"You Know You've Been Traveling too Long When..."

You know that you've been traveling too long when you no longer feel the same thrill with taking the shampoo, conditioner, and soap that the hotel gives you. I'm leaving it at the hotel this week! [Still in Winston-Salem, NC.]

Travel Tip

I traveled on business last week to Baltimore. It started out as a bad trip, since I got a much later start than I had intended. I knew it was going to be bad when the helpful person at the ticket counter said that it was too late to check my bag. I always check my back, despite what some folks say. (Note: he could have saved me lots of hassle if he had just booked me on the next flight right then and there!) Since I had planned on checking my bag, I hadn't taken the time to make sure that I only have 1 quart-sized plastic bag full of 3oz containers of liquid. In fact, I didn't even have a quart-sized plastic bag. So several of my items were confiscated out of my suitcase. Now here's the kicker, any my travel tip: They didn't look through my laptop bag at all, and I had a few more items in there which technically should have been in plastic bags. I'm not advocating trying to smuggle things onto the plane that you're not supposed to smuggle on to a plane, but I thought it was interesting that my suitcase filled with clothes and toiletries was most definitely targeted over my laptop bag which had two computers, several cables, toothpaste, toothbrush, hand lotion, and so on. In fact, I think the items in my laptop bag were more "dangerous" than anything I had in my suitcase! Go figure. Damn Islamic terrorists!

Seattle

I think I mentioned a while back that I was going to Redmond (near Seattle for those of you who are geographically impared) for some training. That was about a month and a half ago. The night before I flew back home I managed to get downtown to the Seattle Center--that's where the Space Needle is. I was there with a co-worker, and the plan was that we were going to eat dinner up there. But after looking at the menu (especially the prices) we decided not to. But I took this cool picture:

Redmond, WA

I just got confirmation this week that I will be attending a training class on the Microsoft campus in Redmond the week of April 3rd. That will be cool--I've never been to Redmond or anywhere in the Pacific Northwest, for that matter. I'm going to try to meet a couple of my friends who live out that way while I'm there. Plus, with my new camera phone (phone camera?) I'll be able to take some pictures and post them to the blog in near-real-time. I'm psyched! :-) By the way, on February 28th I thought to myself, "I should post something to the blog so I have at least one entry for the month." And then I got back to work and forgot all about it. So February 2006 will just be missing from this blog.