Thursday afternoon I drove four hours south into Ohio at the request of a customer who wanted to have a team building dinner with several of his people and several of us Purple Systems people. That’s all well and good; I’m happy to have someone else pay for my dinner and also pay me to listen to a book on CD while I drive to get there. But then Mr. Customer announced he wanted to start the meeting the next day at 7:30 in the morning, which meant meeting my coworkers at 6:45 even earlier in the morning, and that wasn’t good at all. My body clock does not do well with engagements that start before 8 a.m. Nine would really be better. Between the late dinner, checking e-mail one more time before I turned in (someday I will manage to figure out how to get the wireless card in my laptop to work without having to uninstall the drivers, reboot, and reinstall every time), and cycling through each of the five or six pillows on the hotel bed to find one that was semi-comfortable, I got nowhere near enough sleep and greeted Friday morning with more of a bleary-eyed countenance than usual. Fortunately, the customer had many cans of diet Coke in their refrigerator and told me to help myself, so I managed to not nod off at all, even though 90% of the meeting had nothing to do with my area of expertise.

Friday afternoon I drove back home to find the little family reunion before the big family reunion just getting started in my kitchen. I tried not to whine too much about being tired, especially since Mr. Karen’s mom was fresh from the airport having spent something close to three days traveling from Brazil via New York (both Kennedy and La Guardia) and Miami. After dinner and post-dinner chat, we said good bye to the relatives who live in the area and got to bed at a fairly reasonable hour for a weekend.

Saturday we were supposed to get up at 8:30 to be on the road by 10:30. Some of us (me included) managed the getting up part but the on the road part didn’t quite happen in a timely manner, which really is something of a family tradition so that seemed quite appropriate. Eventually we made it the reunion site in Lansing and weren’t even the last group to arrive (or the second to last, for that matter). It was meltingly hot, so I spent a lot of time inside in the air conditioning. I did manage to venture outside long enough to play a couple rounds of the new to me game of ladder golf, but volleyball was right out–just the walk over to watch the game in progress got me overhot. After dark, we hung around talking (and eating) until late, then the drive home took way longer than it should have thanks to a very unhelpful construction ahead sign, a long backup, and a making it up as we went along detour.

Sunday I slept until the last possible moment–though I woke up still tired–and then went to meet Denise at the quilt show. I’d say more about that and share pictures, except I brought only the cable and not the camera to the office with me so maybe tomorrow.

Sunday evening Mr. Karen and I finally saw Pirates of the Carribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. We almost didn’t because a Karen at rest tends to stay at rest, but when Mr. pointed out if we didn’t see it then we probably wouldn’t get a chance for three more weeks, I put my shoes back on and off we went. I’m glad we did. The plot was a bit weak (somehow I’d missed the fact that it’s the second one in at least a trilogy so was disappointed that nothing really got resolved), and it seemed a bit long, but it was a lot of fun. The nods to the ride imagery made me happy –the dog, the bayou–and what I think was a shout out to Days of Thunder fans made me giggle (though I seemed to be the only one).

We didn’t stay up super late after the movie, but today I’m still tired. Unlike my recent bouts of insomnia, I got to sleep okay last night, but woke up around 2:30 and couldn’t get back to sleep. Oh, how I wish my brain had a mute button–I had to get up and write myself a bunch of notes to clear out the worst of the buzz before I could drift off again. I have high hopes for tonight–I might just be tired enough to get to sleep and stay asleep.