Roll Tide, Alabama

I have the pleasure of traveling around most of the state of Alabama for work.  Here are some of the interesting things I've done during the few weeks I've traveled here:

• Ate at Sonic
• Drove through a town called Front Porch City (they did have enviable front porches)
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• Survived a historic tornado outbreak
• Went home

Benchwarming

In consulting, any time between projects is known as being on the bench. Typically most consultants are 'virtual' employees so there is no office to go into during these project hiatuses. So I'm currently doing some benchwarming, in other words I'm getting paid to sit around at home and do nothing. It's pretty wonderful for a few days but then the full time lazy bum that lives inside of me comes out in full force. I haven't left the house in days. Actually that's not entirely true since I have a cute dog named Mac that needs to go out regularly. Since I do not live in a house with a yard that means I actually have to go take him up and down the block waiting to pick up poop with a thin plastic baggie.

Getting back to that bench, when you're not on it life goes a million miles an hour. It involves lots of commuting to airports, occupying my time on long plane rides, commuting again, trying to make my hotel feel like a home (for me that involves Lysol-ing most everything in the room), trying to find a restaurant I haven't eaten at 3 times in the last week, and finally the most important part of actually working and putting in those hours.   Once I foresee a potential time where I will be on the bench I get all these grand ideas of creating a rigorous work out schedule, cleaning everything in the house, gutting that back room collecting junk, and things of that nature.  What have I accomplished so far??? Not much.

The place is fairly clean as long as your ignore the pile of laundry (why do I have so much laundry when I didn't go anywhere?).  I did actually go running yesterday and I'm super proud I went except that gave me a reason to do nothing today.  I love actually getting to spend time in Chicago and in my home I pay mortgages for but I need to get back to being busy so I can start being productive again.  Am I the only one with this problem?  It's seems like it takes me a while to reach my 'stir crazy' threshold.  I would like to look at it as appreciating my time at home because it could end tomorrow and back to the string of Marriott chains I go!