Home and now I need to take some time and reflect

I'm not ready for the reflection quite yet. That will be soon, o'er the weekend once I've had a chance to rest a bit and ponder a while.

Last day in office was Wednesday and started out with not much sleep. This has been typical for most of the trip. Worked for a couple of hours in the hotel and then proceeded to the office. It was nice and quiet until lunch and then again for a short while after lunch. Then I was in meetings and calls until 9:15 pm Warsaw time.

We did squeeze in a nice visit, in the office, over dinner with a couple of colleagues. There is a company called "Room Service" that takes orders for several restaurants (many categories to choose) and delivers right to your door. One friend walked across the street and picked up some beers. We had a very nice visit and dinner, even though it was surrounded by meetings and calls.

I got back to my hotel room about 9:30 or so. Chatted with my hubby and youngest daughter. Then got on email and tried to weed through some of that. A request came through to schedule a call for Friday. I was going to be travelling all day Thursday, so pushed that through. Then my boss emails me and says, "Go to bed!" I finally turned in a bit after midnight. Had to get up around 4. At lease the first 3 hours were good. :-)

Arose a few minutes after 4 and then began to weed through email for 20 minutes. Then I had to wash my hair, dress, and pack my luggage! Thursday was 23 hours long for me, from rising out of bed to falling asleep once home. I was lucky all in all. Slept most of the flight from Warsaw to Charles de Gaulle in Paris. I hate CDG, it is one of the worst as far as efficient. Flight from Warsaw landed 30 minutes late and I feared the worst. Almost ran from the plane to board a bus that would take me to another terminal, wore my tennis shoes this time (had to go through CDG 3 times during this trip). I get to the gate and all is on time. Whew! I go by a snack and water, sit and wait. We pass the On Time time and the natives start getting restless. Finally, someone says the flight crew is slightly delayed, we'll start boarding once they arrive. Then an hour goes by. We leave 1.5 passed scheduled time. Find out there was a small technical glitch with the A/C, but more of the wait was due to a transportation strike effecting the fueling of the planes. Needless to say I knew at that point I'd missed my connection in Cincinnati. Now for the earlier lucky statement.

Lucky #1 - The row in front of my seat was empty, the woman next to me asked the flight attendant and moved to that row. Now I had 2 seats all to myself! This was very nice for a 9.5 hour flight, since it was coach. Plenty of room to stretch a bit and not worry about elbowing your neighbor. I slept most of the first 4 hours, save the first meal.

Lucky #2 - As soon as the wheels were on the tarmac, I turned on the phone and called my hubby. He was on the road to come pick me up! The airlines had called and emailed the house, notifying of the missed connections. Said that I would land about 10, which would put me home around 11pm. He wasn't willing to wait and knew that I would've rented a car to drive myself home. So I arrived at my door at 8 pm.

Hope to have a reflection or two before the weekend is finished.

Here's a new quote that I like a lot:
"Being happy doesn't mean that everything is perfect. It means that you have started to look beyond imperfections."