Life, According to Plan

I don’t know whose, plan, because it’s sure not mine!

I’m in South Bend/Chicago this weekend, and then it’s off to DC on Monday for the week. Just about every detail of these trips has changed, other than that Caron and John are, in fact, getting married in a few hours.

[Hi, DC people! Let's pretend that I have my shit together and I totally sent you an e-vite for happy hour like two weeks ago, ok? So...it'll be Thursday. Um, somewhere. Around happy hour time. Hope you can make it!]

A voice mail message I left for Steve earlier this week, regarding our Sunday afternoon/evening plans sounded like this:

Hi, it’s me. Just calling to remind you I’ll be in town this weekend. Still don’t know what our Sunday afternoon looks like, and Traveling Companion isn’t sure he can make it, so maybe I’ll be free for the afternoon and maybe it’ll just be dinner. So, basically, I have no information for you. Don’t call me back because I won’t be able to deal with this until Friday. I’ll call you from the airport or something.

At the airport yesterday morning, I changed my flight from Chicago to DC, my flight from DC back to Sacramento, and attempted to cancel my flight from Chicago to Sacramento, but the nice woman from Northwest Airlines told me they couldn’t leave it open as a one-way trip, so unless I was canceling the entire trip (no! please no! I’m sitting at the gate waiting for my plane to Chicago!) I’d need to call back after I got to Chicago.

When I got to Minneapolis, (my layover on the way to Chicago) Traveling Companion officially bailed on the trip. Bah. Oh well, not having to entertain someone for the weekend leaves more time for my two favorite pastimes -- working and working out, both of which I’ll be able to do at the hotel.

Since there was no longer a need to coordinate schedules, I set off to get on an earlier flight into Chicago. Success! I love the people at Northwest -- I believe that’s the first time standby has ever worked out for me. (Oddly enough, I think I read that they were rated one of the worst airlines to fly, but I’ve had relatively few problems with them.) I got to Chicago and had to change my rental car reservation to accommodate all those other schedule changes, but at last I was on my way to South Bend.

Even my body is messing with my plans. Headed to Chicago, I fell asleep while the plane was still sitting at the gate, as usual, but woke up for no apparent reason, before the flight attendant even told us we could use our portable electronic devices. I believe my body was trying to tell me something. Namely, "Woman, you have already slept for three hours today! Don’t you realize you’ve filled your sleeping quota? How can you expect me to sleep more?!?!?!"

Steve and I caught up with each other to pin down those elusive Sunday plans. He’s now booked for the afternoon, as am I.* But the requisite dinner-paid-for-by-your-big-sister-when-she’s-in-town is on.

*In Minneapolis I discovered I’d won a deadline of Tuesday (preferably morning) for a work project that just hasn’t gotten the attention it needs from me. Given that I’m spending most of Monday on a plane and in meetings, this attention-getting will have to occur Sunday.

[To the work people who know about this blog and read it, Hi! Yes, I’ve worked for an entire week straight, barely stopping to sleep, and yes, it’s my weekend away, and yet -- look at that -- I’m still working! Anyone want to trade jobs??? Too bad my bosses don’t know about this blog. I think they’re catching on to the all-work-all-the-time nature of my life, though.]

I hear there’s some college or something in South Bend...maybe I’ll go crash the library there to get my work done.

But for now, I'm off to a wedding. Caron and John have been together for almost five years, and will now commit to seventy-five more. At least some things stay the same.