Back from My World Work Tour

So my full-time job (aka, what I do during the day because I find the starving artist bit so trite) has ramped up my responsibilities and required more dedication and time than I've really ever been prepared to offer. Suddenly, it's the high-maintenance mistress who's decided she's madly in love with me and wants to spend the rest of her life with me, at least until I'm 56 and can run away from her with my IRA to the Bahamas. Now I find myself spending 5 days out of the week sleeping in a hotel bed that I suspect would stink of certain unnamed bodily fluids if a housekeeper named Maria didn't drench the linen with the sweet smell of clean. I kid you not. I think the housekeeper has been named Maria for every one of my hotels except one. Anyway, I digress.

The security trade show in San Diego was pretty cool because there were robot guns and bulletproof vehicles and lots of ex-cops named Chuck who wanted to debate the merits of the war. Plus, the new guy we hired used to live in San Diego so every night was a different bar and restaurant to visit.

NACS in Vegas was incredible. This was the trade for the National Association of Convenience Stores. You know those zombie movies where everyone's looting from the supermarkets and AM PM's because it's the end of the world, and you're sitting there like, look at all that shit. I want all that shit. I mean, were you one of those people who used to fantasize obsessively about how you would strategize and maximize your time if you won a shopping spree? Well, I was. And this was a fantasy come true.

Imagine 2 and a half Costcos filled with booths featuring candies, cookies, chips, beef jerky, energy drinks, coffee drinks, slushies, sodas, beer, liquor, condoms, cigarettes, cigars, blunt wrappers, pretzels, pizza, pizza rolls, hot dogs, subs, burritos...everything you can buy at a convenience store. Now imagine some mega-booths set up like mini convenience stores, complete with refrigerated displays, racks of edibles and porn magazines. Now imagine 1:30pm, the very end of the last day of the show, when no exhibitor wants to bring their shit home. Yes, 1:30pm that Wednesday was my dream come true. Suddenly people who were giving away samples by the crumble were throwing bulk boxes of their goods at you screaming, "Take it! Take as much as you want!" Those who flew in to attend the show could just stand and watch as those who drove there (in an SUV like us!) brought out our dolleys and started carting away cases of beer and energy drinks. At 1:30pm, people were running through the aisles, grabbing anything that wasn't bolted down and stuffing them into ultra-large shopping bags provided by Coke with anything and everything, whether they really needed it or not (ie my 24-count display pack of tiny blue fake-Viagra. I have no idea what I'll ever do with that). Thankfully, Reggie had driven in the night before so we could buy a display tub from one of the exhibitors for our lemonade, and he had plenty of room left in his truck for all of our booty. We got about 4 24-count cases of Sol, Tecate, Heineken, Dos Equis and a flat of Monster Energy Drink. We got entire bags of beef jerky, candy, chips, cookies, energy bars and flavored cigars. Overall, it was enough stuff to cover the entire floor of my bedroom. When we got back, threw a football party that looked like we robbed a 7-11.

It wasn't so much about the stuff, since most of that junk, other than the invidual servings of soy milk and energy bars, I won't touch on any given day. But it was just about fulfilling that shopping spree fantasy, of being able to run through a place filled with all this stuff, and being able to take whatever you wanted. It's bizarre, but it was a really fulfilling high to have that experience. And I also won my coworker's son a skateboard by lasso-ing a Snapelope at the Slim Jim booth so that was solid.

Last week found me on this crazy midwest tour that involved going to 5 states in 3 days to showcase our new technology. My boss and I left on the red-eye to Chicago on Sunday night, arrived at 5am and had 4 meetings back to back to back before leaving on the last flight out to Indianapolis. Of course, because we were leaving from O'Hare and it was storming, our flight got delayed by 3 and a half hours and we didn't get into our hotel until 3am. We got up at 7 the next morning to head to our next meeting in Indianapolis, then drove to Dayton, Ohio for an afternoon meeting. We flew out to Iowa via Minneapolis where we got in just before 1am. I ended up going through my work email until 3am. I was given one of those handicap access rooms where the shower isn't partitioned from the bathroom by a tub. Usually those shower floors slope towards the drain or have long curtains to contain the water, but apparently, the Marriott in Davenport didn't consider these things. So at 7am, I turn on the shower, go into my room to grab some clothes, come back in to suddenly find myself wide awake and on the floor, having landed hard on my butt. In the minute that I was gone, the water from the shower had drenched the bathroom floor. This was pretty scary for me as, falling isn't a sensation you expect when you're half asleep, and I had fallen close enough to the toilet to slam my hand against the seat and then the floor below it. I was pretty grossed out by having touched a hotel toilet, but I was pretty scared at the thought of how, if I had landed just a little bit differently, I could have easily hit my head on the toilet and had a serious accident.

We headed out to our first meeting where the guy chose to completely ignore me and small talk with my boss despite the fact that I'm actually an executive in our company and I was making a one-on-one presentation to him. Caveman. We rushed to the airport straight from that meeting to catch a flight back to Minneapolis for 2 more afternoon meetings, before taking a late flight back to LA.

Highlights of the trip were: Pre-negotiating a big salary for next year; seeing the Mall of America; bonding with my boss.
Lowlights: You really can't wash your hands enough after you've touched the underside of a hotel toilet.

I'll tell you...there is nothing better than sleeping in your own bed after having been away for so long.

For anyone who's going to be traveling any time soon, the new liquids that you can carry-on rules are somewhat tricky. Just know that if you're going to carry on liquids or gels, the containers themselves have to be no more than 3 ounces, so even if you have a larger bottle but only filled half of it, it's going to get taken away. You should either check your things in, or make sure you buy empty bottles whose capacity are clearly marked as being 3 oz or under and put your things in there. I had SO many things taken away because my boss insisted on not checking in luggage. What was weird was that no airport was consistent. At almost every airport, they found something else to take away.

Last week we had the screening from Pieces which went really well. Many thanks to everyone who came out and an apology to those who didn't get the evite. Since I was traveling the week before, I didn't realize that so many people hadn't gotten the evite until about the day before and the day of. It turned out that most of the crew didn't know about the screening which is pretty awful.

In other news, TR Knight (George O'Malley) got outed by a fight on the set of Grey's Anatomy. For those who are not familiar with ChokeGate, Isaiah Washington got in a fight with Patrick Dempsey and made reference to a gay castmate. Easy deduction would lead to the conclusion that TR Knight was the cast member in question, which promptly led to his releasing a statement about his sexual orientation and his hoping that his sexual orientation wasn't the most interesting thing about him. It's pretty sad how things came about, how TR was forced to make an announcement that he wasn't necessarily ready to make or wanted to make. But the big thing for me is that Isaiah Washington is quoted as calling TR a faggot, which I think is just as bad as if Patrick Dempsey had called Isaiah the N word. It's incredibly offensive and ignorant, and as I write this, the show's PR department is spinning its little heart out over this. But if a white actor had called a black actor the N word, there would be outrage and that actor would very likely be out of a job. Meanwhile, the F word and a cast member's privacy violated gets buried. Sucks how things can turn out. Then again, I don't claim to be close to the situation and to know the truth of it, but it is intriguing. I hope that TR's role on the show doesn't suffer, and that they let his character continue and evolve naturally the way he has so far, rather than letting the fact that he's a gay actor affect it. George is one of the best, most endearing characters on TV right now, and I'd like to see him continue his development unhindered.

Lastly, Kaiser Permanente sucks. SUCKS. SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS. I want Blue Cross back.