The incident of the Soup in the night time

It has been a really busy week, hence the lack of posts. I'll try and make up for it now with a mammoth catch up!

Stephen was in San Diego at the beginning of the week. Yes, Stan and Ollie were on the road again! They were re-christened on this trip and were known as "Cisco and The Sunburn Kid" as Simon got a little singed when he was sitting by the pool on Saturday. He had lotioned everywhere except his legs...and they were lobster red and swollen.

The Red Bull Air Race was taking place when they were down in San Diego. It was right by the hotel overlooking the water, so the lads got a great view of the last few races. All very thrilling stuff apparently!

Despite the re-christening they still managed to get up to some Stan and Ollie-ish exploits! These two should just not travel together!!! They were driving up to LA for their next meeting and knew they were getting a little low on gas. Except they couldn't see a gas station, so they carried on and ended up on a toll road with absolutely no gas stations in sight! The gauge was reading empty by this time, and then the car lost power so they had to come off the freeway and find a gas station as a matter of some urgency! They did eventually find one...in South Central LA!!!! They were probably lucky to make it out alive and with their car!!!

Ollie, Keith and Stan

The Red Bull Air Race

San Diego skyline

Work has been busy. Not only did we have month end which is busy with report preparation for me, but we also had to prepare for the BD off-site meeting which was on Thursday/Friday. Tim turned into "Powerpoint Man" at one point! He had drunk one of these potent energy drinks and he sent me 3 presentations in 20 minutes!! I also got a call from a taxi driver (who didn't speak a lot of English) wanting directions from Dulles airport to the hotel. I think he thought he was phoning the Westin so was getting frustrated that I had to look up on Google maps rather than know it instantly! That was a fun conversation!!!

The off-site had a really tough schedule, so you can imagine my surprise when we were 1 hour ahead by mid morning! That was due to the lack of "fly boy" stories during the introductions round. We had allowed 30 minutes and it took 5!! It was actually a pretty story-free zone during the meeting...until Friday when Rick was showing footage of when he was shot down over the water during Nam (thankfully near two destroyers) and Chip was one of the pilots sent out to run interference whilst Rick was being rescued. The naval bods weren't in the room at the time, or I'm sure we would have discovered one of them was driving the boat!

Chip is a lovely man. Very funny! We were sat next to him at dinner on Thursday. They have been showing a documentary shot on board the Nimitz aircraft carrier on TV here. I saw one episode where they were trying to land on deck in rough seas and 15 aircraft on the trot "bolted" (missed all 3 of the wires which stop the planes), so I was asking what it was like to land on a carrier in those conditions. He had seen it too and said it didn't look too rough, and thought the pilots were either not very good, or out of practise. He had done around 1000 carrier landings and only bolted 20 times. In addition to flying F-18's for the Navy, he was also the Naval Chief Test Pilot. He is a very modest guy for all of his achievements. Also very enthusiastic!!! He had had shoulder surgery and one of the other chaps on the table was going to be having the same surgery shortly and was a little concerned. Chip was demonstrating how much movement he now had now his rotator cuffs (both shoulders) were fixed. He was doing this by waving his arms about at his sides...Unfortunately the waitress was passing by with bowls of lobster bisque at the time....Yup, you guessed it! All over my jacket!!! It looked like someone had barfed over me!! Chip was mortified and I was laughing hysterically - it was pure slapstick!! The thing was he nearly got me with the wine later - but I had much quicker reflexes that time. I wasn't going to waste wine!!! There was much laughter in the meeting the following day when he announced at lunchtime "It's not lost on me that you are staying all the way over there, when there is soup over here!" After a long wait for a taxi (nearly 30 minutes - ridiculous!) we dropped into Paul B's for a nightcap. The extra wine coupled with only 6 hours sleep was tough on the system and I was not my most perky at 6am when I got up!!

The soup coated jacket! It was actually worse than it looks here!! The photo didn't capture the full extent of the coverage...

When the meeting broke up I cadged lift back to the office with Dawn. The plan was that Stephen would have a meeting at the hotel and come back to the office to meet with someone that Paul was bringing back to the office. (Did you follow that?) The plan quickly fell apart as the person Paul was bringing to the office decided to stay at the hotel...so we had to pack up again and go back to the Westin. I ended up in the bar drinking with the boys (the UK based BD Directors)... a place where I seem to be spending a lot of time at the moment!!

We went out for dinner with Paul B, then we went onto the weekend office as we'd not been there for ages. The band were excellent! Really loud!!

Stephen was up at the crack of dawn and off to watch the Rangers game. He left me snoring gently...I really enjoyed my little lie in! I didn't get up until about 8:30 - bliss! After a quick latte and donut we headed round to Tysons Mall. I realised the other day that I needed some clothes for summer. I had a total "I don't have a thing to wear" moment! Macy's had their mothers day sale on, and I got some real bargains. I bought a pair of trousers, about 4 tops and a knitted jacket (and about half of this lot was Calvin Klein) and it only cost me $155!!! I couldn't believe it when they rang it up!! They don't seem to mark all the reductions on the tag, so I had no idea it was so inexpensive!

As payback for the shopping trip we stopped into the Guitar Centre on the way home. I find it the most boring place on earth, so I stayed in the car whilst Stephen went in to play...which was probably a pretty dangerous move on my part. He likes expensive toys!! Even at my rate of buying shoes/handbags and clothes it would take a lot of shopping trips to match to the price of a guitar!!

We went out with Tommo last night. It was supposed to be drinks and dinner but we didn't make it past the drinks phase!! 40 gallons of wine and no food doesn't make me feel too special - I nearly had a flash virus this morning!! It was a really good night though - Paul is full of stories and a right ol' laugh. We bumped into a Hen night doing the rounds...turned out the bride and her sister were English!

At the beginning of the evening....

Stephen with Tommo

Tommo with the bride to be and her sister