What a crazy month! I have never felt so simultaneously dragged in very possible direction. After returning from London for 30 hours, I was on a plane headed to New York. Arriving Sunday morning, I had one prep day and two days of meetings. Then off to Ottawa for the final days of Sukkot with the Chabad center there and old friends. Of course, the pressure wasn’t off since every free minute not spent in the synagogue was spent trying to run around like an idiot to see friends.
The weekend provided a bit of freedom to really see people and the city. For example, Saturday night I was trying to get a hold of a friend who was supposed to meet up for drinks. Due to phone problems, he wasn’t reachable. I was around Bayshore in the West End when I heard mention on the radio of an Ottawa Senators home game starting in 45 minutes. Hmm….why not? Drove over, bought a ticket from a scalper out front ($110 ticket for $60) and got to see a great game against (ironically) New York. The only downside is that both goals of the game were scored just as I was walking into the building, so I never got to see them.
Monday morning I was off to New York for more meetings, then back on a plane late Tuesday to Israel. I landed late Wednesday and went to the office Thursday for the first time since Sept 18. One day at the office. Yup…that’s it. On the next Sunday I was to spend the next two weeks attending a Search & Rescue team training course for handling Missing Person incidents.
The course was intensive, involving nearly 13 hours/day of classroom time and not leaving me much time for work. It was a superb course, covering interview techniques, map & terrain analysis and behavioral patterns.
Wishing that it were as simple as that, I had to pop off to Geneva for meetings at the end of the first week. I missed one day of the course, which was not such a big problem, but it was more the return to the feeling of non-stop travel.
Heck…last night was I think the 6th night in October I’ve slept at home!
So, I’m glad to be back to “normal”.
