Ever since Lauren was born, I've been cutting back on travel, so I can spend more time at home with the family. I've managed to cut back so much on travel, that this year for the first time, I actually don't have status on any airline, proabably the first year in at least 18 years that I don't have status on at least one airline. In general I consider this a good thing, and I'm know I'll feel it was the right decision when I look back on my life. I mean who looks back on their life, and wishes they spent more time at work instead of with their family?
But travel for this week was inevitable. This week was my company's annual sales conference, and the one week of the year where you can meet up with everyone worldwide on the sales team. Last year it was easy, because the sales conference was in Orlando, Florida, so I just took Lauren and Lars with me, and Lauren got to spend the week at Disney World. But this year, the sales conference took place in Hollywood, Florida, near Fort Lauderdale. Not near a major theme park, and no longer an easy feat to pull Lauren out of school for a week now that she's in kindergarten.
So I traveled to Florida on my own this week. The company picked the Westin Diplomat for the conference, and it was a beautiful hotel, right on the beach. As luxurious and as nice as it was, I never seem to enjoy these luxuries, when I'm alone, as I'm always wishing there was someone to share it with. With this past Sunday being Mother's Day, I think in many respects my mom was the same way. She got more enjoyment watching everyone else enjoy themselves, than she did partaking, which is why she always wanted someone to go with her on one of her jaunts to Las Vegas.
In all it was a pretty successful week. The presentations I had to give went off extremely well, better than I expected. I actually got a lot of compliments on my presentation skills. The new products I was talking about were extremely well received by my colleagues. The only downside, was the time away from home, and the poor selection of flights I had because of my company's travel policy, where they prefer not to have more than 5 or so employees on the same flight. It's considered a risk management issue. So my return flight from Floriday was supposed to be on Friday night getting into San Jose around 11PM, a sure sign I would actually get home closer to midnight.
So I took matters into my own hands, and decided to go standby on an early morning flight on Friday to try and get home by noon. The flight looked promising, as it showed lots of seats available the day before when I checked. I arranged to get a ride with a few other coworkers who were already booked on that flight. But as they say, the best laid plans gang aft agley (often go astray). When we all assembled in the lobby of the Westin at 4:30AM, I was the one who had to break the bad news. I had just checked a few minutes earlier with the iPhone app, and found out the flight was delayed by 4.5 hours. So much for my plans for getting back early.
It also meant while I was able to get on a flight to Houston (the layover destination), it would arrive too late to make the connection to the flight to San Jose, and the next one departing from Houston, wasn't going to leave until 6PM that evening and get in around 8PM. And 8PM is always a tricky time of night since there's about a 50/50 chance that when I get home Lauren would already be asleep. It's happened to me many times before where I rush home to make that magic hour of 8PM to see Lauren off to bed, to only find out that she fell asleep an hour earlier.
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