And I'm back...

A brief recap of the past two days:

Tuesday morning, get to work and there's a message from American Airlines saying that the 1:35 DIRECT flight to Chicago had been cancelled and that I'd been scheduled to leave on an 11:55 flight that went through DFW. This flight left earlier and arrived in Chicago later than my origingal one, but that wasn't the worst of it: I hate DFW with a purple passion, and I do everything in my known power to avoid it. You know, things like paying extra for a direct flight. Grrr...

I go through the drive through at the bank on the way to the airport to get cash for my trip. I park my car at the Airport Fast Park, and I get on the shuttle and start to put my parking ticket into my wallet, and realize that the cash I'd just gotten wasn't in there. Neither was my ATM card. I look out the window just in time to see a gust of wind sending my $20 bills a-flyin' right next to my car. I yell, "Wait!" and get off the shuttle and run around after my money like an imbecile. I manage to get it all and then also discover that my ATM is sitting in the driver's seat of my car. I rescue it and get back on the shuttle.

I check in at the machine, and the travel agent at work who was supposed to make sure my coworker I was traveling with and I were seated together apparently didn't do that. So we dick around on the machine until we find two seats together and switch to those. (More about those in a minute.)

Waiting for the plane, I realize there are two character actors among the passengers. These are guys you've seen in a gazillion different things, but you have no idea what their names are. But thanks to the internet, I figured out that they were James Hampton and Burton Gilliam.A couple of people asked to have their pictures taken with them, including the biggest black dude I've ever seen. He was like a damn H2. He made both of the actor dudes look like dwarves.
Get on the plane, and coworker and I are in the very, very, very last row. We don't even have a window. We're right by the bathroom. It smelled like greasy farts the whole trip. And it was unbelievably noisy. And hot.

Get to DFW and find out that our connection is already delayed by an hour. Ate at fucking TGIFriday's. When it was all said and done, we were delayed leaving by nearly 2 hours.

Get to the hotel (which was actually quite nice despite its proximitiy to the airport), and have about 1/2 hour before we're supposed to meet up with these other folks from our company for dinner. (The other folks are all accountants whom I have not met, so I can't say I was looking forward to it much.)

Meet up with the folks--3 men, 1 woman--have a couple of drinks then decide to go to dinner. Pickins are slim out by the airport, so we end up going to freakin' Giordano's. If you've ever lived in Chicago, then you'll know why that's funny. (It's kind of like coming to Austin and having dinner at Bill Miller.)

Get to bed later than I wanted to. Set the alarm for the morning without realizing that the time on the alarm clock was fucked up (instead of it being 11:00pm, it actually read 11:00am, so when I set my alarm for 6:30am it didn't go off that morning b/c it thought the time was 6:30pm).

Woke up late, and had exactly 25 minutes to get ready, packed and down to prep for the meeting that started at 8am.

Met from 8am to 3pm with the accountants in a room that was about 10 degrees too warm. I don't think I need to elaborate on that.

Got to the airport, ate at fucking Chili's. Our flight that was supposed to leave at 5:35 actually ended up leaving at 7:30.

Got to my house at 10pm. I was a total zombie. Showered and checked my voicemail. My oncologist had left a message to tell me there was "something concering on my CT scan" that she wants to discuss with me. But she ended the message with, "but don't be worried." Yeah, right.

Today was a bitch at work. I'm in the throes of preparing our team's yearly budget proposal. I have no idea what I'm doing, and everything's riding on this thing. I brought home work with me tonight, and I have a shit load to do before I meet about it tomorrow afternoon. And I'm sorry, all I want to do is sleep.