I was wrapping everything up at the office, getting things in line for my trip to Bozeman, MT next week when I suddenly realized: I don’t have my itinerary yet. Uh oh.

I submitted my travel request more than a month ago and I should have received the info back by now, so I don’t know if they booked my travel or not. Considering that I found out today that they “forgot” to process my per diem request (which means I’ll be living out of pocket in Big Sky country), I’m guessing my travel request got waylaid somewhere along the way. What should have been a $600 plane ticket is going to turn into two or three thousand dollars.

I’m glad I’m not paying for it. But then if I were paying for it, I wouldn’t be going to Bozeman in the first place. Cancun, sure. Bozeman? Pass.

I have a theory that if you called in sick for one day, and then called in the next day to really sell it, that you should definitely call in for a third day so there’s no question whatsoever that you were really sick and not just taking mental health days. Unfortunately, theory oftentimes runs smack into the brick wall called Reality, and in this case the reality is that I don’t think I have any sick days left, and even if I did there’s stuff I really do have to get finished this week in preparation for my next two weeks in Bozeman, MT.

So I’m going to work tomorrow. Weep for me.

I have a theory about calling in sick to work: If you call in one day, you really should call in the next day too.

If you’re only out one day, especially if it’s a Monday or Friday, everyone thinks you were burning a sick day to make a long weekend of it, nobody quite believes you were on your deathbed. Ah, but if you take two days, well then you must be sick, right? Two days gets much more respect that just one. It has gravitas.

Tomorrow, I think I’m going for gravitas.

The American Airlines website hates me. Every month I go there to begin trying to work out my itinerary for the next month’s trip, and every month it lies to me. No matter where it is I’m trying to go, how I want to get there, where I want to fly from or when I want to fly, it always tells me: “No flights were found matching your request.”

For this latest round I’m trying to get to Fort Smith, AR. They have a small regional airport there and I’ve been to its website, which assures me that they have several flights a day from Dallas/Ft. Worth and that American Eagle flies there. Since DFW is American’s hub, you’d think it would be a pretty easy 2-flight affair, wouldn’t you? BUR -> DFW -> FSM, piece of cake, right? Wrong.

American’s website says I can’t get there from here. So just to see how badly it was lying, I told it I wanted to go just to DFW from Burbank because I know there are at least two and I think three direct flights a day. I know this because I flew them twice a month for a year. In fact, I flew one of them last month when I went to Manchester. So I checked this with the AA website, asking for a flight from BUR to DFW. And it suggests:

Fly Aloha Airlines from Burbank to Las Vegas.
Fly Continental from Las Vegas to Houston.
Fly American from Houston to Dallas.
And this itinerary begins at 10 pm and ends at 9 am the next day.

I think I need a travel agent.

I decided to take an unscheduled comp day from work today, so I got up early to call in to let my supervisor know. I got her voicemail, so I left her a message. When she hadn’t called me an hour later, I called a co-worker to see if she was around yet. Turns out she’s working from home today.

I probably could have just stayed home under the radar if I hadn’t left that voicemail for her.

But that would have been wrong.

But I would have had a free day off.

But that would have been wrong.

But…

The moral dilemma continues.

Somewhere along the line, I’ve developed the habit of saying “Oopsie!” when I make a minor mistake. It’s sort of vaguely funny and gets weak laughs every once in a while, which I guess is why I started doing it.

But. One of my gay coworkers just gave me a look and said, “That’s so gay!”

Guess I need to butch it up a bit.

My company’s network migration started nearly two weeks ago. I still don’t have reliable email access. Reviews of the situation are mixed.

Godsmack blasting from the studio monitor in one ear, Huey Lewis & The News crooning on tech support’s hold music in the other.

Interesting, but ultimately not satisfying.

Company email kills me. Some people will just forward ANYTHING, and when they do they usually forward it to EVERYONE. There’s no thought behind it, just “Duh… FORWARD!!!” regardless of content.

When writing email, I use different “voices” for different recipients — there’s one guy I’m friendly with who I call “Mah brutha” in email that’s just between the two of us, and I call him by name if I’m sending something “official.” It’s kind of understood that the “Mah brutha” stuff stays just between us. If there’s info I need to send along out of one of those emails, I copy/paste it to a separate email; I don’t send the whole thread. That’s the sensible way to deal with email, I think, and I sort of assume everyone else does the same.

Some people, though… “Duh… FORWARD!!!” I want to just slap them upside they head and ask “Did you read what you just sent to the VP of Lose Your Job? Did you notice the part where you (or I or someone earlier in the thread) said something really unprofessional? Didn’t you think maybe you shouldn’t have sent that, you tool? Didn’t you THINK?”

Morons.

I made it to the concert after all. Sue turned out to be much smarter than I had even hoped for and I was finished with her and out the door in 25 minutes. 40 minute later I was at the concert.

Unfortunately, I completely missed REO Speedwagon. I was a little disappointed by that, but reminded myself that they really only had three or four good songs, and the songs I thought were good (Time For Me To Fly, Roll With The Changes, Son of a Poor Man, Flying Turkey Trot) probably weren’t going to make the set list anyway. Plus, I’m sure hearing the has-been version of I Can’t Fight This Feelin’ Anymore would have made me want to jam popsicle sticks into my ears. With that in mind, I didn’t feel all that bad about missing them. And after seeing the band photo on their website, I’m actually kind of glad. Yikes! This is one band that hasn’t aged well.

Styx was… Well… A reality check, I guess. They were my first concert, back at the tender age of 16, and I remember how huge it all seemed — the crowd, the noise, the music, the spectacle… It was hugely exciting. This time around, though, not so much. It was a much smaller venue and crowd — about two steps up from a county fair — and everything was… duller, I guess.

The cheesy diamond-vision display with the MTV circa 1983 kaleidoscope effects didn’t help much. But the band was still working it, rocking pretty hard, trying to get and keep the crowd excited. But really, Tommy, you didn’t have to scream “All right New Hampshire!” between every single song. And I don’t think anybody believed it when you professed “There’s no place we’d rather be tonight than right here in Gilford, New Hampshire! Yeah!” Uh, no.

Still, it wasn’t a bad show. It all seemed a little faded and threadbare and I was getting bored with it, and then they played Grand Illusion. Suddenly it was 1980 again, I had hair again, it was the old Styx again. I was glad I came.

Ah, but Journey… They were really why I was here. Their music had a huge place in my life in high school (yeah, I admit it) and I was peer-pressured out of seeing them when I had the chance back then. This was my chance to right that wrong. Even without Steve Perry, I still wanted to see them. I had heard that their new singer really sound like Perry, so I was expecting faux greatness.

Well. Let me just say that Steve Augeri is no Steve Perry. He had me going for a little while there, I compared him to Perry for the first few songs and he matched up okay. I was beginning to be satisfied. Then he started singing Lights.

Um, no. Not Steve Perry.

He followed that with Open Arms. Really not Steve Perry.

I started walking. I might have stayed for the whole show, but these two disappointments came on the heels of:

• A 5-minute guitar solo rendition of The Star Spangled Banner, followed by…
• A song from their last album that nobody bought, a song that dropped the audience from their feets to their seats as though they’d all been shot simultaneously
• Completely misreading the crowd and stretching this show-stopping (in a bad way) song out with another guitar solo and then coaxing the audience into a sing-along of the chorus that few of us knew
• Augeri prancing around the stage like a gay flamenco dancer

So I was done. I’d seen Journey and could close the book on that unfinished chapter. I walked back to my car, and as I walked I heard them do another new “song” and a keyboard solo. I didn’t regret leaving.

I caught up to Styx’s tour buses on my drive back to my hotel. I passed and left them behind, literally and metaphorically.