The Great White North

I am now a world traveler, and I could not have said that before Wednesday.

I had a meeting in Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada this week, and it was pretty cool.  I didn't get to ride the Maid of the Mist, but I could see both the American and the Canadian "Horseshoe" Falls from my hotel window.

My entrance into Canada was humorous.  My colleague from our Buffalo, New York, office picked me up at the Buffalo airport and drove me to the hotel in Niagara Falls.  He was very gracious to do that, especially since we were in horrible traffic and the line to get into Canada was beyond long.  Then, as luck would have it, the border agent at the booth we chose to drive through was having some day - he asked us a ton of questions, and when I told him I was a meeting planner having a meeting from Wednesday night till Friday afternoon, he decided I might need a work visa for that and pulled us over.  My colleague, still very patient and wonderful, stood in line with me at immigration for 30 minutes just to tell the agent that I was in town for the a meeting and that I was not selling anything to the attendees.  Whew - that was an ordeal, but it makes for an interesting memory for my first trip out of the country!

Most of my time was spent in my hotel room or in the hotel meeting room.  The group I was with did have dinner in a wonderful restaurant on the 10th floor of our hotel which overlooked the falls.  It was beautiful, and the food was good.

I walked for a while when my meeting was finally over and took some great pictures of the falls.  They really are something to see.  I also stopped at a wax museum in honor of my parents' honeymoon trip to Niagara Falls, Ontario in 1974.  I can still remember the famous photo my dad took of a topless wax figure...he cut off her head - hilarious forever. 

I had a way-too-sugary cookie sandwich with butter cream frosting from the Hershey store.  I bought souvenirs for my husband and my dog - the standard pen for JR and a rope toy for Stryker with a Canadian NHL plush in the middle.  I heard people say "aboot," and "surry," and "eh."  The vending area in the hotel was called "pop & ice."  The buses are called "people movers."

My colleague picked me up to drive me back to the Buffalo airport - he really is a stand-up guy.  Based on our trip into Canada, I was uneasy about our trip out.  The lines were not as long, but the agent was just as specific.  My colleague let the agent know that he was merely picking me up from the hotel, and I let the agent know that I had been at a business meeting.  He asked how we knew each other.  My colleague told him we worked for the same company, just different locations.  He asked if I sold anything to the attendees.  I assured him I had not.  He asked if I had made any purchases.  I pulled out the rope toy and pens and said, "just these for my husband and dog."  He seemed leery, but he let us pass - no trip into immigration that time.

Now I sit in the Buffalo airport waiting to get home to my amazing husband and our wonderful pup.

So, my first trip out of the contiguous 48 states was not that far from "home," but I am still thrilled that I have a passport because of this trip (as does my husband) so we can travel abroad when we are ready...

"Free" Time

The company for which I work has some pretty cool benefits for being such a small organization...I get to keep my airline miles (which makes vacations easier); When I am working in the office, I come in at 7:30am and leave at 4:30pm (I can pick back up tomorrow); if I need to leave for something, I have a no-questions-asked personal time off policy (with 10 days of PTO to use in 15 minutes increments); we have lunch-and-learn once a month during which we learn something useful, get a free lunch, and get to leave one hour early; and, my favorite (at least today) - cookouts once a month during the summer! We each brought in a side dish or dessert, the managers bought the main course (today was chicken), and we have a social hour (or two) on a Friday during the summer. Then, we all clean up and the president of the company tells us when we can go home - today it's 2:30pm! Two hours early!

Ah. Free time!

Wait. Is it "free?"



What am I going to do with those two hours? Well, first I am going to drive home. While I am leaving earlier in the afternoon than usual, it is Friday, and there will be people on the road. So, there's about 40-45 minutes. When I arrive home I'll decide to relax, but I'll see the dishes in the drying rack from last night's dinner. I'll put those away, wipe down the counters, wipe down the stove, sweep the floor, realize the rest of the floors need to be swept, remember that the tub needs to be cleaned, etc., etc., etc. until about 4:30pm. Okay - that's still about 90 minutes before I would usually be home. I'll sit down to read. Then I'll remember that I need to go to the library to pick up some book about some vampire and some girl and some werewolf... I'll head out to the library, hunt down the book, think of a few more I remember I want to read, check them out, and get back home by 6:30pm. Just as I would have anyway.

So, that time may not be "free," and I may not have been able to really relax, but I will have accomplished some things that will allow me to sleep in tomorrow!

Woo hoo!

Omens

Not the evil kind. The kinda funny-when-you-think-about-it omens. I saw one of my least favorites this morning, so I decided to break down some of my list of omens:

1. Seeing a news chopper hovering right over your route to work. It inevitably means that if I left even a minute late I will be late to work. Luckily I left a couple of minutes early today, and I made it into work with a smile on my face.

2. Getting home to a dark house when you know you left a light on. Hopefully it's just a burned out light bulb. Likely the electricity is out. On Sunday, our house was the in the middle of a 7-block radius outage. We went to the movies for an unplanned date night. It was awesome.

3. Noticing that your vehicle is leaning to one side. Maybe you parked on a weird hill. Maybe the tire is low. Maybe it is completely flat. I made it 5 minutes from the office when my truck was at about a 30 degree angle left compared to the car in front of me. I pulled over, didn't panic, called my husband, called the tire store to let them know we'd be coming, then started lifting the truck with the jack so it would be ready for JR. It took several hours (since JR was a good two hours away in rush hour traffic, but he came because he loves me), but we got 4 new tires for the truck and had an impromptu dinner out at a local deli. Good times.

4. Hearing running water in an empty bathroom. Sure, somebody could have accidentally left the sink on. In my case, while someone took a shower upstairs the toilet downstairs was overflowing so much that it was pouring into the floor. Sigh. The plumbing problems we've experienced over the last 3 months have been AWESOME (sarcasm intended). We did finally get it taken care of (tree roots removed!), and we learned that being home owners is fun, exciting, scary, and expensive. We were able to laugh it off together, though.

There are many, many more "omens" like these...what are some of yours?