There's NOTHING on the wing!

So the company sent me to San Jose for a week of training and since I hadn't flown commercially for nearly 20 years, it was both a daunting and (initially) exciting experience.

The security, while understandable, was awkward, difficult and time consuming -- but we managed.

The airline employess (we flew Southwest) were themselves wonderful, but the seats were cramped and uncomfortable for more than a few minutes. I'd brought a short stack of magazines and some writing, but found relaxing enough to enjoy reading or writing to be problematic at best. I did manage to get several thousand words into my new project ("Ice"), but that's not much considering we were in the air most of the day on Monday and again on Friday. So I have it in longhand, and have to weave it in to the disconnected sections I wrote on my laptop during the week, but that shouldn't be too hard.

The trip itself was fun. The training was good and is going to help with how I do my job on a daily basis -- and I had the bonus of dinner with two local friends. One long term internet friend who has been uber-supportive of my writing from the beginning and the other, a long time instructor/mentor who has been that, and a friend and more for many years. It was wonderful to get to see them and those dinners rounded out the week to an overall wonderful experience.

Does this mean that things are back to normal around here? I'm wondering "what passes for normal? Then I remember what I've always said: That 'normal' is highly over-rated. :)