Weekend travels....
Sep. 15th, 2004 06:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jaelieIn preparation for Matt's mother returning home, Friday after work we head out to the farm to do chores. When we get there, we discover that we have forgotten the keys, so we head back home, pick up a batch of keys, and head back out. To put this into perspective, it's a 75 mile drive, one way. When we get there the second time, Matt fiddles with the keys for a while, discovers that the set of keys we grabbed did indeed have a house key on it, but no gate key.
/sigh
So we go in the house and sleep. In the morning, we clean up some storm debris, and while Matt tries to get the lawn mower working, I go back to Lewisville to get the other set of keys, which I grab and head back to the farm. Matt can't get the lawn mower to work and so we order a carburetor for it and head back home.
I got to drive 450 miles on Friday and Saturday.
Whee.
Saturday evening my good friend Paul runs an Exalted game for us, which I thoroughly enjoy.
Sunday after church, I go to the office to enter some orders and do some inventory control since I was not going to be there on Monday. Then I go home and do laundry and pack.
We get up before the crack of dawn on Monday morning to catch our 7am flight to Baltimore. We arrive in Baltimore around 11am EST, check in to our hotel and go to the convention center to set up our booth. Since it's a small retailer tradeshow (although hosted by one of our larger distributors), the booth space is small and very quickly set up. We are finished within an hour. We go back to our hotel, and Matt discovers a pamphlet that shows that there is a Civil War museum with in walking distance, so we head out. On our way to the museum, Matt sees something that completely veers him from the Civil War museum.
A three masted tall ship.
We change course and go directly to the harbor. There, to Matt's great delight, we discover that the USS Constellation is docked. There is a small museum attached, and they gave us a little gadget that has a recorded tour and set us loose on the ship. We spent about an hour and a half (maybe two hours) wandering the ship and listening to the tour. It turns out that this year marks it's 150th "birthday." We thoroughly enjoyed it.
Another pleasant surprise about Baltimore was the people. They were pretty much all very polite and friendly. That was a refreshing change from Indianapolis.
Tuesday we did the show. It was relatively un-eventful, but we were able to speak with several retailers who had never seen our product before, so that much was a success. It's always good when we catch a retailer that is unfamiliar with our lines, because then we get the chance for fresh sales. Go go increasing customer base! At 3pm we took everything down and headed to the airport to make our 6:45pm flight.
The take-off is uneventful; however, as we approach DFW, the pilot gets on the speaker and chats with us about the not-so-good weather conditions at the airport. We circle the storm for a while, then the pilot announces we're heading to Austin to re-fuel. When we land at Austin, I look out the window, and what do I see? At least fifteen, possibly more, other planes waiting to refuel. Ugh. So we sit there for three hours waiting in the plane to get refueled. It would have been just as fast to drive from Austin to Dallas. :-/
Finally, at midnight, the plane takes off for DFW from Austin. We land at 1am (may have been quicker... it all started getting blurred for me) and wait outside for another hour for the shuttle to take us to our car. At 2:30am when we get home, we collapse.
This morning, I get up to get ready for work. Running late but caring less, since I know the bosses understand coming in late after a trip. As I back out the drive way, I notice the City has put a glowing neon orange sticker on my white Oldsmobile.
The jerks.
So I lead Matt over to the lawn mower repair place to pick up that carburetor, then head back home to read the sticker. They stuck it on my car on Monday at 2:30pm and give me 48 hours to move it because it's (a) abandoned or (b) breaking some parking code. Grr. So Matt comes back and helps me jump start the thing. Ok, so the silly car hasn't moved since February and all the stickers are expired, but still! It's in front of my own house, and doesn't look broken down. :P Ah, well. Matt re-parks the car in our drive way and I peel off the sticker.
It's been moved.
So there.
I roll into work about 1pm and promptly am buried in things to do. It's good to be needed at work. ^_^ I enter all the new accounts in and pass the invoices off to Brian to complete, and then start juggling the new releases and next casting cycle. I also manage to knock off some twenty or so emails, though I still need to catch up on the rest. I also have some store follow-ups to do tomorrow morning from the show, as well as six phone calls to return.
Not too shabby, all things considered. All told, since Friday evening, I've traveled a bit over 3,350 miles.
And oddly enough, today I feel refreshed and ready to tackle what's left of the week.
Now I get to head home and play a game of VtR. Very cool.
/sigh
So we go in the house and sleep. In the morning, we clean up some storm debris, and while Matt tries to get the lawn mower working, I go back to Lewisville to get the other set of keys, which I grab and head back to the farm. Matt can't get the lawn mower to work and so we order a carburetor for it and head back home.
I got to drive 450 miles on Friday and Saturday.
Whee.
Saturday evening my good friend Paul runs an Exalted game for us, which I thoroughly enjoy.
Sunday after church, I go to the office to enter some orders and do some inventory control since I was not going to be there on Monday. Then I go home and do laundry and pack.
We get up before the crack of dawn on Monday morning to catch our 7am flight to Baltimore. We arrive in Baltimore around 11am EST, check in to our hotel and go to the convention center to set up our booth. Since it's a small retailer tradeshow (although hosted by one of our larger distributors), the booth space is small and very quickly set up. We are finished within an hour. We go back to our hotel, and Matt discovers a pamphlet that shows that there is a Civil War museum with in walking distance, so we head out. On our way to the museum, Matt sees something that completely veers him from the Civil War museum.
A three masted tall ship.
We change course and go directly to the harbor. There, to Matt's great delight, we discover that the USS Constellation is docked. There is a small museum attached, and they gave us a little gadget that has a recorded tour and set us loose on the ship. We spent about an hour and a half (maybe two hours) wandering the ship and listening to the tour. It turns out that this year marks it's 150th "birthday." We thoroughly enjoyed it.
Another pleasant surprise about Baltimore was the people. They were pretty much all very polite and friendly. That was a refreshing change from Indianapolis.
Tuesday we did the show. It was relatively un-eventful, but we were able to speak with several retailers who had never seen our product before, so that much was a success. It's always good when we catch a retailer that is unfamiliar with our lines, because then we get the chance for fresh sales. Go go increasing customer base! At 3pm we took everything down and headed to the airport to make our 6:45pm flight.
The take-off is uneventful; however, as we approach DFW, the pilot gets on the speaker and chats with us about the not-so-good weather conditions at the airport. We circle the storm for a while, then the pilot announces we're heading to Austin to re-fuel. When we land at Austin, I look out the window, and what do I see? At least fifteen, possibly more, other planes waiting to refuel. Ugh. So we sit there for three hours waiting in the plane to get refueled. It would have been just as fast to drive from Austin to Dallas. :-/
Finally, at midnight, the plane takes off for DFW from Austin. We land at 1am (may have been quicker... it all started getting blurred for me) and wait outside for another hour for the shuttle to take us to our car. At 2:30am when we get home, we collapse.
This morning, I get up to get ready for work. Running late but caring less, since I know the bosses understand coming in late after a trip. As I back out the drive way, I notice the City has put a glowing neon orange sticker on my white Oldsmobile.
The jerks.
So I lead Matt over to the lawn mower repair place to pick up that carburetor, then head back home to read the sticker. They stuck it on my car on Monday at 2:30pm and give me 48 hours to move it because it's (a) abandoned or (b) breaking some parking code. Grr. So Matt comes back and helps me jump start the thing. Ok, so the silly car hasn't moved since February and all the stickers are expired, but still! It's in front of my own house, and doesn't look broken down. :P Ah, well. Matt re-parks the car in our drive way and I peel off the sticker.
It's been moved.
So there.
I roll into work about 1pm and promptly am buried in things to do. It's good to be needed at work. ^_^ I enter all the new accounts in and pass the invoices off to Brian to complete, and then start juggling the new releases and next casting cycle. I also manage to knock off some twenty or so emails, though I still need to catch up on the rest. I also have some store follow-ups to do tomorrow morning from the show, as well as six phone calls to return.
Not too shabby, all things considered. All told, since Friday evening, I've traveled a bit over 3,350 miles.
And oddly enough, today I feel refreshed and ready to tackle what's left of the week.
Now I get to head home and play a game of VtR. Very cool.
