1461 - On the Road Again

Okay, first of all, I need to say that I'm somewhat drunk at the moment. I just came from a restaurant near my hotel (yes, I'm away again).

On Monday, what the fuck did I do? It seems like so long ago. I'm pretty sure I did nothing, relative to things that actally have meaning. I think I worked on my new "song" (though how can it be considered "new" at this point?), and I might have done some reading. I did clean a bit of my bathroom as well (no, I wasn't up to cleaning the entire thing).

On Tuesday (oh yes, Monday to Thursday at work were very boring days - I worked on mindless, repetivive bugs the entire time) I worked some more on my "song" and then I went to JW's (I really am having a lot of trouble typing here - it's just my attention to detail that keeps me hitting backsapce to correct the errors - wow, this is really insane). It was already quite late, so we relaxed for a while before going to sleep.

On Wednesday, I went to my grandmother's after work to eat supper. I bought some McDonald's food for us, and we ate it while watching the ever-boring Live at Five. We also watched a bit of the equally-boring Six O'Clock News. Afterward, I picked up my glasses (which had twice broken under warranty in the past five months) and went to a few stores. I bought a couple of two-fours of beer for my birthday party, which was either going to be the Saturday or Sunday after my birthday.

Thursday definitely came as a bit of a surprise. I went into work as if it was a normal day, with little to do other than work on the bugs I'd been working on the past couple of weeks. However, at 2:32pm, that all changed. I was asked by B-SM to go to Seattle again to help out with a project that was horribly behind schedule. We'd (our company) promised three people, and we'd only delivered one. I couldn't turn down the trip, even though my birthday loomed, as I'd said already that short trips would be fine, so long as they weren't too frequent. At first, I was to leave on Sunday, returning Friday, but that eventually morphed into a Friday to Friday trip. I would be working over the weekend, but I'd be getting time off to compensate. I decided to accept, as a show of good faith, and because I was actually excited to travel, despite my negative experiences only a month earlier. Turning the trip down would only have been a supreme example of hipocracy, as I'd told my company that frequent, short trips were vastly superior to infrequent long ones. Truthfully, neither is good, because freqent short trips (fuck, that was like five typos in a row) have you dealing with travel a lot (delays, wasted time), whereas long trips avoid all of that, but leave you miserable because you miss the people you know and love.

Anyway, what day is this? What was I talking about? Oh yeah, me being sent on another trip. So yeah, I spent the remainder of Thursday booking flights and hotels, and installing necessary software on my laptop. After work, I was going to go to TA's to watch UFC, but I changed plans to go see JW instead as I'd be going a week without seeing her. A week without seeing TA would be just fine, but a week without JW would be pretty bad, so the decision was made.

The evening was unusual to say the least. I ate dinner with Dad at a tavern close to my place. We were slowed up by a large group of co-workers celebrating something - perhaps our agony. We ultimately got out alive, having eaten our club house sandwich/Montreal smoked meat sandwich (sorry, I have to go take a piss now). I then went over to JW's to spend the evening with her - or so I thought. She received phone calls from every person whose name she could remember, and her brother even stopped by to drop off some soup. He stayed for a while, chatting about movies, rocks and music. In the fullness of time, he left. It was bed time, and I'd only had a few minutes with JW - I was a bit angry, until I found that she wasn't hell-bent on going to sleep right away, as I'd suspected. There is a long story that I might tell here, but I won't, because I've already told it.

On Friday, I packed and installed software on my laptop. I visited Mum in the morning, as she was going to Toronto by train that day for a gift shop trade show. I slept a bit around lunch time, before packing and heading up to meet Dad. He drove me to the airport, and I got on a plane bound for Toronto. The security people confiscated my water.

It was snowing in Toronto, and after landing, we waited an hour and a half before pulling into our gate. I got off the plane, and headed to the baggage pickup. I was told there that my next plane was leaving in a few minutes, and that I'd better leave my bags behind and make a run for it. Fortunately, during the conversation, my bags arrived. I picked them up, and headed for my next flight. I arrived just in time, and I went through customs, again getting busted for carrying water (though this time, I got to keep it after drinking half of what I had in front of the guard). I cleared customs and made a run for my departure gate, only to find that my flight hadn't even been announced yet.

I went to grab a bite to eat - I had a roast beef sandwich and a huge Greek salad. I went back to the gate, and was horrifed to find everyone gone! Fortunately, they'd only changed the gates. So, I rushed over to the next gate to find both information screens labelled, "Closed/Ferme". I sat down and waited for a while, and eventually my flight showed up, albeit a half hour later than I'd been told at the last gate. The time was updated twice more before we finally boarded - each time, they waited long enough to ensure I couldn't begin doing something fun without missing the flight. Ultimately, we got on board, only to wait an hour and a half before take-off - it was snowing, and there were dozens of planes lined up waiting to be de-iced.

The flight to Seattle departed Toronto twenty-five minutes before it had been originally scheduled to land. It arrived in Seattle around 1:45am - surprisingly, AN was there to pick me up (he'd been in Seattle for a week already). I got my luggage (luckily) and we headed to the hotel. I got to bed around 3am - 25 hours after I'd gotten up the morning before. I was dead.

I only slept six hours, as I had to get up Saturday to go to work. AN and I had to get an extremely important project completed in order for our (the Seattle-based company we'd been sent to do work for) company to procure a large contract. The deadline was the following Thursday (the future, as I write). Okay, I'm going to stop here for now, as I'm really tired and I need to sleep. Hopefully I'll finish this soon. :S

Continuing on (I'm not so drunk this time, but still a little buzzed - hey, I'm on a working holiday!), we worked about eight hours on Saturday. Afterward, we decided to head downtown to grab some brews at a microbrewery suggested by our Seattle boss. We also wanted to stop by the theatre where Bill Cosby was giving a performance, just in case there were any scalper tickets to be had. The drive downtown was a nightmare - it took us well over an hour. We headed right for the theatre, there being no time left for a beer, and no sooner had we arrived than we'd bought tickets to the show! The scalper wanted $125 each for them, and we'd offered $80 (each). We got them for $90. Even after we agreed on the price, the scapler tried to get more money out of us - but we had none of that.

Once inside the theatre, we both had a feeling of "no way that just happened - no way we're actually in here." We'd thoroughly convinced ourselves that there was no way we were getting tickets. Inside, we each had a drink before proceeding to our seats - half-way back in the lower bowl - really good seats to be honest. Cosby came out, and we were close enough to recognize him without the fifty-foot big screen. He looked old and unhealthy, but he delivered a superb two-and-a-half hour routine, mixing old comedy with new. AN and I both appreciated every moment of the show, as Cosby is really as big as it gets in the world of comedy. The only negative to the evening was the seating - it was cramped to say the least. I was in terrible pain for the last hour of the show - my mind flirted with the idea of standing up mid-show just to stretch. There was no leg room, and the guy next to me (as well as AN) were infringing on my space. I had to hold my legs together. But it was worth it to see Cosby! AN and I both appreciated his extreme style of humour, which culminated with a story about a little brother and his imaginary friend. Cosby, the big brother, supposedly "strangled, broke the neck of, and killed" the imaginary friend - and of course, the little brother believed it!

After the show, there was no time to get beer because the parking garage was set to close at midnight. We drove back to the vicinity of our hotel, stopping at Denny's for dinner (the first chance we had!). We both had large, unhealthy, unsatisfying meals, and we both walked out feeling worse than we'd felt coming in. The staff was downright scary - an older woman with painted-on, red eyebrows and a growling raspy voice seated us, and a mobster latino served our food.

On Sunday, we got up and went to work again. We stayed a bit late, but there was still time to relax before going to bed, so we went to a restaurant close to the hotel. We weren't in the mood for wasting half our time driving downtown. We both had fish tacos recommended by many people at the company. The fish was barbequed, and it was coated in spices - very spicy and hot overall. It was topped with a coleslaw-like mixture, plus sour cream and guacamole if desired. It was good, but not great. We also had several large girly drinks - ten-dollar margaritas, mohitos (sp?) et al.

After the restaurant, I came back and drunkenly wrote the first part of this entry. If you think the author should go see the Microsoft Campus on Friday, go to entry 1462. If you think the author should go see Nintendo Headquarters, go to entry 1462. Sorry, folks - unfortunately, I can only choose one adventure.

I'm currently listening to: "Major Label Debut" from "To Be You and Me" by "Broken Social Scene" (this song is fucking awesome)

Movies watched this week: none (fuck me) (I TRIED to watch Casino)