Home. in These Foolish Things

Safe and sound!

What a good trip. But I’m tired now. I’m at the office today but not feeling it. Yeah, there are things to do and I have gotten to most of them already, but I want to do a little recap because I had a good trip.

Last I wrote I was headed to the middle of nowhere, Tennessee to meet with my licensing colleagues and the corporate big wigs of the company I designed TLIC for. The company has built this impressive innovation center along with giving an old factory a very nice facelift.

I landed and drove the hour to Small Town, USA where I was to meet the guys (yes, I am always the only woman on these trips as this is still an Old School / Boy’s Club-type company. I don’t mind it, though - they treat me with a lot of respect and, surprisingly, don’t even try to mansplain things to me.

My first and only meeting of the day was a biz dinner.

Now. Because we were in Small Town, USA the dinner venues were extremely limited. So our host took us to a brewery. Y’all. It was a BLAST. There, we ordered drinks and some dinner and everyone in the place played this game called SINGO, which is the love child of Name That Tune and BINGO. By 7:30pm, our whole table - and the whole, entire BAR - was singing and laughing! I know it sounds dumb, but it was just so nice to be out of town and kind of carefree.

I was also happy about this trip because this time I was a guest and had no presentation to give and had already had the long conference call the night before to update the licensor so I really didn’t have a stress in the world.

Next day was factory tour as well as a tour of the new R+D facilities. Because a lot of it is proprietary, I won’t give you too many details. But my observations are as follows:

• There are some very, very ruggedly handsome factory workers in the middle of nowhere, TN…and that includes the dudes! Ahaha!

• But seriously, the people doing innovative work are so passionate about what they do and it’s contagious. I walked away inspired.

• Not only are there robots that do all of the wear testing of these products (such as abrading fabric for 50,000 rubs and adding crushing weight and seeing what the breaking point is of certain metals), but there are HUMAN testers too - and these folks spend eight hours a day literally lounging!

We were done with our meetings in the early afternoon and my flight back wasn’t until late afternoon. And yes, Doofus Approval Dude (from previous entry) was on the same flight back. No, we didn’t end up riding together, thank GOD, but I made sure to make it back to the airport early so I could hide in a tucked away lounge where I knew he wouldn’t be able to find me to chat or have an impromptu meeting.

Before we boarded the plane I happened to meet an off-duty pilot who was taking the same flight back to [my city]. We chatted briefly and somehow the topic of luggage came up and I mentioned that I was going to gate check my bag because I can’t lift things over my head anymore (due to my injury and the aneurysm). He told me that he’d do it for me and I was all…noooooo…but he insisted. He said that it was part of what his company does.

We chatted more and just as I was thinking that he was the absolute nicest man in the world (and attractive to boot!), he mentioned his wife…they’d dated in college and then both went off and married others and had kids and then had gotten back together five years ago. Oh my heart…what a sweet story!

We boarded the plane together and I decided to ask him this question out of curiosity (I didn’t tell him it was because I was nervous about my aneurysm): do smaller airplanes have different cabin pressures than larger airplanes? Turns out, yes, they do. We only had a second to discuss before he had to go to his seat, but the bottom line is, he told me that the particular plane we were on would be pressurized to about 8000 feet while larger planes are pressurized to about 6000 feet - so, he said it makes a difference for sure!

And of course, I had to Google all that shit frantically and then take a Valium.

I was fine. Totally fine.

Fight was a breeze.

Got home in time to meet some friends for a happy hour. Well, I was late and they were almost done, but I still made it. I didn’t drink at all, much to my girls’ chagrin, but I just wasn’t up for it as I haven’t been sleeping all that well in the past week (except for the night after I took that restorative yoga class).

Home to bed.

Back in the office on this lovely, lovely Friday and now it’s almost time for the weekend already!

Reading back, I think this is a pretty boring entry, but I wanted to record it because I really had a nice trip. I think that the fact that I wasn’t stressed for work had a lot to do with it. And even though I was a little stressed about the actual travel part, I’m getting better and I think I will get better with each trip.

Looking forward to a weekend. A little fun tonight - Maria has reserved us a table at our fancy-schmancy bar. I’m going to DRESS for SUCCESS. There’s already some built-in drama (long story that I don’t feel like writing about now, but let’s just say a guy might come who shouldn’t be coming). I’m sure I’ll tell you allllll about it soon.

For now, I’m going to wind this workday down in a few…

Happily ever after,
GS

Last updated September 27, 2019