Last week, I was on my first business trip in about seven years. Also, it was the first time since we were married that Cynthia and I had been apart for any significant period of time. Cynthia was pretty worried about taking care of both Matthew and Samantha on her own for a week, but she did very well. The day before I left, she and I did a bunch of cooking to prepare lots of easy to re-heat meals. We still have some left-over tomato spinach soup in the fridge.

The trip was fairly uneventful. I left on Sunday and it did look like we might end up stuck in Chicago. The flight from Ottawa to Chicago was delayed and there was a chance we would miss our connection. But, everything in Chicago was delayed. We arrived at San Jose airport at about 12:30 local time which made for a very long day.

Unlike years ago when my trips were mostly to visit customer sites to perform upgrades or to fix problems, this trip was to our Mountainview location to begin planning our next software release. The work days were long, attending meetings in the day, working on the current version of the software when we could and leaving for a late dinner and the hotel late at night. As often happens to me on business trips, I came down with a cold almost immediately and am just getting over it now.

The other difference with this business trip was getting back home. When I was travelling years ago, I would get home to a quiet and empty apartment. This time, I returned home to a family which was very happy to see me.