It's warmer in NY

Bet you didn't think that was coming did you?

Ok here's the trip....

Sunday Night -

I leave my rehearsal at 9:30 and go with the gang out to eat at the local Diner. It was snowing. After we eat and have a LOT of fun, I go home only to find that my parking lot is full. Given that I am getting up at 4AM for this trip, I refuse to park on the street. So I did what I do best, I created a parking spot where there was none. I figured it was safe given that I will probably be the first one to leave the building.

Monday -

I get up on time, miracle of miracles and get myself ready to leave. I get the biggest coffee that 7-11 makes and started for LaGuardia International Airport. Woohoo.

It occurs to me on the ridiculously speedy drive that I am going to have to be social once I get there and I have only had one cup of coffee..... interesting, for the guys at any rate.

I park my car and get on the shuttle. They get me to the terminal at 6:30, I check in and literally fly through security. I see my sales guys and my old boss and Poodle sitting right in front of the security gate drinking what turns out to be REALLY BAD coffee. I threw it away - not worth it.

Our Flight has been called. We board the plane. We are all sitting one row in front of the other through out the plane. Poodle is in front of me and turns to the woman next to him and says " would it be alright if you switched seats with the lady behind me? She's only going to hit me the entire way down...." The woman laughed looked at me ( I nodded) and switched seats.

I immediately pull out my book and my ipod and get settled in. We take off uneventfully.

Once we land we all collect our luggage and head out for the courtesy van. It arrives and I am sitting on my side between Poodle and my old boss and the poor sales guys were sitting on each others laps. It was pretty funny - but I was wayyyyyyyyy too close to my own boss.

I check into my room, which is down the hall from the gym and pool that I will never have time to use ( bummer), change and clean up and head down to lobby so we can go to the meeting.

The meeting starts and there are 35 of us in the room. There are 6 rows of training style tables with two 4 pack on the floor each with 2 data and 2 phone jacks. For each 4 pack, only 1 data jack was working at any given time. So that made keeping in touch with the world challenging.

We all go around the room with intro's and a "fun Fact". Very typical intro. we had enough musicians to start a jazz combo in the piano bar downstairs ( and we did later that night), we had a lot of folks who had brushes with fame and some military guys , a couple of folks who were "in the family" and one guy who caused an Israeli border dispute. One woman was married twice with both husbands having the same name, another woman was on the team for many many years and had had so many husbands most people weren't sure what her last name was anymore. very entertaining.

We broke into departmental presentations and I may have mentioned that my boss wrote ours ( because we refused to) and it was, in effect, inappropriate.

It generated a good deal of Q&A from other depts on legal ramifications to our managements latest policy decisions in addition to some other interesting discussion points.

I figured out that my boss is insecure and has low self esteem at this point. I still didn't feel sorry for him though because he's also stubborn. When we told him what he needed to change he refused.

Yes that sounds callous and cruel. There are days I feel sorry for him in this particular area. Largely because when there is a self esteem and security issue personally in people I know, I feel compelled to help. That's MY insecurity and self esteem issues at work. My problem here is, you can't help someone who doesn't want it. So my compulsion usually fades fast.

He's a great guy, a nice man, family oriented, but seriously, his work ethic is different. Mostly not in a good way. Lord knows we are trying to fix that.

But I digress.... more than likely again.

We have lunch ( pizza) and after lunch we start up again with directors speaking and presentations being given. Somewhere around 2PM, our business analyst lets out a shriek of what we thought was laughter, her arms shoot out in front of her, wrists clubbed over a la carpal tunnel style, and continues to moan and shriek. One my people was sitting next to her, got her down on the floor safely. She was as rigid as a board. One of our techs called 911 and security for the building. Gen rolled her on her side and she must have bitten her tongue as she started foaming at the mouth. Her eyes were rolled back in her head.

We were all shaken up. She was on the plane with me form NY and when we landed she mentioned that she just "didn't feel right ". By the time 911 got there, she snapped out of it and was talking and making some sense. She has never been a diabetic or epileptic. They take her to the ER in Tampa. Two of my team went along with her (locals to Tampa).

We were out in the hall to give them room for her. We all went back and tried to resume the meeting. We all kept looking at her empty chair. I won't speak for anyone else, but the image stayed in my mind. I was really proud of Gen - she was fabulous with her. A real trooper. She just made sure she wouldn't do further damage to herself. Kept her warm. She really did great.

We break and head upstairs to change and get ready to go to our evening activity. Bowling. Did I mention I don't bowl?

I don't bowl.

We load up the cars and I end up in a car with Poodle, Phil, Craig and Joe. Craig lives in Tampa and had no idea where we were going. The rest of us are from the Northeast. So Joe starts "helping". I am now feeling queasy and headachy but its not due to the driving ( though that was interesting). Its due to over exhaustion. When I start getting like that I know its time to hydrate eat and have some aspirin. When we got there, I did exactly that. Two HUGE glasses of water and some food and I was ready to cheer on the bowlers ( I don't bowl). Teams were drawn and I got the job of watching them play.

It was interesting. The whole point of this social event was team building. No Clique-y stuff.

I noticed that mgmt was bowling on one team and the rest of us on another. Except for Jak, she bowled on our team. She's definitely the coolest. I just found it funny. At one point I noticed that our sales director started bowling with us and that was really great. We talked a lot, laughed a lot, took pictures, drank, ate and had a lot of fun.

At 10 PM K and D come strolling in from the Hospital. D looks like nothing happened and she confirmed that they have no idea what this was. She had half a glass of wine an some dinner and she said hasn't felt this good in a week! So she will be fully tested again once she gets home.

The night ended at the bar in the hotel and then up to bed on the worst bed in history. It had a hump in the middle and you could roll off either side if you weren't holding on or positioned right.

I was awakened at 4AM by stomach cramps. Dealt with that. Woke up at 8AM packed up, checked out and went to the meeting. this portion of the day was Boredom centrale. I felt crappy to start with and all I wanted to do was sleep. I kept nodding off. So bad....

We break at 2:30 and we socialized till we had to leave for the airport. The plan trip home was blessedly uneventful except for flying through snow that never made it to the ground and the fact that the tail wind got us to NY in 2 hours but we had an hour of circling the airport till we could land. The longest final descent in history.

I was home in my house at 10:30 and in bed by 11:30.

My personal opinion on this trip is, I would go a day ahead next time, but I am not sorry that I spent time with my team and wished I had a little bit more time with them. I miss them when they aren't around. We cover 6 states. Some of us are the only ones in our offices from this team. ( I know I am and I hate my office but not enough to commute to another).

It was sad to leave them all but I am so happy to be in my own bed with my boys.... I missed their little faces !

Oh and it was Freezing in Florida - 38 degrees and they forgot to turn off the A/C!!!!