Last week at this time, I was in Daytona Beach, Florida on a business trip. At this time (4:45pm), I was sitting in a construction trailer checking some emails for work and downloading some test data that I had collected on site earlier in the afternoon. Later in the evening, I would be going out for a steak dinner with the client's rep, owner's rep and the lead contractors. I would miss American Idol.. not arriving back to my hotel until 9:30pm and then changing rooms twice (the first room had bugs and the second had no power on the wall that the TVs were plugged into.. it was a HILTON).. The job itself was difficult in that I have one or two moral values and the type of facility that I was testing was one that I'd likely picket if I were the activist type.

The one redeeming moment (actually.. 20 minutes of moments) was on Wednesday when I was on my way out of town and I had the chance to stop at the beach. I drove on, parked.. and walked a bit before sitting down near my car and watching the people and the surf. The warmth felt wonderful and to be honest, there is nothing more relaxing and grounding for me than the ocean. Water in general (lakes, rivers, snow, etc.) is a good thing for me (plus it defies most laws of matter.. but that's a subject for a different blog).. After 20 minutes, I felt like I had hit the rewind button on the past day and a half and was ready to be home with my family. I felt a level of relaxation that only happens occationally for me and I equate it with reaching a state of grace. Everything makes sense and life is good.



As usual.. that was short-lived. I drove back to Orlando only to stand in line at the Jet Blue ticket counter for close to an hour waiting to see if I could get on an earlier flight back to Boston only to have the mean behind-the-counter-lady tell me that I had missed the cutoff for that flight by 10 minutes and if I had just called the airline from my cell phone when I got to the airport and had the ticket changed electronically, I would have made the flight.

[insert sound of relaxed state of existence exploding]

The good news was that Benji was still awake when I got home and I was able to rock him before we put him to bed for the night.

THIS WEEK.

I mean seriously.. it's the norm.. I'm at work getting ready to head out to pick the big guy up and race home to play/make dinner/etc. before going over a friend's house to watch NEIL DIAMOND night on Idol! We've both been waiting for this show for weeks and have it all sorts of built up in anticipation. I hope the final 5 come through for us! I'm sure I'll be blogging about it tomorrow! Today hasn't been as "exciting" as last week... thank GOD!

Sweet Caroline... oh oh ohhhhhh.... Go RED SOX!