A week from today I'll be in Washington DC for work. Two weeks from today, I'll be in California, starting a drive home with Haley. Sort of cool for these things to be happening, but truth be told, I'll be more excited come June 1, when I'm home for a bit, before the next trip, later in June.
When I took the job in late January, I knew there would be travel involved. I think I was told 10% travel, which, at the time, I thought, "no big deal!" And, really, it isn't. But I'm terribly not excited about airports and planes and with two new bands getting off the ground (and other projects happening), it's sort of rough to get a rehearsal or two going, just to have to put a pin in it for a week while I'm gone.
Add in the fact that Ted passed away and that complicates things as well, but there's not much we can do to accommodate for that other than to live through it.
But this Saturday, I fly out at 8:30am on a direct flight from Seatac to DC. Then Sunday morning at 8:00am, I report to duty for testing at the convention center. Monday through Wednesday are event support days and though they'll be long, they'll go quick and I'll learn a ton. Thursday is a travel day and I'll be flying from DC to Dallas, then Dallas to Palm Springs, where Judy will pick me up. I'll stay there until Saturday, when I drive to San Clemente to meet the rest of the fam. We'll do Ted's memorial that night with family and then Sunday or Monday, Haley and I drive home.
Speaking of which, I need to look into places to stay on our way back. Ugh. Half of the dislike of travel is the logistics of everything. Where will you stay? When will you leave? What kind of flights are there? Will you Uber or rent a car? And all the time, I keep seeing $$$.
For work, at least they reimburse me. I just got a new CC ONLY for work. My last trip, the expenses were $1800 or so and 24Seven paid me back the week I claimed, so that went straight back to the card I was using. Only we weren't getting much reward back on that, so I opened a Chase Sapphire Preferred card which gives us a good amount of benefits for using it.
If and once I get converted to FTE, I'll get a corporate card to book everything to, so that's something to look forward to. However, the travel appears to increase quite a bit, so that's something to consider as well.
