After 36 years Mom and I are finally going back to Hong Kong! My school is celebrating its 40th Anniversary. Mom picked me up at the house and we came to the airport. I hadn’t even gotten the car parked when I realized I had forgot my backup computer files. I figured if anyone could get them to the airport in time it would be Chris, so I called him. He threw on some pants and ran out the door. I then called Don who located the disks and had them ready when Chris got there. I am not real sure I want to know how Chris did it, but he managed to hand me my disks in less than a hour after I called him. Nice job son!

So, with still 40 minutes to spare I relaxed and headed through security and on to the gate to meet up with Mom. Unfortunately there was going to be a bit too much time to sit around. Our 9:30pm flight did not leave until 11:30pm, arriving in San Francisco at 1:15am… the same time our Singapore Airlines flight to Hong Kong was taking off. Needless to say.. without us. After a couple hours of trying to arrange another flight we went to the Hyatt to get a few hours of sleep. We were able to get out of San Francisco at 12:30pm on the United flight and arrived in Hong Kong about twelve hours later than originally scheduled. The only problem then was that our luggage didn’t come with us. Oh well.. hopefully sometime tomorrow. I will wear what I have on to the hospital tomorrow.

We have been working and working, but did find some time to play on the way to dinner tonight.  I am still looking for blue crabs.  Maybe tomorrow night.

As a teenager I flew tens of thousands of miles and around the world four times.  My mother reminds me that I was a nervous wreck.  As an adult I guess I got over the fear because once I got on the plane I was fine.  A big help was a client’s husband who is a pilot.  He explained a lot of stuff to me and let me know when the plane was pitching back and forth they were in the cockpit laughing away.  Every time we hit turbulence I would picture him up there grinning. I also would think of the odds I faced actually getting to the airport alive in Atlanta and the statistics that show it is much safer to fly than drive.

I did absolutely fine with the flight from Denver when we blew out two tires on take-off, even when we saw all the fire trucks and ambulances lined up.  Ok, so maybe I was a bit nervous, but I wasn’t panicked.  The landing was even relatively smooth.  But then came my flight into Salt Lake City last week.  The wind was so bad we had two aborted landings.  The plane was pitching side to side, we were dropping who knows how many feet, and the final landing was far from smooth.  There were two pilots in the seats across the aisle who actually had their hands clenched and heads glued to the window.  That was NOT reassuring. It wasn’t until we were taxiing down the runway that I was able to breath again.  Flying home last night was miserable.  There was only moderate turbulence but it was enough. Last year I would not have blanched but after my most recent flights I was a wreck. 

 Do I have to do this again?  Yeppers!  Hopefully I will have calmed down by then.

It has been a reletively quiet morning. Maybe that is because I haven’t left my room except to get breakfast. Abby and Gera are out at the pool enjoying the lovely weather. I am enjoying the calm. Did I mention it was 90+ degrees when we arrived Friday? By Saturday afternoon it was in the low 40’s. Sunday morning Carol and I watched it sleeting outside while we ate breakfast. Hmmm.. so much for the 10-day forcast that predicted temps near 90 all week. I now own a new green sweatshirt purchased at rite-aid for $9.99.

Tonight is the ACNM/MANA Liaison meeting. It should be pretty interesting. The good news is there is plenty of food left from the reception to feed everyone.

Well, we had another great reception. The food was wonderful and the people seemed to really enjoy it. Of course the way the week has gone you know there had to be some twists. I keep a database of food, drinks and supplies we purchase each year and how much is actually used. I then compare registration so I can adjust for the current year’s reception. That was done easily this year since it seems to be a small conference comparatively.

We closed and packed the booth then around 2pm this afternoon one of the local midwives, Jules Johnston, came to take us shopping. We told her where we needed to go. When we got to Sam’s I noticed I could not buy the wine there so after getting the “Sam’s” food and supplies we headed to the state run liquor store. OMG… state run means closed on holidays. We could not find wine anywhere. We were all sick! How can you throw a wine, cheese, and chocolate reception without wine. I was so mad at myself for screwing that one up so bad. We ended up buying some beer (which we still have tons of) and wine coolers to fill in the gap. When we got back to the hotel we called to see how much bottles of wine were. Dang… $45 a bottle. We called Little America to see how much it would be there. Ok, getting better… $30 a bottle. $300+tax later we had our wine. I shot our budget all to hell. Oh well, it is done. I have a nice note on my reception notes to make sure in the future I can actually buy wine on Monday. Geeze!

Catch up time since I haven’t had time to discuss my week. Mom fell and I went and stayed with her Sunday and Monday. Tuesday was prenatals then I went out to a birth and absolutely awesome birth. Definitely priorities but took away 2.5 days I had planned to get stuff ready for the conference. I did leave Mom’s late Sunday night to come home and get the boxes ready for FedEx pickup. They had all the booth materials, my printer, and reception stuff in them. They went out Monday.

Wednesday I finish the reception invite, somewhat catch up on email, get calls returned, etc. I get a call asking if I could get the MANA Conference flyer I made for the MWT Conference printed for this week. Geeze.. it was a quickie thrown together so I ended up redoing it and finishing late that night. I had already set up the Kinkos order online but had to switch all to Staples since the flyer was color. Boy was I cranky. I ended up getting to bed around 2am.

Thursday was prenatals and a postpartum. As I got ready to go to the postpartum I called Staples to make sure the order was ready. They had never heard of me. The sales lady had the gall to ask if I had bothered to call the store to confirm they received my order. Hmmm…. no, I have a printed confirmation here. I explained to her that losing my order was not an option and that she had better find it and get everything printed so I could come pick it up. She said she would look and called me as I was arriving at the postpartum to let me know she found it. Hopefully they would have it done by tomorrow morning. Nope! That is NOT an option. My order will now be priority one and she had better put everything aside. She will see what she can do. She calls again during postpartum. Did I mention she had a 2nd grade education? Maybe…. So, good news…. They had finished printing but didn’t think they could cut them in half. Huh? She said there was no where to cut. Huh? These are two invitations on one page. Just cut between them. We don’t know where you want it… nothing looks right. Geeze! What does it say at the top? She said, “Believe.” ARGH..that is NOT the one that is supposed to be cut… that is the conference flyer. This is all we have. What? No Way! There were two separate files. Hold on… let me let you talk to someone else. Finally, someone who at least graduated from high school! Ma’am… I am so sorry you are having the trouble. Here is the file we have. Ok, if you will give me your email address I will send you the other file. I went to my client’s computer, pulled the order up, downloaded the invitation file and emailed it to them. They called, said they had it and would print it immediately. I told him I would be there in 45 minutes… around 4pm. The flyers looked great. The invitations looked terrible. I can’t believe they printed them like that. Nope… not gonna take these.. they are trash. Yes, you will print them again. Yes, I will wait. Three hours? ARGH! Ok, I will be back. I went home and played computers games for an hour. It was that or killing someone. Got dinner and groceries, semi packed, and then went back to Staples to pick up invitations. They were ok. I got home around 9pm.

Hmmm… boxes? Oh yeah, tracked them all the way to SLC. They went straight there with no detours thank goodness! As of 2am they were in SLC scheduled for delivery later that day, Friday. I was able to go to bed at 3am and sleep soundly. Everything was done and running on schedule. I got up at 7:30 to finish packing and get on the road. My flight out of Atlanta left on time and I was on it. Good news! I was finally relaxed once I was on the plane. Well, that was until we tried to land. The wind here was incredible. There were two aborted landings before we finally touched down. Even I got nervous.

So here is the rest of the story. When I called FedEx they said that the packages were scheduled for re-delivery Friday. That never happened. Saturday morning there was no delivery so I called FedEx back. No, they didn’t deliver ground on Saturday, but they would be here Tuesday. Whoa! No way! All the booth and reception stuff is in those boxes. Can I drive to the FedEx place and pick them up? Nope.. they are closed. I was freaking! I was finally able to get a representative who actually seemed to care, especially after I told her about the hydrangeas! She had me hold and talked to several different people. She finally came back and told me she had “Peggy” on the line who was a customer advocate. Peggy was in Cincinnati and would try to help me. Guess what? She really was an advocate. She didn’t give up. She was able to locate the SLC manager who was actually in Las Vegas getting married. Evidently she didn’t see that as a good excuse and hounded him until he gave her several contacts here she could try. The woman did it! She found someone who agreed to go to the warehouse and search for my boxes. He found them and drove an hour to get them here. We were able to get the table cloths on the table and rest of the stuff set up before everyone started coming in at 8pm.

Tomorrow I get to go shopping. I expect that to go smoothly. There is no other option! I’m going to the hot tub now!