Traveling to Maine

I'm in the airport in Charlotte. It's been a long day and my flight to Maine is delayed. It was supposed to leave at 7:20 pm and they just updated the board to 9:30 pm. The big storm that swept across the east coast delayed or canceled all the flights to Portland today. I've been watching the delays on the internet. (Boy things have changed a lot since I started working for myself over 10 years ago.) I figured my flight would be okay since the storm has passed Portland at this point. There is a problem with the flight from Newark and that's what I'm waiting for.

So I've walked around the airport as much as I can. I've looked in the shops and bought a few magazines I didn't really need. I went through my catalogs (I always grab several of the catalogs I have sitting on my bedside table and take them to the airport. Then I go through them, tear out the pages I'm interested in and then get to "lighten" my bag and throw them away.) I succumbed to a Whopper Jr./fries. I'm hungry and won't feel like driving around Portland at midnight trying to find something to eat. I wonder if it will be icy then?

I'm bittersweet about going to Maine. I don't like to travel much for work anymore. There was a time when I loved it. It still doesn't bother me to travel alone, or go out and eat alone, but I miss home. I imagine it is because previously I had a house, now I have a home to miss. (It's probably the same reason that flying drives me nuts anymore.) But on the other hand, I'm anxious to see some friends that I haven't seen since the last time I was there in 2003.

I met Eric the IS Director at Maine Medical Center at the TDS user's group meeting in Nashville, TN in the fall of 1996. We talked for a few minutes and he said he wanted me to come up sometime. Well it took almost two years before their schedule and mine synched up and I flew up there the first time in 1998. I've been working for them ever since.

Some of the people I've worked with at Maine will be friends for life. It is just like anyone else that goes to an office to work everyday; you become friends with some of your co-workers. But, it's different in some respects. Your friends become the familiar voices on the other end of the line during telephone and conference calls. They are thousand miles away, yet you e-mail back and forth the celebrations of life and the tragedies. And then when I come in town we get to go out for dinner, maybe some shopping or a show..... the same thing friends at the office do.