Whew. Finally, I get chance to start getting caught up. I don't know how far I'll get, obviously things are pretty crazy here right now, or I would already have added an update... I guess I'll summarize what has been going on, then perhaps eke out the details over the next few days.
So, first things first, and easiest to deal with. No, I'm not ignoring the doctor's advice, but I decided at least to postpone quitting coffee until after my vacation. Probably a good thing I did. Because right up against the end of June, Terry decided I was going with him to Salt Lake City to look at a software product we're going to try to license. We'd get back Thursday, 7/1, so my vacation wasn't in jeopardy... (and the check's in the mail).
So the week before, I was trying hard to offload all of the work I needed to do, while helping train Karen and get everything ready for Kelly to arrive.
You know the running gag in "Airplane!"? "I picked the wrong day to quit sniffing glue," etc.? I felt a little like that. I'm glad I hadn't quit drinking coffee.
Brian and I were puzzled before I left, why Terry would want me with him. Well, Brian had some ideas on that, but I didn't think they were likely... and in fact Terry was a perfect gentleman for the whole trip. Except that it's one thing when he talks to my breasts at the office, and quite another when he spends a whole dinner staring at them, a thousand miles from home. It's only his nervousness, I know, he just doesn't like looking people in the eye, but still, it's disconcerting.
But, anyway, we didn't have any problems, we sat in meetings all day, doing code reviews and such, and talked about options in the evening. I learned a lot about the internal politics of our company, and the one we were visiting, and I think I contributed a lot. Certainly Terry took what I gave him and used it to drive our discussions. But I still don't know why I was there, in particular, why he didn't use one of the software people. He did have a concern about the negotiations not getting back to the software group quite yet, but surely he could have found someone he trusted there.
We had one disaster. We got to the airport for the return trip in plenty of time, only to find out that our flight had been cancelled, and no more flights out. We were supposed to get back about midnight (which irritated me even without the flight problems, because Brian and I were supposed to leave Friday), and the closest we could manage was by returning via Las Vegas, taking the red-eye, which got us to the airport after 6 am. So that's what we did.
So I slept on the plane, head resting on Terry's chest at one point... quite by accident, I was asleep when I must have tried to curl up on him. I'm not planning to tell Brian that part :-) And I apologized to Terry.
I was pretty zoned out most of the day, and Brian did most of the packing and all of the driving, but we arrived in San Antonio around midnight Friday, which is only a couple of hours later than we would have done had everything been perfect, so I don't have too much to complain about.
I'll get to our vacation in the next entry.