Home Is Always Best

Work sent a group of us to New Jersey for a couple of days last week. We were there to check a couple of the substation sites we're building and conduct training. It started with a 4am alarm Wednesday morning so I could get to the airport by 6:00. At my layover in Charlotte, I found out the person who was supposed to be traveling with me (and paying for food, etc, since I don't have a company card) changed his travel plans Tuesday and forgot to tell me. I got to Newark about 11:30 and had to wait until the others showed up at 1:00. Thanks to traffic, we didn't make it to the first site until 3:15. We toured that site then drove over to the second site. We finally got to the hotel at 6:00pm. Checked in and did a quick luggage drop-off, then back out the door at 6:15 to get to the group dinner. We ate at a place on the river with a gorgeous view of New York City.

We finally made it back to the hotel around 10:00, and I was asleep maybe 15 minutes after that. At 1:37am, I was rudely awakened by the fire alarm.

We were kept outside for nearly 30 minutes. Luckily, I was asleep within a few minutes of getting back to my bed. I found out the next morning the alarm went off because some idiot decided to smoke a cigarette in the stairwell.

Thursday was training day. We were supposed to finish at 4:00pm and then go into NYC for some sightseeing. I was the only one in the group who hadn't been there before. NYC is one of those places that I wouldn't necessarily pay to go visit, but if the company wants to send me, I'm definitely up for seeing the sights. We did actually finish the training at 4:00, but then it was decided that we should change to a hotel closer to the airport so that we wouldn't have to worry about traffic in the morning. By the time we relocated and turned in the rental vehicles, it was after 6:00. We finally made it into the city at 7:00. We did a really fast walk through Times Square, sat down for dinner at 8:00, left the restaurant at 9:00, hustled back to Penn Station and made it back to the hotel at 10:15pm. I have to say that I was really disappointed with how that all worked out.

Back to the airport at 6:15 Friday morning, then finally home by 1:00pm. Sooooo happy to be home. The pups were just as happy - lots of wiggles and kisses from them. Belle gave me the evil eye and the other cats stayed in hiding until dinner time. So, pretty much the normal reaction.

While I was gone, John came over twice a day to feed everyone and monitor a few issues. Reyna developed a mass on her belly on the 3rd, so I figured it would rupture while I was gone. Surprisingly, it didn't. More surprisingly, its almost disappeared now. I talked to Dr. L about it Friday afternoon. We're both happy it didn't rupture, but concerned because that's just not how Reyna does things. She causes us enough stress without suddenly doing things differently.

Poor Duncan had a grand mal seizure Friday evening. He made it 25 days past the last one, which is good. What's not good is that he had another grand mal Saturday about 12:30pm. Two seizures in 16 hours is worrisome. Dr. L and I chatted again and agreed there really wasn't anything to do but monitor him. I can't afford to add other medications and he reacts so poorly to increasing the phenobarb. Thankfully, he hasn't had a seizure since Saturday. I'm hoping the two were the result of the stress and excitement of me being gone and coming home, rather than an indication that things are getting worse. We'll just have to wait and see.