Where the heck have I been?

Good question. I have been working like a dog. I was actually in the United Kingdom for a week in the middle of my absence for work. Traveling on business has a lot of bad points and only a couple of good ones.

Bad points to business travel:

Long airline flights
Being away from the family
Not sleeping in my own bed
Working twice as many hours as normal (this is time zone related and kind of unique to European travel, because half of the US day or more remains when I get back to my hotel)

Having conversations like this over skype:

Me: Tell the baby I love him
Her, to the baby: Daddy loves you
Her, to me: He said, "Who's daddy?"
Me: Ouch

It was said in jest, but the fact remains that traveling is as hard or harder on my wife and kids than it is on me. As I said there are some good points to business travel for me and NONE for my family.

The good points to business travel:

Per Diem expense policy: If you are on a per diem expense policy and you are willing to sacrifice on accomodations or dining you can make a lot of extra cash. On my UK trip I got a hotel that was approximately 100 dcollars less than my per diem allotment and I brought enough food that I was able to eat about 75% of my meals without spending money. I profited close to $1200 on the trip and that money is basically paying for our family spring break vacation back to NJ. I also learned some valuable lessons about bringing food on trips and will be able to make even more money next time. If I had been willing to really sacrifice and stay in a youth hostel I could have made double the profit on the trip, but I am not a young man anymore and a youth hostel is not on the agenda.

The plush hotels: I have travelled twice to Europe in the last 6 months and stayed in 3 hotels. They were incredibly plush. The last one I stayed in was so sweet I felt guilty being in it alone.

Broadening my horizons: I like to experience new things and it is nice to be able to say I was here, I was there. I probably would never have travelled to the UK or Switzerland if not for my job, so that is nice too, even though there was no real time for sight seeing.

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Work has gone from breakneck to dangerously close to killing me in terms of intensity. We have launched one new product in the last couple of weeks that I have a LOT of responsibility for and will be launching the biggest new undertaking since the company itself took flight back in 1999. I have major responsibility for getting it ready.

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I hope to get back to a regular posting schedule. I don't like not writing and I am not going to let the blog slip away. I just have to be more disciplined and take time that I spend watching TV to decompress at night to generate content for the blog.

Keep checking back. More to come.

No 1 of Consequence