OK, so I have to admit that I brought it on myself… I lobbied for the trip to the US so that Patrick and I could go over and pick up some more of his belongings, and it totally backfired on me. The day after we arranged the flights he got his job offer, and that screwed up the plans, as he had to work during the time we were away. The week before the trip wasn’t great, but I got through it by trying not to think about how much I was going to miss him… The 10 days I’ve been away, however….
The visit started poorly, as we’d arranged a flight changing in Boston for a cheaper price, and as it was ‘no changes and no cancellations’ we were not only unable to get his flight price back, but I had an 8 hour flight to Boston, followed by a 4 hour wait and then a further 1 hour flight to JFK.
Boston airport was OK, but I really didn’t enjoy such a long trip.
Once in NYC I quickly went through the shopping tasks that Patrick had left with me, including picking up a Mac Mini for him. I also went to his storage space to rummage through his old stuff and bring back essential items like warm winter clothing and IT accessories he needs. There were some lovely old pictures of him when he was younger too, but I left those for next time – I really want him to go through them and show me them with stories attached. From the couple I leafed through he was an adorable kid though.
The weekend was relatively uneventful, partly due to the timezone shift shutting me off around 10pm, and also because I wasn’t really ready to ‘enjoy’ the gayer aspects of NYC. I was asleep in the hotel before 11pm both nights. The hotel itself wasn’t great – it was a Radisson, which I would usually think was good, but the room was in desperate need of refurbishment, and the doormen in NYC use whistles to attract cabs for their customers, so those regular and insistent whistles combined with honking horns woke me up regularly.
On the Sunday I took a car over to New Jersey, and met up with Latisha who had just arrived from Europe. Latisha is a colleague with a mad shoe/shopping addiction, so we immediately went shopping to the Short Hills Mall. The place is full of designer shops, so we were both happy, and I stocked up on Abercrombie and Fitch gear again.
Gary Zebrowski – the new Transformation Manager was in attendance, and proved himself to be totally out of his depth. He has no idea of the size of mess he’s getting himself into with this client – he’s been sold this role as though it’s a senior project manager, and that it can be run with a set of complex mpp files… he’s starting to realise that this isn’t the case at all and it’s much more complicated than he thought.
The workshop with the customer was, as always, boring and full of discussions that they should have had before we arrived. What could have been done in 2 days took the entire week and we still didn’t get everything done. Gary also dropped a bollock on the Wednesday by mentioning that he didn’t yet have a replacement for me… this wouldn’t have been such a big problem if someone (Marek!) had told them customer that I was leaving the account. Jason went barmy about it, and raised an escalation. Tinus has already assigned me to another account for January 1st, though, so it’s too late.
By the Friday I was so bored that I couldn’t wait to get out of there. We booked the car early (2pm) so that we could get over to NYC before the rush hour traffic.
Latisha and I were relieved to be done, and went out on the Friday evening – first a manicure, then dinner at Vynl in Chelsea. The cute waiter was there again, and he paid a lot of attention to us. I’m not sure if it was because he thought I was cute, or that he liked Latisha’s false eyelashes… either way it was nice 
Unfortunately that’s where the weekend started to go wrong. It was bitterly cold, so staying out wasn’t really an option, so I was back at the hotel by 10pm, bored and having had no hubby for a week decided to go online and find some fun. The rest of the night decended into chaos (you’ll have to read my other blog for details), and the next day I was wracked with guilt. I called Patrick who assured me that it was totally OK, and was only sorry that I hadn’t had a better time. He’s amazing – truly the best man I’ve ever known.
On the Saturday – the day before I was due to fly home – true to form the weather turned, and we got snow. Not just a couple of centimeters like in Europe, but 12 inches in under 24 hours. This caused problems for the airport and so most of the domestic flights are cancelled. I’m currently sitting at the airport (I got here very early ‘just in case’, but now have a 4 hour wait until my flight leaves. There are people everywhere sitting on the floors… fortunately I have a Silver Elite membership so didn’t have to queue to check in or drop my bags, but finding somewhere comfortable to wait has been a struggle. Now that I found a seat the fire alarm has mistakenly gone off – they’ve stopped the sound, but there is a blindingly bright light flashing right in front of me, so I’ll have a migraine pretty soon.
The flight’s still showing as ‘on time’, but I guess we’ll have to wait and see….