Typically I have very little issues traveling, a hiccup once in a while, but today started off on not necessarily the “wrong foot” as much as just… off.

Let’s start with the work portion of the day:

Work was semi-normal, woke up early to triple check my luggage and headed to the local office (why would I drive to the Chicago office on a day like this?) relatively early… I was behind and being prepared for the trip, but had caught up beautifully. The only major item was that I was suppose to have a monthly forecast financial meeting with the cost engineer at work… except that didn’t happen.

That should have been my first hint that things weren’t going to be smooth.

The only availability she had was in the afternoon… when I would have been at the airport. I railed at that because I didn’t want to bring my laptop for what was essentially going to be one hour of work done at the airport and then it would be a dead weight the rest of the trip. Except there was nothing I could do about other people… So since I have to be on my laptop to do financial / budget forecasts for my jobs that meant I had to bring my laptop with me… Yay! **grumbles**

This is me we’re talking about, I have my suitcases packed and repacked thrice over by this time, and now I had to repack to include my (new and refreshed) work laptop? So in my mad rush of repacking items from one suitcase to another that had a laptop pouch… I ended up forgetting the work pouch I had planned to look at whilst on vacation (really only four hours of work) as well as all my paperwork to get on the cruise in the first place…

That should have been my second hint… albeit I didn’t realize til I was at the gate waiting to board the plane. Oh **le sigh**

After repacking suitcases I had an errand to run, and headed to a friend’s to do just that except I forgot something at home that would allow me to work remotely from my work laptop. Meaning without it the work laptop ends up being a dead weight… I was less than five minutes from my friend’s place before I realized what I forgot and so had to turn around and go back home the come back. Go figure. That was forty minutes that I really didn’t need wasted… plus I didn’t realize I forgot the work pouch / paperwork else I would have picked those up!

My Borg programming was seriously undergoing some major issues.

After the errand it was off to my parents where I wolfed down some lunch while sending work emails which in turn made me late for leaving their house to head to the airport.

Airport security checkpoint was fine… but the flight ended up being almost an hour delayed. Wifi access was spotty, so I almost didn’t get the necessary work done. Keep in mind, yes I know I could do this on the boat “theoretically” but there is a company policy that they do not wish for employees to log in remotely from a foreign country or international waters for security reasons. So this had to happen while I was still stateside. >.< Flight itself was relatively uneventful... Then the hotel… first key card didn’t work at all… went down to the front desk and got two more… neither worked… had to go down again for another set of key cards and was escorted up by the front desk personnel to make sure it worked. Which did… finally.

Originally I was going to head to the Claim Jumper, have a small meal, read something and then roam around the ocean front, because why not. But after trudging up and down the floors just to get into the room, could you blame me when I decided that all I wanted to do was sit on the balcony and chillax for the evening? Can you see what’s coming? My friend / roommate for this trip had an adventure of his own wherein he forgot his credit card at the bar during the bar crawl he was doing.

So guess what he wanted to do? 1) Grab a bottle of wine we would share and sit on the balcony with and 2) go on an adventure to find his credit card, while I get some grub in the process.

So we left the hotel went to the Poor House Brewing Company to fetch his credit card and a couple of drinks (I had a Dark and Damp Imperial Stout… yum). Then walked a couple of blocks to the Soda and Swine…

After stuffing ourselves with some absolutely delicious meatball based food we trudged back to the hotel and he promptly fell asleep while I showered. Yay!

Here is hoping the rest of the trip is uneventful…