Hitting the road

I am so very lucky. I have a great friend from work. We all have the work friends, you know the ones, you call them friends, yet would never consider doing anything with them outside of the workplace. Maybe drinks after work on a particularly crappy day or lunch on the occasional Friday, but not much more. My friend Joe is the other kind of work friend. The one where you wish that life wasn’t quite so busy so that you could do stuff outside of work. As this is my first business trip for this company, he provided me with a couple of key pieces of equipment to make me look like the veteran business traveler. I already have the company laptop. Check. I have my personal cell phone. Check. New carry on bag because the old one has traveled the world over and the zipper has finally given out. (Wonder if there is a way to expense that particular purchase back to the company? Hmm, I will have to give that some thought.) Check. Joe gave me an ear bud from an old cell phone. (The ear bud is new, the phone was old.) Now, I look all cool and everything talking without holding a phone (this freaked Caleb out, he keeps asking how I am talking on the phone but didn’t have it next to my mouth.) Check. But the thing I like best is Joe lent me a preloaded ipod shuffle. So much better than sitting in O’Hare zoning to CNN while knitting. Instead I am blogging while listening to HeyJude, The Bitch Is Back, Solisbury Hill among other titles. Joe appears to have pretty good taste in music, but I did find a glaring lapse in the selections. Not one title by Sting (Brand New Day is one of my favorite albums – saw that in concert, YUM!) I would have tried to load it on myself, but my guess is that as it is an ipod, you need special software to make it work on a PC. So, this morning, armed with all of the modern essentials for 21st century business travel, I boarded the puddle jumper at 6 a.m. for the 18 minute flight to Chicago and then on to Houston. The sock has made its first plane trip.

I felt so silly on the plane because I was taking pictures out the window. I’ve flown a lot, but I thought that Caleb would like to see what everything looks like from a plane. He’s flown a lot too, but all of it was before he was 18 months old, so he doesn’t remember any of it. I am sure that the other passengers thought I was a complete novice flyer. Not that I care – I’ll never see them again. During the boarding process, I ended up changing seats twice. The first time, There was a sweet couple in their 60’s and they were seated several rows apart. I took his seat so they could sit together. No big deal. I’ve traveled several times where Eric and I were separated. As soon as I sat down, I saw that the person seated next to me was also separated from her traveling companion. So, being the kind person I am, I switched. There was a bit of an ulterior motive because this allowed me to sit on the aisle. The rest of the trip has proved fairly uneventful so far. I got so much done on the sock. The heel is turned and I have picked up the gusset stitches. The worst part is that I lost one needle. Luckily, I was working with 5, so I can make this work, but 3 needles never feels all that comfortable in my hands. I have more at home, but didn’t think to bring any extras with on the trip. I will just have to be extra careful not to lose any more.