I need a nap

I got up crazy early on Monday. (3:45, to be specific). I didn't have a choice - I had a flight at 6:30.

You know what's not a good idea? Flying to the US early in the morning the Monday of the week after New Year's. There were crazy lines of people going everywhere - but mostly, I suspect, somewhere warm.

I made it through the lines, though, and after breakfast in Dulles, landed in San Francisco around noon.

(Of course, noon in San Francisco is 3 here, so it had already been a long day.)

I took a car to San Jose, checked into the hotel, and went in to the office.

I was there for 3 hours, and by the time I left, I was starving.  My colleagues and I went and got dinner, and then I went back to the hotel and collapsed.

(After checking Twitter and Facebook, of course. I wasn't living in the dark ages.)

At 4 a.m., I woke up. I really would have liked to have slept more, but my brain decided to do it's overactive puppy imitation. (You know what we should do? We should get up! It's morning, you know! Let's get up and see if the internet is still there! Let's get up!)

I got up.

I'd ordered room service (which was insanely expensive, but work was paying for it), and it showed up promptly at 6:30. I have to say, my bagel and cream cheese was extremely well presented - the bagel was wrapped in a napkin, the cream cheese was on the plate, there was butter and jam, and the glass of orange juice was sitting in a container of ice - but it wasn't worth the $20+ it cost. Except that it was, because I needed breakfast.

Look, it's sunlight

We went in to work at 7:30, and left again at 7:30.  It looked beautiful out, but all-day meetings don't leave much time for enjoying the weather.

When we finally got back to the hotel, one of my colleagues and I went for a walk. We explored the area around the hotel, and eventually ended up walking by the outdoor skating rink beside the hotel. The ice was ... not good, but there were tons of people for a Tuesday night, and they all seemed to be having fun.

The skating rink

 Wednesday was a little shorter - the meeting started at 9:15 and ended not long after 4, so my colleague and I were able to walk around a little in daylight. We made it to the university (where we'd been the night before) and then stumbled across city hall.

A bunch of us then went out for dinner, then it was time to go back to my room to pack.

Thursday morning, I left for the airport at 3:30. After an extremely disorganized check-in process (which wasn't helped by it being not long after 4), I took my 5.5 hour long flight to Philadelphia, then a shorter 1.5 hour long flight to Ottawa. When we started descending, I looked out the window and thought "Hmm, wonder what river that is".  Then I turned my head to the left and noticed it ended in a giant lake, and thus had to be the St. Lawrence.

After another long day (on which I saw the sun both rise and set from a plane), I made it home by a little after 6.

Remind me not to do that again for a while.