Don't Let It Get You Down, It's Only Castles Burning

So this is my first remote blog entry, I'm sitting in my hotel room in San Jose, California, the heart of Silicon Valley. I'm here on business and so far it's been a comedy of errors. There were supposed to be three of us coming here to a trade show and to visit a handful of customers. Yesterday before the flight, one of us had a daughter go into emergency surgery to have her appendix removed and cancelled his trip. That was not me, but seeing how things have gone since then, I may have been willing to offer up one of my many daugters appendixes to avoid being here. 

I normally love it here, I normally want to live here, I normally leave here with real estate brochures and dreams of moving my entire family cross country like the settlers did way back the the 1980s (close enough). But not this time. This time has been different. So far one rental car reservation was not actually reserved, so far we found that the two 60 inch longe boxes shipped to our hotel from work weighed 150 lbs each and had no wheels on them, so far we learned you can't deliver your own boxes to your booth by going through a "union" loading dock unless you pay them all of the cash that you have on you, so far we found out that the person who packed both boxes did not pack any tools to assemble things nor did he pack tape to repack the boxes to be shipped home. So far we were informed that no, in fact there is NOT a FedEx or a UPS depot at the convention center. Awesomely I also discovered that my duffle bag that I use as a suitcase has a huge rip in it and is essentially garbage. 

I had an awesome surprise when I went to pay for the duct tape, utility knives, screw driver, hand cart and new carry on suitcase at Target (serial killer's starter kit); I learned that my company credit card was on "fraud hold" since I'm in California and wouldn't go through, I learned that my personal credit card also wouldn't go through and I learned my debt card would. (My wife called me later to inform me that in researching this she learned that someone has in fact cloned my credit card a few weeks back and has been using it at a JC Penny somewhere in southern California).

I arrived here last night at midnight California time, this is essentially my first day here. In addition, in the grand scheme of things category, I have learned that I don't have time to enjoy California, and I wouldn't have the time to enjoy it if I lived here, but my life is busy and hectic and ridiculous and this is me here without my family and kids. California isn't going to fix me or my problems and although the sun may help with my depression, therapy would probably help more. Moving here isn't a cure to anything, I think I have t look elsewhere for that type of medicine (obviously I am referring to heroin).