Wednesday, I flew to DSM via Chicago. I got up at 4:30 a.m. to catch my flight. DSM was having an ice storm that day and our flight form Chicago was canceled. I was traveling with another colleague….and when we arrived at our gate, we ran into 3 other colleagues. Our flight was the 3rd of the day to be canceled and the most flights through the afternoon were full…our next option was a 9:00 p.m. flight. One of the guys (Matt) is from Chicago & suggested driving, so that’s what we did.
We waited 2 hours to get our luggage. Matt rented a Cadillac Escalade and the 5 of us piled in. Surprisingly, the drive went pretty well. There was only a 30 min. or so section where the I-80 was slushy. By the time we got into DSM, the temperature had warmed enough that the roads were just wet.
I’d been in my room for about 30 minutes when the power went out. Lovely. A dark hotel room. I wished I had freshened up as soon as I’d gotten to the room! Oh well. I tried to freshen my make-up, then I walked down 12 flights of stairs to meet up with the others and we headed over to the reception. It was a nice event and the best thing was spending time with Tonya and Mindy, who I rarely get to see. (Tonya is my best friend who lives in Charlotte.)
Luckily, by the time we headed back to the rooms, the hotel had gotten the issues with the power fixed. Apparently it happens fairly often.
We had to be downstairs for breakfast at 6:30 a.m., then started meetings at 7:30. There was a short break before our “Summit” (recap of 2009, talking of what to accomplish in 2010) started at 2:00 p.m. Another break (1 hour) before starting the reception & awards dinner. (Tonya & I just laid on her bed and chatted….I had a hard time standing back up by then!)
The dinner was good. The motivational speaker was amazing (though a bit crazy in my humble opinion). And, the awards section was long. We were seated (for dinner) at 7:00 and it didn’t all end until 11:00. Considering I’d been in a seat most of the day for training, and had such an early start that morning, I was beat. Completely. Off to bed.
Another short night of sleep since we had to be downstairs at 6:30 to catch a bus over to the office. (There were about 50 of us, so they had rented a bus.) Quick breakfast, then training started at 7:30….and went until 3:30. They really need to look at breaking this up a little more because I don’t think anyone was getting much out of the training by Friday morning.
Everyone was flying out Friday night, but I had decided to stay until Saturday. I was planning to have dinner with Mindy, but we were both exhausted and she hadn’t seen her husband all week, so she headed home. I had tried to change my flight, but they wanted to charge me the change fee, plus the difference in airfare. No thank you. They did, however, bump me to first class.
Friday night, I was in my PJs at 5:00. I ordered a pizza and wine from room service. The plan was to watch a movie, but I didn’t think it was worth the money since I didn’t know when I would fall asleep…and maybe miss the movie. I just watched NCIS (3 hours of it) while chilling out. And, I have to say, it was awesome. I think I turned out the light around 9:00 and slept fairly well until the alarm went off at 5:30.
The girls (and Butch) were happy to see me when I got home that afternoon. They made a sign to welcome me back:
How can that not make you smile?
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