I have returned from a two day business trip. It was not a pleasant experience, as these never are, and I’m likely to lose a moderate amount of money rather than getting paid for the extra time my job has kept me away from home. Nor was it voluntary, except in the sense that I volunteered to not quit my job or lie and say I was too sick to go. I may try to refuse next time. There will probably be a next time if I live, even though there is very little to gain from these seminars that could not have been achieved faster and cheaper. Or so it seems to me. Perhaps neurotypicals need these kind of experiences. They certainly don’t seem to mind.

That said, I love my job and it is like with friends: You can’t expect them to be perfect. Especially when you’re not perfect yourself, and I am not. (I think that should be obvious from my archives.)

I am grateful that I have a job where I can help people and get paid for it.  But this trip had very little of the first and less than usual of the second, so I am not enthusiastic about it. That said, it was not a soul-crushing suffering either. Kind of like a bad cold, I guess.

And I came home unharmed. Well, essentially. I usually get sick the day after a trip. At least it is something like 10-15 years since I have had an overnight trip and not got sick afterwards, if memory serves. It is not a big deal, just the body ridding itself of the unusual forms of food eaten at unusual times. I have eaten very little on this trip, so there should not be much to get rid of. But it means another day off from work.

Oh, and the tooth is broken again, the one that was glued on last year. (I think it was last year.) Usually it breaks when I buy a new laptop. I don’t really need any more laptops, but the trip made it clear that I could use a new battery in my HTC Hero. Either that, or a new phone, if the price is approximately the same. By now, it really only holds charge for actual use between home and work, where I recharge it again. For a day trip I can only use it a few times a day to check mail, twitter and Facebook, and it still runs dry.

At least it lasts more than five minutes, which was about how long the next-to-last phone held charge when I gave up on it.  Since I did not actually use the phone back then, I did not notice.  Now that there is Internet on the phone, I tend to use it to stay in touch, much like other humans do, except they talk and I read. And occasionally write.