Hump Day

I began writing notes for this blog while I was sitting on an airplane this morning headed to Los Angeles for the day. Just one day. My bosses told me last Friday that they wanted me in LA today for a “meeting”. I was appalled at the cost of the roundtrip to LA since it was booked for the same day, and at the last minute. I was even more appalled when I got to the airport this morning and they told me my flight wasn’t actually confirmed when I purchased it on Friday, so they proceeded to charge me today’s price which was $150 more. (I’ll be arguing that with United later). It’s on the company card, but even though it’s not my personal money, I still can’t justify the cost in my own head. This better be some meeting.

Last night was fun – I went to the Jimmy Buffet concert with the Foffs. My dad actually bought all of our tickets, but he and J had to go to Colorado so he ended up giving daughter Foff and me their tickets. The deal was the Mr. Foff had to treat us all to dinner before hand. It was the only time I’ve ever been able to tell an “authority figure”: “My dad said you better take good care of me tonight or he’s going to ‘kick your ass’”. To which Mr. Foff looked me in the eye and replied, “What would you like for an appetizer Mingle?” (Everyone knows that you just need food to make a Mingle happy.) The concert was really good, but probably would have been better in a tropical, or even a warm setting. We were all in jackets zipped up to our chins swaying to the reggae tropical beat. They had huge screens to either side of the stage where they would show a close-up of the performers as well as pan the audience. The blond girl with big boobs who was dancing in the front was on there a lot. No pictures of Mingle and Foffs dressed up in winter gear in section 202. Go figure.

This whole week is weird. I haven’t actually been to my office yet. (Not complaining at all about that!). I had a 2-day course in SF to learn some reporting application, which I found relatively simple since I spend so much time with Excel. So, I spent most of the time checking my email while the teacher would show people how to add a border, or change the color of a header. We would get out of class at 4pm so on Monday I spent the entire evening shopping. It was wonderful. Mr. Mingle was in the city at a meeting so I decided to wait until that was over and take BART home with him. I went to a café on the top floor of Virgin Records and ordered a beer from the tap. The “keg kicked” so the glass was half full of foam. The bartender then gave me a bottle of beer, but also handed me the glass of beer, which by the time I drank it was a full glass of beer. There I was sitting alone with my many shopping bags, overlooking Market St., while double-fisting two beers. It was truly grand. Not to mention they had “Men’s Pocky” which I haven’t seen since I was in Japan, so I bought that as well. (Pocky is long, thin pretzel sticks dipped in chocolate – “Men’s Pocky uses dark chocolate instead of milk.)

So, there’s my week so far – I’m back in the office tomorrow, but then work from our Dublin office on Friday. I love being secluded out there away from the rest of my department. All in all, I’d say it’s a pretty good week.