Yeah, I know. 4 AM CDT is 2 AM PDT!

I keep trying to lie to my body when I travel. I religiously change my watch to the local time and sternly forbid myself to translate eastern or central time to REAL time -- Pacific time!

I cannot even conceive of going to a breakfast meeting that starts at 4:30 AM real time. The only way I can do it, is to convince myself that it really is 6:30 AM. And while that's bad enough (especially for a NON-morning person), it's just a bit more palatable than trying to eat breakfast in the middle of the night.

This morning was one when my body was just not believing my lies. It kept telling me that getting up at 2 AM real time to take the shuttle to the airport at 2:30 was not even remotely a possibility...

I had planned to get to bed early last night.

Our last meeting ended at 4 PM and I was going to go to my room, order room service and just crash. My roommate's flight to New York was leaving at 5:30, so I knew I'd have our room to myself. Well, there was only one other person on the Executive Board that wasn't able to fly out last night and she said she disliked eating alone so I said, sure, I'd go to the hotel restaurant with her. (I really think she wanted to get a taxi and go somewhere else, but I ignored the hints...).

Kansas City prides itself on being the BBQ capital of the world (though there are many other claimants for that title!) so we had wonderful pulled pork sandwiches while we discussed what it was like to raise autistic kids then and now. (Our son is in his late forties and her daughter is a teenager.) Needless to say, we didn't have a very quick dinner.

When I finally got back up to my room, I was shocked to see my roommate's suitcase sitting in the entryway! Addy had missed her flight to NY! There was a trainee at the airline check-in desk all alone who didn't know how to take care of the woman in line ahead of her who was changed from another airline that had cancelled its flight. By the time a supervisor showed up (angry that the trainee had been left alone..), the last NY flight of the evening had left... At least the supervisor was able to issue Addy a boarding ticket for the 8 AM flight this morning -- and she knew that she still had a bed in our room.

But, as we hadn't really had a chance to talk much during the meetings...

It ended up being a pretty short night!