Getting Ready

I was talking on the phone this afternoon to Mom and got completely excited about the New York trip! I'm leaving tomorrow night, which means tonight becomes a frenzy of procrastination: one more episode of SATC, clean the house, do the laundry, pack the clothes...that's the plan, anyway. Currently, I've done the first task and am sitting with my mug of Red Zinger and listening to the best of JJ Cale. Life is good.
I'm approaching this trip with a new idea, a new mindset. It's personal, it's likely boring to all others, but it's pretty exciting to me. I'm going to track my food and ww points this week, even knowing I'll go over my dailies. I'm going to stick to my quite limited budget, and essentially try not to buy anything. It sounds ridiculous; more to the point, it begs the "WHY?!" question. But I am going to New York to look and be on a tour, not to buy things. And what would I buy? I've so far identified my two mine zones as the museum gift shops and the bar. Figure I'll make a list of things from the gift shop (and then turn it over to Jim around my birthday), and make Alex buy all my drinks. Fair warning. So, I have a food and money budget. I'm quite excited.

In other news..cleaned the office today: a clear sign of procrastination. I've been working a lot lately; last week we had the feds in town to give legal advice on a big project I've been working on (for the last 4 years), so there was a field trip and lots of meeting coordination and good discussion going on, not to mention staying a bit later and checking email and generally following up on the rest of work. I'm officially finished with my year as chair of the national committee of my company's employee recognition program, which is good. A year is the right amount of time for that. And the presidents of the company (we have two) and the CEO and the head of HR all signed a very nice letter thanking me for all my hard work and finesse - yes, I think they used that word, I'll check tomorrow - getting the committee through it's first major budget increase in 14 years. Original signatures and everything. I have honestly never seen these signatures in pen, they're always scanned and printed. It was presented to me at our annual awards ceremony (which I mc'd, in a flaming red evening dress, pictures to come when I get them), and I was totally surprised. The letter was matted and framed, so now it's on the wall of my office. I wouldn't have matted and framed it, but there you have it.
Anyhow, I cleaned the office - divided the enormous African violet, repotted some other plants that badly needed it, wiped down all the desk surfaces and computer with germ killer wipes. I have this wood goose mobile, the kind with a string that you pull to make the wings flap, that used to hang in my family's cabin when I was growing up, hanging over my desk. Because of the way I engineered the hanging apparatus, it's been facing the corner for about 2 years - until today, when I finally got up there and moved that paper clip in the acoustic tile and now my goose is looking out at the office. A little bit of feng shui that actually made a huge difference!
I felt I was allowed a little procrastination, since I worked 9 hours on Sunday and 5 or so on Saturday, trying to make up for this Thursday and Friday when I will be in NYC. Those days were so productive, it almost - almost - made me want to trade out a weekend day for a weekday on a regular basis.
So, that's enough rambling for now. I promise I'll post a picture of the red dress (on loan from a colleague) when I get some, and I'll post NYC pics when I return. Not taking the laptop and pretty darned excited about that!