Love to travel but glad to be home

I'm baaaaaaaaack. The travel was good, the training was good, the evenings were not so good. Too much food, too much TV, not enough sleep. (No, I did not go out like I said I would in my last post, and didn't read a thing the whole trip except the training manual in class, the room service menu and my Tom Clancy novel on the plane).

A few observations:

The check-in process at O'Hare on Sunday took me approximately 35 minutes from getting in line to getting through security. This was very good, considering it was incredibly crowded and there seem to be several machine breakdowns. They efficiently move thousands of people through that place every hour, yet many people in line with me did nothing but complain about how long it was taking. These are probably the same people who will wait an hour to be seated for dinner in a popular restaurant on a Saturday night. Go figure.

There was an older guy in line with a little kitten in a carrier. I did not have the nerve to ask him where he was going and why he was taking the cat, but I was really curious to know.

The hotel I stayed at - a Doubletree property - gives you a fresh, hot chocolate chip cookie when you check in (their own recipe with nuts and cinnamon...mmmm).

They do not sell alcohol in stores in Georgia on Sundays (saw a sign in the grocery store where I was buying bottled water, crackers and fruit).

The office building where the class was held was stunningly beautiful...soaring blue glass towers, marble lobbies, fountains, a lake, flowers and trees. The building I work in is OK, but this was gorgeous!

The food court at the Atlanta airport has a Houlihan's restaurant with live piano music. The guy was pretty good.

No matter how many times I see it, the view of downtown Chicago from an airplane still fills me with awe and pride. I always find myself thinking "that's my town". I hope to move back to the city someday when the time is right.

Finally, a helpful travel hint. If you do not want the people around you to know how crazy in lust you and your wife are, don't open your laptop PC and read the explicit emails you send back and forth if the font is an inch high!