Morning Coffee...

Waking up next to two children crammed into a queen size bed is a great and brilliant way to start any Monday - I don't get that very often - the tired "I don't want to go to school", followed immediatly by, "Can you take my temperature", none the less, it is a different way to start a Monday - no harried, frantic trips to the airport or throwing a few golf shirts and ties into a suitcase - it is a more peaceful and meaningful start - with cereal and milk and jokes and kisses and tired little eyes that eventually smile and say good morning.

Adjusting to fixing the pot of coffee and not having someone say "Good Morning Mr. Bennett" as they fix me an omlette is a different thing - you see, as travellers - we get lazy. Not in the sense of not taking care of things, but those folks in hotels and at airline ticket counters get paid to make us feel at home - and you get used to those perky friendly smiles every morning - being at home, that takes a little more work - the coffee pot groans - it actually complains and sputters, the milk, it is not as fresh as the milk in the hotel, and the omlette - hell who am I kidding - there is a better chance of the disciples sharing their thoughts reincarnate with me as there is of me waking and fixing myself an omlette. You don't have the same noises of dishes clanging in the background and business women planning out the marketing meeting and musak piped in over the loudspeakers playing some catchy Brittany Spears tune that you will hum the rest of the day. Instead, you have a couple of tired eyes, a noisy caffeine maker, and the occassional sounds of your stomach complaining about Honey Nut Cheerios and old yogurt.

It is a different pace when you are readjusting to home - me, I have the next ten days - and I know it is going to seem like an eternity - I could actually drive into the office - but why make the forty five mile drive in traffic to waste a few hours, when I could spend that time taking care of work. I guess I could establish some routine on 3" x 5" notecards and check them off as I finish them (this is my habits of highly effective people method that actually is used) but that would make things seem like work - and besides, who keeps notecards in a batchelor pad anyway - I relish taking my notes on the past due water bill that I cannot figure out how to pay. The air conditioning unit is actually a welcome sound, it serves as the ringing office phone, or the reminder from Outlook that you have another meeting scheduled.

Don't take this the wrong way, I am not, by any means complaining - it is just different - and change takes some getting used to - I am usually a part of a team that guides folks through massive amounts of change - hell, I live in mergers and acquisitions - so I am a good guide for the abrupt and sometimes brutal changes that folks have to face to get a paycheck - I am just in need of a guide to actually being at home - stupid simple things, like, how long do you need to defrost pork chops before they are okay to cook - or better yet, how long CAN you defrost pork chops before they become slimy, disease ridden, slabs of warm pork that you should not cook? Maybe that is the next great novel - "Being a Batchelor for Dummies" - it amazes me, that I am really that stupid and simple about things around the house - for instance - when did they condense laundry detergent into syrup? Now, from what the directions say, you only need a little bit to go a long way - me, I call bullshit on that one, and still pour two lids of the blue grease into the load - and wonder why I smell like bedsheets when I put on my clothes. When did cable get 957 channels - I can only watch three - and most of the time, it is for noise value - most hotels give me a choice of maybe twenty channels - and that is overwhelming. There are actually entire aisles in the grocery store devoted to animal feed, and although I have no pets, I am still enticed to walk down that aisle just in case they are hiding something on that aisle that I might need - you never know, and I want to be aware of the things that are coming out these days. How long has it been since you were not able to bank, do dry cleaning, get Starbucks, and grocery shop all at the same time - walking into the grocery these days is like walking into a mall condensed and refined with sparkly fruit and happy soccer moms chatting it up about Bruce being out of town this week and Susan having some troubles at home with Jeff. They even have live cooking demonstrations and flower arranging seminars in those places - and oddly enough, that change to me is a grandiose example of why I like life in the simple hotel - when they change things, they make a big deal of it - like the new super sleep beds or softer sheets, or toilet paper that is now two ply - spoon fed change.

I ramble on this morning - that's the morning coffee for me - even the tone of this blog is just like the change - it, for some, is easy to grasp and move forward with, and to me, needs an explanatory pamphlet complete with diagrams of smiling people (sort of like the safety cards in airplanes) - they should make people like me wear an orange vest and a visitor tag in these new places - and have a guide that walks you through the aisles 'That, Mr. Bennett, is an air freshener that knows when people are there - and then it sprays on ITS OWN' or 'Yes, Mr. Bennett, there are fourteen different varieties of sports drink and Gatorade is now know as 'G' and the other Gatorade is known as 'G2' and there are more Doritos than just Doritos, they come in flavors like Late Night Tacostand and Hot Wings and Blue Cheese' (I thought Doritos were a flavor - but now there are subcategories of Dorito flavors).

Albeit simple, that is what I am thinking about - us travellers, we know the road, we know conference rooms, we know places and sites and landmarks and kitschy little local coffee shops, but all in all, do we know what we think we do?

Good morning.