Another Customer, Another Meal. And Another Late Flight.

[canyonwalker]

After feeling like "All I've done is eat. And visit one customer," yesterday today I've visited another customer. And sat down to eat again. 😅 At least the ratio is decreasing: one customer visit, one restaurant meal before or after, not three.

Also decreasing is the ratio of meetings about meetings. That's almost entirely attributable to us not having our bosses want to get involved in this one. More people who want to be involved (and have strong opinions about how the meeting should be run) equals more meetings. Today it was just Sandi and I visiting a customer. We chatted briefly about it last night over dinner, aligned on a strategy, and agreed on one small task each we'd do independently to prepare. This morning there was no need for another prep meeting. So we didn't need to meet for breakfast. In fact, both of us still kind of full from yesterday, we both at a meal of a protein bar in our rooms. 🤣 And the meeting went beautifully despite our lack of 3 planning calls to prepare for it.

After the client meeting we went to a nearby restaurant for lunch. That, thankfully, wasn't a meeting so much as "We both need lunch, let's eat here rather than go to the airport and pay more for worse food there."

Now I'm at the airport. I'm plenty early for my flight... which is already falling behind schedule.



Yup, 30 minutes earlier this flight was tracking on time; now that I'm at the airport and through security, it's late. But, oh, UPDATE: now it's only 26 minutes late. A few minutes ago it was running further behind. The plane's now in the air en route to PHX so now there are fewer things that could go wrong to change the schedule.

Comments

[morningloryblue]

How I remember planning life around meals + travel delays from my consultant life. I used to joke and say that I spent half of my life on delay at either SFO or DEN! May you arrive home sooner rather than later!

[canyonwalker]

Back in the day when I was traveling 3 weeks out of every 4 I had a custom status on my instant messenger "Sitting on the tarmac". That's because I spent so much time in travel sitting in an aircraft that was basically parked on the ground, either in a long, slow line awaiting a takeoff or landed and awaiting a gate to disembark. ORD was the commonest place this occurred.