Ok, yesterday morning I drove to the Lindbergh Minneapolis St. Paul Airpot for my flight to Atlanta, for work.

I volunteered weeks ago, for this trip to a hospital in Atlanta. Our headquarters office has created an electronic medical record software product and has assured this customer that we would provide a certain amount of employees who would remain on site for the first few days after they start using the new product, in case they have any problems with it, or questions about it. I have only seen an overview of what it's supposed to do. If they had any questions about it , I would have had to call them in to the help desk.

So problem number one is that I park at the Lindbergh terminal, and walk in to the Northwest Airlines baggage check. Slightly more than a year ago, I almost fainted when I was asked to fly to visit a customer in Colorado. I normally work in our call center. I rarely visit clients' offices, and when I do, they're here in town. I had not flown in almost 10 years. I didn't know the routine, how to arrange the round trip flight, car rental, hotel, driving around in a strange city, etc. Now I've taken so many such trips in the past year that this has become the routine for me. I swiped my corporate credit card in the auomated check in machine. And somone else's ticket, a name similar to mine, came out! I realized 1) I had not been reading the screen or I would have seen the name come up, and 2) I did not even notice I was not even flying Northwest, nor was I leaving from the Lindbergh termial ! I was flying Air Tran, and needed to depart from the Hubert Humphrey terminal! I had to hand the wrong boarding pass back to the clerk behind the desk, and explain it wasn't mine. Sadly that proves Northwest's check in software only looks at the last name and part of the first name on the credit card, and does not do a true identity check, but never mind about that. So I had paid 6 bucks to park at the wrong terminal.

I drove to Humphrey, parked again, checked in on Air Tran, flew to Atlanta, rented a car, and followed my previously-printed Mapquest instructions to the hotel. All perfectly fine. I was pretty proud of myself. But no one from my group met me in the hotel lobby at 2:30 like my email said. And since they're all employees from other cities and I don't know them, I don't even know how to ask the front desk for any of them, by name. That was my first clue that something was really wrong.

Well I knew that some people had to stay at a different hotel, and since we were running out of time, I knew we were all supposed to drive to the hospital for a 3:00 orientation, so I again followed my instructions to the hospital. The good news was I found it, but the bad news was I couldn't see where to park ! I drove back and forth along that same street, until finally, in desparation I pulled in to the emergency room parking area and asked the triage attendent where guests park, and he pointed it out to me! A total mis-use of hospital resources, I know. I parked across the street in the poorly -marked parking ramp, and rushed in to the hospital emergency room, knowing it was well past the 3:00 start time of this orientation. But the shift manager in the E.R. assured me there was no group of employees of my company visiting today. OK, now I knew for a fact something was really, really wrong.

I drove back to my hotel, set up my laptop, brought up my email, and started tracing the several re-schedulings of this software implimentation. I had the most recent email, send Dec 4, that clearly, in the body of the email, spelled out that my team was in fact supposed to arrive on December 9. And today was December 9, right ? This same email included an attachment that included the cell phone number of the "engagement leader," so I called it, but had to leave a voice mail.

Now for the first time , I clicked the link at the top of that email, to bring up part of the company web site that can show each employee any educational or training sessions that have been arranged for them. Mine said Atlanta, GA, JANUARY 13, 2007! This implimentation had been put off another month! The only reason that the body of the email still said December 9 was that it was a forward of one of the previous postponement emails, apparently just so it would go to all the right people, with an attachment to the company web site training schedule to show the new dates. So I can't even say I never received that email, I just never "got" it.

So it's about 4:30 in the afternoon, and I just figured out I just flew from Minneapolis to Atlanta, Georgia, on a Saturday, for no good reason.

I wondered if I should keep the room and enjoy having a quiet night watching Spinal Tap on my dvd player and having a bath and enjoy sleeping in a clean, quiet hotel room. Then I figured out that the reason I was going so delusional was because I hadn't eaten since the previous day. So I drove to a local strip mall, to an Italian restaurant, and ordered fettuccini alfredo with chicken . It smelled and tasted great. But I was too stressed to even eat most of it, and it mostly just tortured me.

My new favorite toy is my new cell phone. Just for re-enrolling in our same cell phone plan, our cell phone company sent us an upgrade phone with all the 'stuff' on it. A camera, internet access, some download capabilities that I haven't played with, much, yet, because I don't want to incur any new fees on it. But it also still calls people. I called and left the last of several voice mails for the engagement leader who still to this moment has not returned any of my voice mails. I tried to call my husband , but he wasn't in. I went back to my hotel room. I called Air Tran and asked them to re-schedule my Tuesday departure date to "tonight". Yes, for $80. Just do it anyway. Then, at about 6 pm, I packed, left my completely untouched hotel room , checked out, drove back to the airport. Wouldn't you know there was a Falcon's game that night, and I got stuck in their pre-game traffic, on the highway. I stopped for gas along the way. I had alread burned through a quarter of a tank!

I noticed this in the airport, at the hotel, in the hospital, and now in the convenience store. Atlanta seems to have a lot of African American men who wear suit coats and stetson hats, like Morris Day from the Time. I wonder if it's always been that way, or if it's some kind of recent retro trend. Oh, well, I was the one standing there, in Atlanta, Georgia, wearing a polar fleece sweater with a picture of snowflakes and snowmen on it, so who has the better fasion sense, really?

I returned the rental car and took the rental car shuttle back to the same airport I had just come from , about 5 hours earlier. I didn't care that I had arrived almost 4 hours before my departure time. I just wanted to be assured of getting out, and back home. I'm really glad Adam Ant's autobiography Stand and Deliver came from Amazon.UK this week and that I brought it with me , because I had plenty of time to read part of it, while I was waiting.

I landed at Humphrey at 12:30 this morning, got my car out of the same space where I had parked it about 17 hours before. I started driving home. Highway 35 E Northbound has construction on it , and I went the wrong way on the way home. And I noticed my gas guage was on "E" for "empty." Every gas station I passed , was closed. Although I did take a detour home, I did eventually arrive. I couldn't wait to go to bed.

My children were so surprised that I was here when they woke up this morning! I called my boss at home on my exciting new cell phone , and told her I took a $400 day trip to Atlanta on the wrong day, and she laughed out loud and said she'll still approve the expenses, thank heavens.

When we all do go to Atlanta in Mid-January, if in fact that day ever comes, and doesn't just keep getting posponed again, I'm going to volunteer to do all the driving. I certainly know my way around Atlanta, now.

Tomorrow I gotta tell everyone why I'm back so soon, after telling everyone I'd be gone until Thursday.

I still have a headache that goes all the way down to my spine.