Josh, Lindsay, and Mackenzie

As many of you know, I have been sent to California to aid in the training of our performance management process at Centex. Since this side of the world moves at a pace slower than the rest (something about a time zone or two being inbetween myself and my posse...), I thought I would write you out a little synopsis of events to date.

Let me set the scene. Picture it: DFW airport. 6 p.m. I am surrounded by men in red who appear to be on a soccer team headed back to Fresno and on my flight. I am neither worried nor excited about this fact. What I should have been worried about was whether I was in THE seat next to the galley...because if I would have worried about that, I would have been right to worry. I get to my seat (THE seat next to the galley), I see that I am sitting next to an elderly couple in their 60s that have a strange odor to them. I know immediately I'm not going to sleep on this flight. So, once we're airborne, I pull out a blanket I'm crocheting for myself and order a glass of red wine. Now, understand that I'm wearing a red, white, and blue starred hoodie sweatshirt, jeans, tennis shoes, and my hair is in pigtails. The elderly man next to me asks his wife, "Do you know how to do that?" (indicating my mad crochet skills) to which she replies, "Shit no!" - these are my kind of elderly folks. I think the couple combined with the male flight attendant are at this point having a very hard time picturing me flying to CA to actually deliver training to people, but hey, that's why you can't underestimate people right?

I get to the hotel in Visalia (the city next to Selma - the raisin capital of the country) around 10 and fall asleep the second my head hits the pillow.

Today, I get up and go to the office to deliver two training sessions. They go off without a hitch and I get praise from some of the people in the session that I'm a natural presenter, which is about par for the course despite my loathing of how many times I hear myself saying, "Does that make sense?" so I make a mental note that I must start my university dedicated to bullshitting your way through life, as I feel I have fine-tuned this skill.

Now, after we finish at the Central Valley office, my coworker and I get into our respective modes of transportation and begin the 3.5 hour trek to San Ramon. Now, I have various rules for my life; these rules keep me content and protect me. It is on this trip that I break two of them and come quite close to another. Let me explain. For a bit of context, let me tell you about my rental car. It's a Pontiac Grand Prix. Not horrible in itself, until you get in it. The dash lights and controls are all the red-glow color. I am pretty sure Lucifer himself is sitting behind the dash looking at me with his devil-red eyes and boring into my skull to suck out the will to live - at least this is what I always feel like when I get into cars with these red lights. If we were to conduct a study of all cases of road rage, I'm positive all cases would have dashes with these red lights. As my rage builds, my coworker chooses the place to stop. This leads to rule break number one: never stop on a trip less than five hours unless your gas gauge necessitates liquid refreshment. It also immediately leads to rule break number two: never eat at Denny's. I have only eaten at Denny's once in my life and knowing that I am slightly phobic of IHOP and Denny's because of how incredibly dirty I feel upon entering, this is a huge deal. I'll most likely be in the restroom all night.

Now, you might say to yourself, "what about that third rule"? Well, it turns out the windshield wipers in my awesome rental car do not work unless I manually hold the control in the down position. This matters not, until the rain is torrentially pouring down and you are driving in a foreign land (CA counts as a foreign land) and your coworker apparently feels the need to SPEED UP in rain. I could actually see the moment in time when I know for a fact my mom would have thrown in the towel and holed up under a bridge to let it pass. It is at this moment in time that I realize the radio has decided to take this opportunity (with both my hands tied up) to play all my least favorite artists. Dave Matthews and John Mayer, I'm talking to you - stop collaborating with Lucifer and providing a soundtrack to my soul being sucked out by the red glow.

I start hearing these metallic sounds like I'm running over metal pieces - but I know I'm not. So, I figure out that it is really the sound of the puddles I'm driving through and the repercussive sounds of that water hitting the wheel wells. I immediately rename these puddles "MOTHs", which obviously stands for "missed opportunity to hydroplane". So, this situation leads to almost breaking another rule: no death. Luckily I made it here safely and checked into my second hotel for the day. Tomorrow can only be more awesome with a day of training, sight-seeing, and the eventual red-eye back to Dallas. It is at this point that I will sing myself to sleep to the tune of, "Texas our Texas, all hail the mighty state. Texas our Texas, so wonderful so great..."