As alluded yesterday, I’m about to board a plane for a week of business travel in Munich. Or, more precisely, I’m currently seated on the floor of Terminal E at Logan Airport, near gate 8A where apparently national security considerations have precluded providing sufficient seating for transatlantic traffic. Not that it matters. I will be sitting down for an awfully long time.
I should be fairly gleeful; I’m fairly resigned. Partly because of exhaustion—I drove Lisa and our dogs to the Jersey shore last night so that she could attend a family wedding today, and our dogs could have some supervision next week. Meaning that I drove the five hours back from New Jersey today, then caught my breath and started packing.
Partly, I think, because I’m just plain exhausted. When talking to my sister on Wednesday, she observed that I didn’t sound like myself. I’m tired. And this time I don’t have a job search, a coast-to-coast move, or anything else to blame. I’ve been on edge and anxious for months for no good reason.
The one thing I know is that I will be among colleagues when I get to Munich. Our company’s German office has sent more than a few people that I work with on business travel to the States in the past six months. So even if I don’t understand a word that anyone else says in the next week, I’ll at least understand my coworkers.
Right now, though, I’m hoping I can just get some sleep tonight. I need to meet my colleague, the company’s other product manager, tomorrow night in Munich for a beer, and it won’t look good if I’m passing out in the middle of a biergarten a full week before Oktoberfest begins.
I could write more—about the miserable failure of the iGo system, about pedal to the metal from 9 in the morning to 1:45 in the afternoon, meaning that I was coming close to some speeds I’ve previously only driven in Death Valley—but I’m probably saying enough considering that I probably won’t update this blog for another eight days. Feel free to use this as an open thread, all you regular readers (yes, you four). But if you’re a comment spammer, I hope you drown in your own pork by-products while I’m gone.