update on the life of Anneke

I'm here. Really.

The last couple of weeks were nuts. I was in Calgary, then I returned on the 6th, to go home and re-pack for a weekend in Kansas City, left on another airplane on the 6th...

Had fun in Kansas City. We ended up going to the Renaissance Festival there. It is much bigger than the one here. It was kind of odd going there not dressed up in my garb, but I didn't want to drag it all with me, then have us decide that we were going to go in street clothes, so I made the decision to just not bring the stuff. It was a weekend of poor food choices: with the beer at festival, then the dinner of tacos, accompanied by chips, guac, and con queso, bloody marys, beer, and wine...

I didn't run that weekend either.

Then last week. I was so cranky on Monday, I bitched for about 10 straight minutes to my husband. He was not sure what to do. It's just that I was trying to make sure the things were done for the meetings I was facilitating, and it was not done. And it is really not my job to make sure that these things were done, but the admin person who was here before has taken a different position, and the new person in the job is not sure about what needs to be done. So amongst the myriad of conference calls, catching up from a week out of the office, and getting together the infomation I needed for facilitating the meetings, I got calls from people about their hotel reservations not being correct, I needed to adjust the time the bus was picking us up for the event, and I needed to get someone to pay the remaining $600 for the tickets to the hockey game we were going to attend the following evening. Then I had to go pick up the said tickets, since I did not want to leave that to chance... and honestly, if I had not stepped in, things would have been complete crap, and I would have gotten blamed for things not running smoothly, as I was the "representative" on site.

I'm sure the banquet manager was pretty fed up with me and all of the changes/problems we seemed to have. At the meetings on Tuesday, I needed to fix the direct billing of hotel rooms, increase the number of people we had for meals, and adjust meal times, not once, but twice. I kept apologizing. She kept telling me that it was fine, but I would have been fed up with me.

At least it's over. And people keep telling me that it was a well-organized event. Just a tad bit stressfull for me.

And I ate all of the food I could manage to find at the meetings - delicious pastries for breakfast (not one, but two) salad with real dressing, potato chips and cookies at lunch. Tootsie rolls and hard candies they had set up on the tables for the meetings, then dinner at the hockey arena. More chips and dip. More cookies, but at least, no beer.

And the following day was pretty much a food fest too. (that being Wednesday). I don't even remember everything I had. Eric and I also went out for a drink that evening, so I had a margarita and some tortilla chips and salsa.

Thursday, I made fried fish for dinner. That's what Eric wanted, so that's what we had.

Friday, I took the day off of work. I had the best of intentions on getting up and exercising, but it didn't happen. I went to have a bowl of cereal for breakfast, but the milk was completely sour, so I had two eggs and toast with laughing cow spread on the toast. Lunch was microwave popcorn, snack was a TJ chickn pizza (about half) and dinner was at DQ, on the way to camping in Southern Minnesota.

Yes, we went camping this weekend. I realize it was cold (um, lows in the high 20's) but the days were nice, and there was a great campfire. And, we had a cabin with a heater (some folks still tented it, but not us). Again, lots of food and alcohol. But I did have the redemption of going for a short run, and a hike on Saturday, and for a run on Sunday morning.

It still did not make the hop on the scale this morning any nicer...

But, I'm not traveling at all this week, and the meetings are not as large and stressful. I am just glad when this part of the year is over (planning for 2007, corporate safety goals, Safety Committe goal setting, planning, etc). It's my busy insane season.

On that note, I need to compile some more stats.

~a