” she tells me, apologetically.

    I wait for about 15 min­utes and then it dawns on me: “So, got any cars in the sys­tem if you just treat me like a walk-up?” Bingo – now I’ve got a car. And I’m off to Indiana.

    Got a fleabag room ($50 includ­ing all taxes and bed­bugs, which fit nicely with my goal of keep­ing the whole car + hotel thing under $200) and go to sleep at 1 a.m. with a wake-up call set for 4:30 a.m. When I *do* wake up, it’s 5:45 and my flight is at 6:45 – turns out the wake-up ser­vice is, appar­ently, broken.

    I make it out of the hotel room in three min­utes flat (I know because I was star­ing at the clock while I threw on my clothes) and try to call SWA. All other flights that morn­ing are sold out, so I make this one or miss an impor­tant meet­ing. I break many, many traf­fic laws to get back to the air­port, rush through the ter­mi­nal and I’m the last guy on board the plane before they close the doors.

    I fly. I get home. I get off the plane… and, um, yeah… Grace isn’t there to pick me up, because she got the time wrong on the flight. ;)

  • Grace

    AAARGH! I’m mel­l­llt­ing, mel­l­l­llt­ing. What a worrrld.….

  • Deb

    my hubby used to be a fre­quent busi­ness trip trav­eller. This all sounds way too famil­iar, except I don’t pick him up at the air­port — call me self­ish. He works for a com­pany so they pick up the park­ing tab. Besides, with 6 kids, its just not gonna happen.

    Glad you made it home in one piece and hope you get some qual­ity time on the couch.

    Deb

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