In the ongoing saga entitled All I Ever Do These Days Is Work:
What’s more fun than finding out less than a week in advance that you have to fly to Philadelphia for a 2.5-hour business meeting, even though you’re swamped with work and can’t really afford to spend a day out of the office? Finding out that it’s actually a three-day business trip involving two accounts that you won’t be working on, of course. And even better is finding yourself with a fever (from a flu that won’t quite give up on me) the night before your 6:30 a.m. flight to Philly.
Maybe I wouldn’t be feeling quite so awful if I hadn’t set my alarm for 3 a.m. this morning to watch the Australian Open quarterfinal match between Justine Henin-Hardenne and Lindsay Davenport. Yes, I really did that. What can I say? I’m a fan, and ESPN2 hasn’t shown any of Justine’s matches during normal hours. I figured she needed me to cheer her on in order to beat Davenport. I’m paying for the lack of sleep today, boy howdy. But it was worth it, because it was an exciting, come-from-behind victory for my favorite female tennis player over my least favorite tennis player.
(And I can’t resist a nasty comment about Davenport’s outfit. At first, I thought it was just a shapeless one-piece dress that bore an unfortunate resemblance to a nightgown, but then I got a better look. It was actually a long-sleeved (very practical for the Australian summer) mint green zip-up cardigan with a matching mint green skirt. With random black stripes as accents. And the clincher: a vaguely triangular translucent mesh cutout panel on the back of the cardigan…presumably needed for ventilation to counter the long sleeves. And her hair! It was all bunched up in weird clumps that were caught in barrettes. Yikes! Fashion note: The lighter your complexion is, the worse you’re going to look in mint green.)
It’s not all bleak, though. One of my projects got scaled back and postponed slightly, so I won’t have to fill the hours during which I’m not in meetings with work; I can actually relax and sleep in a little bit. And the good news is that the second part of my itinerary will take me to New York, so I’ll get a very quick, unexpected visit with my dad. It will be very different from my last, relatively leisurely trip home (which I haven’t written about yet, but I might still; it was a pretty cool trip), but hey, a trip to New York is a trip to New York.
So why am I dreading the whole thing so much? Oh yeah, I forgot: I’m allergic to meetings. It’s a good thing I love my job. That’s what I keep repeating to myself, over and over.