5-Weeks of Work Trips

Alison and I have just completed a five-week stretch where one of us was out of town for work. I was out of town the first week for training in San Jose, California. Then Alison was out of town for three weeks straight. She went to Florida, Michigan, and Michigan. I was in Irvine, California this past week for another training. It is challenging to be apart so much. For these five weeks, we only had the weekends together, and sometimes the weekend was cut short because we needed to travel on the weekend.

These trips were made more difficult since we have our puppy, Tex. It is a lot easier to take care of him when we are both at home. We had tons of support. Alison's grandma, Aleene, often came over to let Tex out of his crate during the middle of the day. Alison's parents also came over to let him out or pick him up and take him to their house (which we loved). We could not have done it without this support.

It has been crazy how big Tex has gotten over the past five weeks. He was a pretty little pup when this whole thing started, and now he has gotten bigger and longer. It seemed like each time one of us was gone when we got back he grew a ton.

We have done a fair amount of travel during our marriage and honestly, it has been a good thing for us. While it is difficult to spend a significant amount of time apart it helps us appreciate, all the more, the time that we have together.

Most of the time work travel isn't very glamorous. It is funny because when you talk to someone who hasn't traveled much for work and often they think that sounds like so much fun, but usually it isn't really too fun. Most of the time we would rather be home than on a work trip. This last training in Irvine, however, was one of my favorite work trips. I was there with a couple of my work buddies, Coulson and Eric Olsen. We had some fun experiences.

On Monday night we decided to go to an Angels game. We knew we wanted to go to the Angels game during this training and when I saw that it was Mike Trout's birthday on Monday it was a no-brainer, plus he was at 999 hits so we were hoping to see him hit a historic milestone.

The Angels are a pretty terrible baseball team these days. They don't really sell many tickets. We were able to get tickets on the top-level behind home plate for $6 a ticket. I love sitting up there because you have a great view of the full field. We sat up there for the first couple of innings. We watched Mike Trout strike out in his first at-bat. Then we wandered around the stadium. We weren't too worried about the game, as long as we were in a position to watch Mike Trout's at-bats that was all we really wanted. We ended up standing over in left field for quite a while. While we were over there Mike Trout hit a double down the line for his 1,000th hit. What a way to celebrate a birthday. He followed it up with a home run in his next at-bat. During the at-bat, he hit a ball high and deep down the left-field line that just went foul. Normally, a hitter only gets one chance like that during the at-bat, but on the next pitch he hit another one high and deep down the left-field line and this one hit the foul pole for a home run. I read after the game that Mike Trout has had six birthdays in the major leagues and he has hit a home run on four of them. He is a pretty special baseball player. For dinner we all got nachos in batting helmets - they were huge, spicy, and awesome. None of us could finish them, although I gave it a valiant effort. The only thing that could have made the game better would have been an Angels win, but Manny Machado hit a grand slam in the late innings and that put the game out of reach.

On Wednesday we went to Mastro's Ocean Club Newport Beach. It is this nice steak/seafood place. We had calamari, steaks, lobster mashed potatoes, (very expensive broccoli), and Mastro's signature warm butter cake. The warm butter cake was unbelievably good. It was so rich and delicious. We left so stuffed. Then we drove over to Balboa Island. We walked around the island enjoying the interesting houses, ocean views, and the sunset.

On Thursday we went over to Huntington beach. We walked up and down the beach for an hour or so before heading down the pier to eat at Ruby's. Ruby's has perfectly mediocre food, but it is always a fun experience.

On Friday I caught an earlier flight so I got home three hours earlier than we had planned. It was awesome. Alison and I went to a nice dinner at Ruth's Chris Steakhouse. We love that place. Then we headed over to Blake and Debbie's to see our pup Tex and our niece Skylee. Skylee wanted some glow sticks so Alison and Debbie took her to the Dollar Store. Alison just can't say no so $16 later we were having a party. Skylee was so excited. She had party hats and tons of glow sticks. Naturally, we put the party hats on the dogs. They weren't sure they liked them. It was good to be home and just to be able to hang out with everyone.

Tex was not sure he liked the hat

Skylee has great organizational skills