When You Are Traveling For Business...

1. Everything will fit in your suitcase on departure. However, despite buying nothing, it will not fit on your return. So you will wear two dresses and socks with your heels on the plane.
2. The stuff you hang in the hotel closet will still be there when you leave. You will never see it again. And yet, your suitcase still will not shut.
3. You will either be far too early for your flight or you will do a personal best (PB) down the tarmac.
4. You will carefully lay out each work day outfit, complete with shoes and accessories when you are packing. Yet once you arrive, there will be a component missing from each outfit.  Better hope it's not your pants.
5. Dinner will be by yourself and you will pay for your drinks separately so that your corporate credit card receipt doesn't reflect the fact that you are a rampant alcoholic*.
6. You will be on the 31st floor so there will be no need to draw the curtains.  Then the window washer will wash your windows at the same moment that you get dressed.  It will be awkward for everyone.  It's not easy for them to go somewhere else in a hurry...
7. The batteries in the hotel TV remote will be sketchy.  And you will never be able to change from the hotel welcome screen.  You will not feel very welcome.
8. You will unexpectedly have to go to a meeting in a different building with 2 minutes to get there.  You will be told to go to the 47th floor.  You should go to the 14th.  That will require going back down to the lobby and going to a different elevator bank that services floors 1-20.  You will now be ridiculously late.  You will find the room and try and sidle on in, knowing that no one has met you and has no clue who you are.  You will try and become one with your chair.  It will not work.  They will shoot looks at you that mean "get out - not your meeting".  So you will make notes in your notebook in order to look engaged and as if you know what is going on.  You do not.  Also you are writing "take me to my happy place, take me to my happy place". You remain where you are.
9. You will make it through the week because you are a professional**
10. You will only drop your laptop once when you get it out for the airport screening.  Thank goodness it's not your personal one..
11. You will exchange knowing looks with all the other business travelers.  Your looks will say "we're in this together, we're business professionals, we have expense accounts, we're not like these others".  Then they will call security.

*or cake connoisseur
**and a wine drinker

Things That Happen When You're Away for Work For A Week

1. Blog posts don't get written
2. Cats have to look after themselves. And throw wild parties.
3. TV doesn't get watched
4. House doesn't get cleaned - not actually a bad thing and also since I'm not there, it should stay cleaner for longer. Technically. Unless you have an Albert.
5. Exercise. Although I like to imagine I will work out. I imaginary sweat a lot.

Back in a week. Trust me, this hurts me more than it hurts you. I'm going to be working a lot harder than I normally like to.  Not to mention, meeting and being nice to people.  Yuck.

Travelling Alone Tips

When you're very shy and you go to a foreign-speaking country for the weekend and you get there and there are no taxis to be found, you read your guidebook and you discover you have arrived on a non-working public holiday and there will be no taxis, so you walk two miles to your hotel.

And then you steel yourself to go out and have dinner alone and you position yourself in the corner where you won't draw any attention and just blend in and you order what you think is steak and mushrooms and they bring it to your table and then two chefs show up and flambe it and there are flames shooting up and everyone is staring and you have not blended at all.

Don't do it like that.