Corporate Traveller, I am

It's like I've been gone forever, right? I haven't abandoned the blog, no worries. Just been extra busy lately with work and all. I spent this week in Baltimore for a training seminar, and the two weeks previous to that feverishly trying to catch up on the pre-work that was supposed to be done before class. It's about ninety hours of computer work, and ideally I would be tucked into a corner computer or the back room for a couple of hours a day to finish. But we're so short handed that I had no time at all to work specifically on the training and had to squeeze it all between customers and during my lunch break. Which is when -hello!- I usually do things like check my email or update this page. So between that and not bringing the laptop with me to Baltimore... no blog.

Traveling for work is kind of neat. I felt quite grown-up: staying in a hotel room by myself, dressing up every day, getting everything comped by the bank. Why yes thank you, I WOULD like a taxi! I don't let it go to my head though, because if I were still in Texas I would just go downtown for the training and not have to stay over. The traveling is really more a result of being so far from a big city than of being promoted. Unfortunately, the other nine associates taking this class were local to the area-- not shipped in as I was. Which meant that instead of us all going out after class (because we're all staying downtown and separated from our families and friends) they all drive back to whatever Baltimorean suburb they're from, leaving me alone in the city to do my thing. Which was cool, OK, I have no problem entertaining myself... but it would have been fun to have company!

I did what I always do in a new city with time to kill: find the nearest bookstore, which in Baltimore was the Barnes & Noble down in the inner harbor area. Quite nice actually. Except... I wanted to finish reading a farming book I'd picked up to look at here in Virginia, so I scoured the store (upstairs and down) looking for the agricultural section. (Generally in a B&N, agriculture is sandwiched between ecology and pets.) When I finally asked for help, the dude at the info desk explained to me (in small words) that Baltimore isn't very "agricultural", that there aren't a lot of "farms" in the area, and that there may not be any actual "books" in their agricultural section. Actually there were: three books about tractors. I guess I've gotten used to living in the sticks... if a city of 40-50,000 can be considered the sticks. But we are surrounded by farms here. And cows.