Home now...

Plane was five and a half fucking hours late. For a one-hour flight.

It would have been faster to drive back.

Jetsco people were not only unhelpful, they were rude, in spite of my being polite with them.

After which I let them know that their attitude was wholly unacceptable. Politely. I've worked customer service. I know customers are shitty and that you work long hours for not enough pay and get a lot of flack from both sides. You know what? I was never, ever rude to a customer. Not once. I was snippy once, and yet was polite anyway.

Trip was mostly okay. Some of the people I work with are truly appalling, and I'm glad I don't have to deal with them on a daily basis. I don't mean appalling in a good way, either. Drunken, rude, crass, and generally offensive. (It was a business trip: you thought people wouldn't get drunk? Hah!) Meeting itself alternated between mildly interesting and excruciatingly boring, depending on the speaker.

Will try for a more coherent entry later. Right now am fried. Golden brown and buttered. Stick a fork in me, etc.

Am mostly pissed off about missing t!'s Hallowe'en party. Arriving in Montreal at 1am after daylight savings time went into effect pretty much guaranteed I wasn't going anywhere but home, however.

Going to bed now. G'night.

You know what?

I ain't in the mood at all to complain endlessly about my trip anymore. For one, I've vented to joane and feel better about it as a result, and for two, who needs that kind of constant negativity?

However, for posterity, I'll try some bullet-point "highlights" of the trip. It may turn into a rant in spite of my best intentions.

Friday:

-Get up reasonably on time, realize passport is nowhere to be found. Likely at the Parental Units'. Decide to risk going with only my birth certificate, as I'll be horrendously late otherwise.

-Get to work by ten minutes past seven. Put out three fires and answer the phones because the receptionist has fucked off somewhere, as usual.

-Get to airport with two coworkers, have no issue boarding plane, although someone has spilled their coffee all over the floor just at the security checkpoint.

-Have uneventful plane ride, although Natalie has the worst sinus cold in the case of mankind, and as a result is absolutely miserable. She's taken lots of decongestants, though, so it's not too bad.

-Get to Toronto, where coworker meant to pick us up is nowhere to be seen. Chris, the other coworker, goes to find him. More about Clayton later.

-We find Clayton and another colleague, Bob. Get in minivan, start driving to Kitchener. When Clayton nearly kills us all by practically driving over a median, Chris takes over the wheel. We marvel, wondering what Clayton is like drunk, if this is how he drives when sober (Clayton being a known alcoholic).

-Arrive in Kitchener, check into hotel. All goes smoothly.

-Stop at McDonald's to grab a bite to eat, since no one's had any food yet.

-Go to Baden (Head Office), which is about fifteen minutes away from Kitchener. Meet up with all OS&D, Customer Service, and Dock colleagues. Promptly forget most of their names.

-Baden people have organized LazerQuest. We go, form teams, and my team kicks ass and takes names. Develop brain-splitting migraine in the process.

-Go to nearby restaurant which specializes in meat, meat and more meat. Have reasonably inoffensive spare ribs. Coworkers start drinking more alcohol than I've seen in a long time. Note that our company, which is run by Mennonites, will not buy alcohol for people, although it's paying for everything else. I enjoy my free cheesecake. ;)

-Go back to hotel to change for going out in the evening. Take more massive painkillers, which takes the edge off the migraine. Sort of. Have a short rest, shower, get organized, meet people in lobby.

-People are now almost to a man completely sloshed.

-Find myself sitting next to Clayton in minivan. This is highly unpleasant, as he's over 300lbs (which means I get squished), very drunk, and holding a putrid cigar over my shoulder. He spends the entire car ride making crude, lascivious jokes, the most offensive one involving beating up women. I come close to shoving him out the car door on more than one occasion, except that I probably wouldn't be able to budge him. No one in the car is impressed, but there's no getting him to shut up.

- Go dancing at the local country music/dance club. Live band is there, and they're more than half-decent. Lead-singer is reasonably good-looking, definitely a crowd-pleaser, and changes into shiny fake leather pants (I almost said "leatheroid") halfway through the show. Women go nuts over him.

-Meet more people, watch as people get increasingly drunk and unruly. There is a costume contest, with a man wearing a pumpkin over his head. He seems to think this is a valid excuse for groping every woman on the dance floor.

-V. hot blonde girl dressed as construction worker. Am in awe of her hair. Want hair long like that again.

-V. hot girl dressed as cop with minimal plastic clothing wins contest. She gets ogled by about seventy percent of the room.

Saturday:

- Migraine gets worse, but they play "Redneck Woman" at my request. Am absurdly pleased.

-I go home before my coworkers get drunk enough to take off their tops/otherwise let their boobs hang out. I find out about this occurrence the next day. Find myself torn between being completely appalled and vaguely regretting I wasn't there. Julie has a spectacular rack, after all. :P

-Get back to hotel, borrow toothpaste from Natalie, since I've apparently left mine at home. Go me. Pass out in bed for four hours or so.

-Get up at six thirty, shower, get ready for work, pack bags.

-Meet up with coworkers who are all looking very much the worse for wear in hotel lobby. Grab complimentary continental breakfast, check out.

-Go back to Baden.

-My name gets drawn in the raffle and I win a pair of Raptors' tickets. I give them to Julie, because I don't even know who the Raptors are. She informs me they're a basketball team. Revel in the irony that the one person in the room who didn't want the tickets (or one of the few, anyway) has won them.

-Meeting progresses. First part is excruciatingly boring. Speakers are not exactly talented. Nearly fall asleep several times. Second part is better, but last speaker goes on forever. Third part is tolerable. Fourth part is open discussion. Not much gets resolved, unsurprisingly.

-Food is not bad. Rescue a box of Timbits, because I optimistically think I'll be making it to t!'s Hallowe'en party.

-Get in car, head to Mississauga.

-Stop for dinner at overpriced and not-very-good Italian restaurant.

-Arrive at airport, only to be told there's a one and a half hour delay on our flight due to weather. Am unpleased, but that's the way things are. Chris and Natalie put up more of a fight, but it gets them nowhere.

-Wait in airport for five hours, being jerked around by Jetsco people. Snatch not-very-restful nap on airport seats.

-Get on plane four and a half hours later than we were supposed to.

-Natalie suffers in quiet agony through the trip, her cold having gotten much worse. Manage to flag down a steward for hot compresses and that neat trick with boiling hot cloths in paper cups to hold over the ears, except that the steward isn't especially helpful and brings cold cloths instead. We use teabags from their very repulsive supply instead, since there's boiling water to be had.

-Arrive in Montreal at 2am, adjust watch to reflect Daylight Savings Time.

-Get lift from Natalie's brother back to terminal.

-Drive home, update LJ, collapse in bed.

And that, ladies and gents, is the summary of how my weekend went. Or part of my weekend, anyway.

NaNo in an hour and a half...

... and yet I'm still going to go to bed. Am seriously, massively on the verge of passing out.

Stupid business trip.

I think the plan right now is to do the bare minimum during the week (1,667 words a day, which I know I can do because of the serial), and then maybe write a bit more on the weekends so that I can give myself a cushion.

I have an idea now. Plot will come later, but at least the idea has solidified into something that'll last more than a paragraph, which was my concern last week.

After this I shall be limiting my NaNoWriMo ramblings to secret_history, since I know that NaNo tends to drive some of my flist absolutely batshit.

Tired now. Going to bed.