Stuff

The trip to San Diego was good. The conference was great and ended early on Friday. Gilday flew in on Friday afternoon and we walked the boardwalk, watched a beautiful sunset on the beach and then had an early dinner at one of the ocean front restaurants.

Saturday morning our good friends from LA traveled down to hang out with us. We had the best time at the Zoo. I even rode the scary Sky Tram a few times (I hate those things). My favorite part was the giant panda that let us intrude on her lunch hour to take some photos. She now graces my cell phone as the background. She was just too cute sitting up against a tree with a piece of Bamboo in each paw. It was great. We did some hiking on Sunday, had late lunch, and then said goodbye to our friends. They hit the road to beat the traffic into LA. Thanks for hangin’ Ryan & Melissa!

The only down side of the trip was our flight back to NY. What a pain the ass that was. We were supposed to leave San Diego at 11:15 but sat on the tarmac for 3 hours because of traffic delays in O’Hare. They had us watch the in-flight movie while we waited, and then when we finally got in the air, they played the Da Vinci Code, which was the in-flight movie we both had watched on the way over. It figured, because we had rented the Da Vinci Code the weekend before I left for the conference, and I wasn’t ready to watch it a third time.

Once we finally got into Chicago, we found that our connecting flight was delayed by 4 hours and didn’t leave until 9:45. Being that we only shared a small bag of corn chips and a Twix bar all day, we went off the airport strip version of a Chili’s, and had some apps and a much needed tall glass of cold beer. Then back on a plane (which sat on the tarmac for a half hour before take-off) and we were in Albany NY around 1:30. Of course, our suitcase never showed up at baggage claim, and I found out it somehow ended up on the last flight from Chicago to Albany, which was 20 minutes behind us. We decided to wait and Gilday drove around the outskirts of the airport a couple of times. Great fun at 2 in the morning! We stopped back and our luggage was the first on the conveyer belt, which was good. We popped on the thruway and by 3:30am we were home.

Yesterday was a blur. I was tempted to call in to work but we had our departmental holiday luncheon and gift exchange. I wasn’t going to miss that! We went to a Japanese restaurant and had a hibachi lunch where the guy cooks in front of you. He was hilarious. He freaked out my boss when he made an onion volcano and he moved it across the grill toward her. The real interesting thing was at the end when he used Vodka to clean the grill. That was unexpected.

Tonight I hope to spend relaxing a bit. I can feel the lack of sleep from the past few days catching up with me….