Last week my work sent me to Springfield (state capital) for an overnight visit. I have an easy time finding my hotel, but when I get there, the entire parking lot is blocked off. There is no way in or out. Now I'm not a fan of the hotel I was staying at, I only went there because that was the only hotel my company would cover the expenses. I have to park in the overflow lot.

After a nice long trip, I really wasn't in the mood for this crap, so I focused on getting to the door. I tried to keep my frustration and annoyance under control. Then when I get to the door with my one small bag. It was only an overnight trip. I'm stopped by a guy asking me, "What is your business here at the hotel". Of course I'm a little miffed because I'm thinking what a bunch of pretentious bastards. There hotel isn't that swag that they have to keep people out. I explained to the guy that I have a reservation to stay the night and that I need to check in. So he lets me go.

I'm swearing under my breath.

I get to the desk and check in. So I can't help but to ask, "Hey, what's up with the parking lot?" The girl at the desk responded with, "Obama's coming". I knew he was coming to Springfield for Lincoln's 200th birthday, but what does that have to do with their parking lot? When I asked her, she clarified, "No, Obama is coming HERE, he's staying in the hotel." When she said that, little things started to stick out in my memory. What vehicle's that were parked in the roped off area were all black and some kind of nice heavy SUV. The guy at the door, all the activity. It started to make sense.

After putting my bags in my room, I headed out to dinner. As I'm walking out I look at the guy(s) at the door and notice the ear pieces this time. I look at the plates on the big heavy SUVs, and they all have government plates. Some were senate plates, some where house plates, some were just Fed and State government plates.

When I checked out Wednesday apparently I missed Obama by a couple of hours. Honestly, that's as close as I ever want to get to the man.

Then the fun really began when I got to work on Wednesday. I walk into the office at 8:00 AM to hear that the entire building is being besieged by a computer virus. I spent the next 16 and a half hours helping coordinate the clean up with the IT guys that my company shipped in from all over the state. Yes, I said 16 and a half hours. I started my job at 8:00AM and didn't get off of work until 12:30 AM. I was tired as all hell.

I get home, and crash at 1:00AM only to get up at 4:30AM so I can get to work by 5:30AM. I needed to finish up what we started the night before. I was so tired that I kept making some very interesting verbal mistakes. Like telling one of my bosses that "this virus sucks the sweat off of a stump broke donkey". Yea, she gave me the same look you probably have on your face right now.

Since then I've still been doing some clean up on the computers at work. Which is why I haven't been my normal chatty and active self. It's also why there was no beer review last week.

Posted by: Contagion at 08:14 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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I leave today to head to Springfield, Illinois on business. My company is sending me down there for a seminar. It sounds like it's going to be a really interesting one too! I'm pretty sure I'm going to be sleeping through most of it. They had two dates for this seminar, February 11th and February 12th. I had to attend on one of those dates.

All of my peers are supposed to attend as well. They, being undecisive lemmings that they are, decided to wait and "discuss it at our meetings" before signing up for a date. Me, I choose the date that worked best for me and signed up right away. When they finally got around to making a decision, they all had to go on the 12th. So I'm the only one from my office going on the 11th! Not that I have a problem with that at all.

For a week now they were all planning on leaving at noon on the 11th so they could go shopping when they got to Springfield. They included our office manager. When they said that, and I knew I was going to be going by myself I thought I would leave early to scout out Springfield for my trip next month for IGOLD.

I a meeting they were discussing when they were going to leave and it turned out they couldn't leave until 3:00 because of anotehr meeting our manager was in. Then I was asked what time I was leaving today. I told them, "I'm leaving at 2." I didn't figure it was a big deal.

When one of my peers asked kind of snottily, "Why are you leaving so early?", I was a little taken back because she was one of the ones pushing to leave at noon to go shopping. So I responded with, "Well I don't shop, but I decided to go down early to get some range time in."

Another one of my peers responded with, "I didn't know you golfed"

I responded smugly, "No, shooting range."

At that point they let it drop and wouldn't make eye contact with me for the rest of the meeting. Hopefully they learned to let their double standards go.

Posted by: Contagion at 07:10 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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