More Bay Area Magic!

So ya'll know that I went to SJC again yesterday to facilitate their monthly JLT meeting. And, of course, when I go to the Bay Area, I just have to see someone I know - right?

I did! Yup - on the plane heading out there, my friend/former roommate Danielle's uncle was in first class! The neat guy I fondly call Uncle Jim really startled me when he reached out to grab my hand when I was passing his seat to head for my own in the back, blindly in my own world! :-)

Just so funny. All the places I go to, but I only ever see people randomly when I head to NoCal.

EXHAUSTED after that trip, though. Left house at 6 AM, got home at 10 PM. That's a long day, folks. I'm really looking forward to actually spending the night next month to (a) give me more time on the ground and with the local EEs, and (b) not give me such a freaking long work day!

Still sick. Cough has worsened. Throat feels like it was scraped raw with Brillo. Ugh. Oh, well, I guess. I'll get better when I get better. It's just so old to still feel like this after way longer than a month now.

Even despite exhaustion and sickness, it's a Wonderful Wednesday in my world - Chris has been gone to Austin since Sunday afternoon and he'll be home tonight! YAY! For some reason, I've missed him a lot more this time around than I usually do when we're apart for a night or two or three. I'll be very glad to have him home.

Hope ya'lls Wednesdays are going well! I'm off to grab a bite for lunch before tackling my afternoon meetings!

Traveling, er, Wednesday

Had another travel day today...and it was a doozy.

Alarm: 4:55 AM (CENTRAL)
Depart Home: 6:00 AM (CENTRAL)
Arrive south airport parking: 6:25 AM (CENTRAL)
Arrive Terminal A: 6:45 AM (CENTRAL)
Purchase Breakfast to eat on-board: 7:00 AM (CENTRAL)
Board flight from DFW to SJC: 7:25 AM (CENTRAL)
Depart DFW: 7:55 AM (CENTRAL)
Arrive SJC: 9:25 AM (PACIFIC)
SJC Joint Leadership Team Meeting: 10:45 AM - 2:00 PM (PACIFIC)
Lunch with SJC GM: 2:30 PM (PACIFIC)
Board flight from SJC to DFW: 3:20 PM (PACIFIC)
Depart SJC: 3:35 PM (PACIFIC)
Arrive DFW: 8:50 PM (CENTRAL) (SAME TERMINAL AND GATE I DEPARTED FROM!)
Arrive south airport parking: 9:20 PM (CENTRAL)
Arrive Home: 9:45 PM (CENTRAL)
Dinner: 10:00 PM (CENTRAL)

So yeah...long day. GREAT meeting, however. Love going to the Bay Area, but these day trips are just killers! To read a bit more about my day, check out my next post - Bay Area Magic!

Oh, what a day...

From the alarm going off at 4 AM (mind you, I didn't stop working on writing last night until 1 AM) to finally getting home at nearly 7 PM, I had a busy non-stop day.

What did Tiffany do on her Traveling Tuesday?

Oy. Left the house at 5:15; parked at the Parking Spot and froze my patootie off while waiting for the van driver to come get me. (Sadistic bitch won't drive towards you until you're out of your car...and then takes his time.) Got to the airport...hurry up and wait. And wait.

Yep, we were delayed. The pilot reported a lightbulb out to maintenance and maintenance found that the whole socket was bad...so...they fixed it. Could the dang plane not fly with one lightbulb not able to light?!

Flew to St. Louis. Spent a total of 1 minute and 30 seconds at STL...the time it took to sprint from C10 to C5 and get on my next plane to MSP. I was the second-to-last on.

Then bumpity, bumpity all the way to Minnesota...where it was snowing like crazy. Buckets full. Argh.

Good news is that even though I was running late (correction: pilot was running late) the team held the meeting for me, so we didn't start until I got there. Yay! I love the MSP JLT!

Lunch, browsing through the mini-Mall of America that's onsite at MSP, denied upgrade to first (as usual)...and then wait some more. Did I mention that it was snowing like crazy? I was honestly quite sure that I wasn't getting out of MSP today.

We ended up boarding about an hour late, and then it was time for the plow and de-icing. De-iced twice, watched the plow drive around ineffectively...consider we taxied down a runway that had 4-6 inches of pack snow on it!

Bumpity, bumpity all the way home. Man, that turbulance was bad. I was in a cold sweat for a lot of the ride home.

Good news is that I got about 1700 words knocked out today for my Going Home MS. Yahoo! Haven't typed it in yet, that's a hand-written guesstimate of number of words.

Odd news is that I think this is the first time that I've been on three different planes on the same day.

VERY glad to be home. TIME FOR BED!

Traveling Tuesday

Last Tuesday I was in Washington, D.C. for the day. This Tuesday, I'm traveling a bit as well...but just around the metroplex! So far today, I have gone from home to the office to the airport Hyatt for my conference to lunch up in Grapevine to my house to pick up speakers to my office to the airport Hyatt and then back to my office...I'm due in a meeting in 15 minutes and then back to the airport Hyatt for the late afternoon session. Ye Gods! I'm tired!

I just thought I'd vent on something today: the attitude accepted by some people that it's ok for a woman to accept that she'll "always" make less than a man and subsequently not to strive for more.

My Pampered Chef director is the one who started this in my mind. Chris and I visited with her and her husband a week ago Sunday, because we're just getting back into the demonstrating business...after 6 or so months off when we were too busy to do anything with PC. I made the mistake of making a comment about current and future wages and that I didn't want to end up in the same boat as my mother, only earning 1/2 as much as my dad's Social Security because she didn't have enough work credits of her own to earn on her own. My director, a very sweet woman only 5 or 10 years younger than my mom, told me not to worry, that women should always elect to just earn 1/2 of their husband's SS because they'd never qualify for as much using their own income.

Excuse me?

I compounded the situation by attempting to explain myself, telling her that until I took a rather, er, HUGE paycut to come to American Airlines(40 freaking percent!)I'd always made more than my husband, year over year, for five years prior. Coming to AA was the first time I ever made less, and so I determined that I'd work even harder at my outside activities (writing, judging, PC, etc.) to make up that difference because I'd be damned if I'd change my quality of living.

So then she used that opportunity to tell me that if I'd just schedule more PC shows (she basically considers me a slacker because I only schedule shows from other shows...I have neither the time nor the inclination to solicit from everyone I know) I'd make good money.

At that point, I just shut my trap. But there's no way that would every be true. I do PC for fun and to get fun products. The average show requires 1.5 hours of pre-work, 1 hour of setup, 2 hours of demonstrating, 1 hour of break-down and order-taking and a final 1.5 hours of entering sales, converting internet orders, working on host orders and transmitting. For that seven hours of work, I'll clear around $75 on average or $10 per hour. On the flip side, my freelancing would bring in about $200 for the same number of hours worked and doesn't require me to get out of my jammies, leave my house or spend money on gas.

All this, just to be happy with making less than my husband.

Dream on! One more promotion at AA and we'll be back to even salaries, but I'll damn sure keep writing and judging...and even an occasional PC show once in awhile. I'm never happy settling for just enough...I'll always want more.

And that's not a bad thing!

Hope you're all having a good day! Off to my meeting and then the conference again!

Tiffany

Too Too Tuesday

No MeMe today - sorry! :-) I didn't find one that I liked with a Tuesday theme. I guess that means I actually have to write something original, huh?

I had a very long day - and it's only 6:45! My alarm went off at 4:25 this morning, and by 6:10, I was on a plane headed to DCA, Ronald Reagan National Airport. This was a tagalong trip for me - since I'm still so new to my team at American, I'm still learning the ropes. I'm about to be permanently assigned as the Internal Consultant to the Joint Leadership Team in San Jose, CA and so today's trip was to see another city's JLT in action. I sat in on a phone call for the Minneapolis JLT a few weeks ago (I'll be covering that city, as well, temporarily, for the next few months) but I wanted to get an idea of how other cities ran their JLTs as well.

I was very impressed with DCA - just like MSP - despite anything the media would have you believe about the horrible relations between American Airlines workgroups, on an airport level, everyone really does play nicely in the sandbox. The meeting wrapped up in just over an hour and the IC and I had a bite to eat before boarding our plane back home. Lots of flying for such a short meeting, but I'm glad to have gone!

I got back just in time to meet my husband at the airport - his flight arrived just minutes before mine, on his way back from visiting family in Kansas. With dinner in the oven, I thought I'd take two minutes to post!

Writing - got a bit done on the plane today, but honestly, not a lot. That's ok...I'm not going to pressure myself this week. Beating myself up for not achieving certain threshholds is not going to make me a better writer...I need to continuously remind myself that I already have a 40+ hour a week job, plus additional sidelines such as judging speech and debate and my Pampered Chef business...it's not like I sit on my butt doing nothing with my time...but I can't help but feel inadequate when I set a writing goal and do not meet it. If only there were more hours in the day, right?

I've got NaNoWriMo on my mind today...Patti is considering working on the sequel to her soon-to-be-released novel, The Daddy Spell, during NaNo and so I've got my own proposed project on my mind. I just posted to my writing board that, with 10 days to go until November, I'm already un-optimistic about succeeding...and that's just a crappy attitude to have, isn't it?? If I go into November with such a crappy attitude, it'll be like a self-fulfilling prophecy and of course I'll fail.

NaNo sets the goal of 50,000 words over the 30 days of November, but I just don't feel like 50k will do justice to the project I have in mind...I'd rather shoot for at least 75k...which would mean 2500 words per day IN ADDITION to everything else I already do and my mother-in-law arriving for the winter and two work trips and, oh yeah, THANKSGIVING! ARGH! But then I think about it like this...if I can set a schedule for just adding on to my NaNo work and actually observe that EVERY SINGLE DAY, it's really not that unrealistic, right!? I've been working on schedule ideas, so I'm just going to go work harder now to get something into place. Perhaps I'll take a little pressure off myself and call it NaNoWriMoMo and do November AND December...now there's a thought...

Anyhow, I'm definitely rambling by now. Hope all is well with my readers!

Tiffany