Business trip

I had to make a trip to my company's headquarters in Richmond, VA this week.

I left Tues morning and returned Wed night. It takes about 4 1/2 hours by car each way, if you drive a little fast like I do. It would take even longer if I flew, since I am 2 hours drive to the nearest airport.

I used to hate spending time in the Richmond office. The old management's bad energy affected everyone and it was so unpleasant to be around all that negativity. But fortunately the old management was kicked out, and so was their bad energy. Its like visiting a different office now, and I don't mind it at all.

I checked into renting a car and found that it would be cheaper to do that than expensing the mileage to drive my own car. Go figure! The small car rental office didn't have the intermediate size car I'd reserved so they upgraded me to the luxury class, so I got a fully loaded 2009 Nissan Maxima that looked exactly like this:

It was nice.

I arrived at the office at 1:30 and worked until 4:00. Then I was in a meeting from 4:00-6:00, followed by a team-building happy hour and then dinner which lasted until 10:00. The next day I was in back-to-back meetings from 8:30-4:00, with hardly any time to check email. I left at 4:00 and got home at 8:30. I'd brought an extra 1/2 of a sandwich and a cookie that were left over from lunch, and ate them in the car on the way home so I wouldn't have to stop.

It was a productive trip and it was nice to see my colleagues again. Since all of us work remotely we only see each other in person once a year, usually.

Crush du Jour: Matt Kobler