Perks of the Job

My cousin is coming home!! Lt Bobby Jakucs USMC has been stationed in Afghanistan for the last 9 months. In July my sisters, cousin and I road tripped down to North Carolina for the 4th of July weekend to see him off. He will be getting back into NC this Sunday. 

Just today I discovered I would be onsite with a client in NC Monday and Tuesday. Instead of flying down Monday morning and getting into the hospital late morning/early afternoon as I normally would, I'll be flying down Sunday morning and driving to Camp Lejeune to meet my cousin and his family. Monday morning I'll drive back to Raleigh to arrive at my client site as I normally would. 

It'll mean a lot of driving in a 24 hour period.

But it's totally worth it.

Toiletry Guilt

Let me preface this with: I know this is a weird topic for a blog post...

Actually I guess I could preface a lot of my posts with that disclaimer...

Anyway.

When I travel I bring all of my toiletries with me, including shampoo/conditioner/face wash/etc. But I still take the free shampoos, lotions and soaps from the hotel and donate them to the soup kitchen (of sorts) where I volunteer from time to time.

But I usually use the bath soap they provide and always feel guilty about it! It seems so wasteful for me to use a whole bar of soap (even if it is just a little bar) for 1 shower when it could be donated to someone who needs it more than I do and can use it more often than I can.

I should probably just invest in some shower gel and start carrying that around as well.

Also, whenever I check out from a hotel I do a quick look around to ensure I'm not leaving anything behind. When I glance into the bathroom I see this one lone bottle of conditioner left on the counter. I always wonder what the housekeeping staff things about the random girl cleaning them out of toiletries, except for the conditioner.

(Sorry folks, haven't traveled in a few days and I'm scraping the bottom of the blog barrel)

Thankful.

As one of my colleagues called it - today was definitely a marathon. I was up at 3:00am and I'm hoping to be home by 2:00am.  I was a little bitter about having to travel at all today as I was initially scheduled to be on PTO. But as I reflect on my day and put it into perspective, I'm a little ashamed of my initial bitter feelings!

I was upset to miss 1 day of vacation while traveling in relative luxury. I was picked up by a car service this morning, sat in Economy Plus for my flights to Des Moines and I'm currently sitting in the Delta Sky Club waiting for my last flight home sipping a glass of red wine. Meanwhile, men and women around the world won't be home at all for the holidays.  When I think in terms of the sacrifices others are making, I'm both supremely thankful for their service and appreciative of my life and opportunities.

I think this little dose of reality was brought upon by an email update from my cousin yesterday, a Marine who is currently stationed in Afghanistan. Hearing from him about their work in counter IED operations makes my concerns about having enough overhead luggage space seem just a bit ridiculous.

So with that all said - thank you again to all our Armed Forces who are always in my thoughts and prayers but never more so as during this holiday season.