Blah

The initial rush of coming back from vacation and telling everyone about it has faded. 

Dealing with all the pressing work emails has ended, and now I'm just left wading through the crap that remains (about 85 unread messages right now). 

The weather is insanely cold (we've been in the 30s, which is usually as cold as it ever gets here and that is rare and shouldn't be happening in November). 

I haven't wanted to go running at all because of the cold, which doesn't bode well for my "fun run" coming up in a few weeks in San Antonio, or for either of the races on my calendar before then, both of which I had originally intended to race. 

I'm feeling very blah.

Oh, did I mention I had to work in Philly earlier this week?  It totally sucked because I had to fly up there on Sunday, cutting into my weekend, and (mostly) it sucked because we got hammered.  I had told my husband I'd be back Monday night if it went very well or if it went very badly.  It was the latter.

I felt like crying.  Defense counsel and I were both blown away, expecting a very good result.  We did a bit of investigation after the fact and have a pretty good explanation of where things went wrong, but it was still disheartening.

My husband tried to comfort me when I got home by saying that I'd kicked butt on so many work trips lately that I was bound to have a loser.  He had a point, but it still sucked.  Fortunately, it wasn't a huge case, so I'm happy to get the beating out of the way now to hopefully get back on a good streak before we mediate one of my largest cases right after Thanksgiving. 

The big bright spot of the travel was, oddly enough, a flight attendant in coach.  For the first time in recent memory, maybe the first time in my life, I wrote a message about the outstanding customer service I received to a big company that I have no relationship with (I send messages all the time when I deal with someone professionally who does a great job). 

Anyway, she seemed to love her job, she was having so much fun, finding out the stories of all different people on the plane.  Sometimes when I'm in a place, like a plane, or a restaurant (particularly abroad), when I ponder it, I become insanely curious about the people around me.  What are their stories?  What makes them smile the most lately?  What do they do for fun?  What do they do for work?  Do they like their job?  What are their biggest concerns?  What are they looking forward to?  What are their relationships like?  Why are they where they are (the same place as me)? 

I am NEVER one to talk to people on planes.  Occasionally a few pleasantries when seated, but it's pretty much a 3 sentence maximum.  And of course comments on an in-flight event (turbulence, crying baby, spilled drink, whatever) is fine.  But I usually work on flights and I like to be as productive as possible (I actually work even on "fun" trips because planes seem to boost my productivity, the uninterrupted hours let me plow through huge stacks of records that would otherwise take twice as long). 

But on this flight, I can tell you lots of things about the people who were sitting near me because this flight attendant talked to everyone.  One woman bought her plane ticket that morning!  Her daughter was about to have her first baby in Dallas.  The guy next to me used to work for Racetrack and lived in Dallas for a while, and he has 4 kids (saw their picture).  Another woman talked about her 93 year old mother who still lives independently.  One woman came from Dublin that morning.  It was so weird that she elicited all that info, but she had such a fun personality and honestly, seemed to actually like her job (which is fairly uncommon in general, but it seems to be particularly rare for flight attendants on legacy carriers). 

A lot of rambling to say I'm suffering from the post-vacation blues.  We've started planning the next big trip (and the next couple little trips), but that's not enough to get me over it right now.  Sigh.  Life just seems so ho-hum when I'm not with my buddy 24-7 soaking up experiences that are crazy fun, crazy odd, crazy interesting, crazy whatever.  Instead I'm just getting my butt kicked with totally unreasonable numbers...