I was supposed to be in Atlanta this week. I’m not.

When people say “the last minute”, it’s usually a somewhat embellished description of events. In this case, it’s kind of embellished as well, but only by about three or four hours, and when we’re talking airport time, it doesn’t get much tighter than that, so relatively speaking, this one’s pretty literal.

Strap in, friends, for a story.

After a whirlwind week of meet-and-greets, rehearsals, and an eventual quick, unanimous decision for something that never happens quickly or unanimously, Colleen’s year-long volunteer commitment came to a successful end, and there was much rejoicing all around. Our Sunday was pretty long, with us leaving the house before 8am and not returning home until well after 9pm. It was exhausting, but kind of nice, as there was some steam blown off and toasts made to bring this crazy part of our lives to an end. Upon our return, we convinced the kitten we hadn’t abandoned her after all (she forgave us), and I packed a bag and removed all airport contraband from my laptop case, then finally made it to bed, convinced I was going to hit the office in the morning for a few hours to clear out the inbox, grab my ticket confirmations, and get on a plane before lunch.

When i got to the office, I found, buried amongst the usual crap, a short message, sent late Sunday afternoon (when nobody was in the office and most don’t have access to email anyway) indicating that the event I was supposed to check my bags to travel to in a couple of hours was postponed for technical issues, and that we’d try again next week.

Not cool.

So, with about two hours to spare before I’d have to check in, I managed to cancel my reservations. Luckily, I ran into the spouse of the person I was traveling with during a fortuitous morning fire drill, because she didn’t know of the cancellation (she wasn’t planning on coming in before the airport). Bullet dodged there.

Now, I’m not really going to complain about being home for a week, especially this week. I’ve not been feeling that great anyway (a couple of busy weeks with little downtime will do that to a person), and I have a sit-in bass gig this weekend, so I could use a little more time to practice the tunes so I don’t embarass the band. Still, I’d managed to shift completely into travel mode, and having to shift back rather abruptly throws a person off.

So, as it stands now, I’ve been working locally and sleeping at home all week, fighting to find flights for next week (for some reason, things next week are tight – at least my travel companion and I will be on the same flight home), and figuring out if this thing’s actually going to happen at all, and trying to get myself rested enough to function normally again.

That’s my story. It kind of sucks, but it’s the glamourous life I lead. Aren’t you jealous?