Greetings from Plano, Texas. I’ve been here three or four times in the last two months, training at clients that are all located within about 3 square miles of each other. I usually call it Dallas, but this time I’m keeping in real and calling it what it is: Plano. Texas.

Warning: this entry is going to be a bitchfest. More so than the usual entries are, I mean, so be advised.

This trip started out badly and has not improved at all at any step of the way. Virtually everything that can go wrong has gone wrong every step of the way, even stuff I never could have predicted.

First, I had to conduct this training on Monday/Tuesday, which meant travelling on Sunday. Which meant I missed going on a HOG ride I was planning to go on, which I was not a happy camper about.

Then, I had to fly on US Air/America West. I hate America West. HATE them. Every time I fly that piece of shit airline, something goes wrong — either a missed connection or a cancelled flight or a late departure/arrival, you name it. This time was no exception.

When I purchased my tickets online, I made sure to request aisle seats. So of course when I checked in at the airport, they had me in middle seats on both flights. I waited until most of the plane had boarded for them to miraculously find an aisle seat for me, which of course meant that when I finally made it to the aircraft, there was no more overhead space left and I had to check my bag. Amazingly, they didn’t lose it. I was sure they would.

Connecting through Phoenix, the flight was delayed. Of course. And of course it was delayed with us all on board. We sat there at the gate for nearly an hour, baking in the summer desert sun, with the air conditioning turned off. Which meant that when we finally got to Dallas, it was nearly midnight.

Checking into my hotel, I found that my reservation for a room with a king bed had somehow turned into a room with two double beds. I raised a stink about that, got my king-size bed, and then found that the in-room internet wasn’t working. Of course. I still had some prep work to do online for my class the next day, so I had to use the business center computer at 1:30 a.m.

Getting to the client site today, I discovered that their A/C was broken. Really broken. Not broken as in “Sorry, we can’t blow any cold air for you,” no, it was broken as in “We can only blow hot air and we can’t turn it off.” So in the 95 degree Dallas heat, I was training in a conference room where the heater was blasting and you had to go outside to cool off. And of course this was the one trip where I forgot to pack an undershirt, so I spent the day sweating through my dress shirt. Lovely.

And at a business across the street from us, a woman was shot in the head in the parking lot at lunch. It didn’t have any impact on me or my time here, but it certainly didn’t help to know that this had happened just 50 yards away while I was running my mouth and sweating.

Now I’m back in my room and the internet is working again — for the moment — but now I find that I can’t log in to my company’s website to set some things up for class tomorrow. So I’m going to have to shuffle and dance in the morning and try to train these people on my company’s software without actually using the software if our developers don’t get it back up and running by tomorrow morning.

God, I love my job sometimes. And travelling. And Texas.

Here’s the room:

And here’s the view:

And just fyi, when I tried to actually post this entry, the fucking internet connection in my piece-of-shit hotel room was down a-fucking-gain.

I can’t wait to get back home.