Back at home.
Hey All!!
I'm home!! Never thought it could feel so good to be back amongst all that I know and love. Overall it was a good and productive trip but it was extremely stressful being at Headquarters so I'm glad that part is over (for now). The most eventful part of the entire trip was the flight home. I left Birmingham around 6pm for Houston. In Houston, I found out that my flight had been delayed for a little over 2 hours due to storms in OKC. It's kind of interesting the people you meet at airports, and most of them are open to small talk, but of course I lean toward the more unusual and difficult. I spent a good amount of time communicating with a guy out by the plane from a second story window in the airport. We managed to corresponde through motions and gestures to determine that he used to live in Nomran, I live in Norman and he's a sooner fan. He had me cracking up. At this point I'm completely exhausted so I spent the majority of rest of the layover sleeping. Met a sweet kid in the airport, Evan, and he boarded the OKC flight with me.
It's pretty much public knowledge that I haven't flown up to this point. Four flights in one week will you warm you up to it fairly quickly, but the OKC flight broke me in completely. About 100 miles outside of OKC we start hitting the storms and the turbulance got bad. I don't know what the reasoning was, but the pilot decided to put the plane down as fast as possible. The wind was blowing the plane all over the place (tipped over sideways, picking it up and then dropping suddenly, rocking violently). People were screaming and I was absolutely terrified (I can't stand to feel like I'm falling helplessly.) Evan's dad is a pilot and he faired a little better than I did (I've got both feet braced against the seat in front of me, a death grip on both arms of the chair and my head down) so, cute kid, he scoots over into the seat right next to me and holds onto my hand while chanting "Almost there. Yeah, that's got to be the last time. Are you ok? " I have never been so glad to be back on the ground.
Cilla meets me at the gates and we have a joyful reunion. It's nearly midnight at this point so we quickly gather my baggage and get out to find it's pouring down rain. In a matter of minutes there's ankle deep flooding. By the time we got out to the car we were completely drenched and pretty well miserable. The drive home was slow to say the least. Once we got home there was no electricity. Needless to say I'm glad that whole night is over.
Today was my first day on "base". That's going to be a good environment and I like my OKC partner, we did lunch and pretty much spent the day exchanging tips, thoughts and other auditing banter.
From here on since I'm actually auditing on site I'm not allowed to "publicize" my locations so no more forward information by blog. If you want to know where I am, take a sworn oath that you won't disclose my location to any Aaron's employee and I can give you a general idea. They're extremely careful about that and it makes sense.
I've got to get some sleep.
This is my life
Its not what it was before
All these feelings I
I'm home!! Never thought it could feel so good to be back amongst all that I know and love. Overall it was a good and productive trip but it was extremely stressful being at Headquarters so I'm glad that part is over (for now). The most eventful part of the entire trip was the flight home. I left Birmingham around 6pm for Houston. In Houston, I found out that my flight had been delayed for a little over 2 hours due to storms in OKC. It's kind of interesting the people you meet at airports, and most of them are open to small talk, but of course I lean toward the more unusual and difficult. I spent a good amount of time communicating with a guy out by the plane from a second story window in the airport. We managed to corresponde through motions and gestures to determine that he used to live in Nomran, I live in Norman and he's a sooner fan. He had me cracking up. At this point I'm completely exhausted so I spent the majority of rest of the layover sleeping. Met a sweet kid in the airport, Evan, and he boarded the OKC flight with me.
It's pretty much public knowledge that I haven't flown up to this point. Four flights in one week will you warm you up to it fairly quickly, but the OKC flight broke me in completely. About 100 miles outside of OKC we start hitting the storms and the turbulance got bad. I don't know what the reasoning was, but the pilot decided to put the plane down as fast as possible. The wind was blowing the plane all over the place (tipped over sideways, picking it up and then dropping suddenly, rocking violently). People were screaming and I was absolutely terrified (I can't stand to feel like I'm falling helplessly.) Evan's dad is a pilot and he faired a little better than I did (I've got both feet braced against the seat in front of me, a death grip on both arms of the chair and my head down) so, cute kid, he scoots over into the seat right next to me and holds onto my hand while chanting "Almost there. Yeah, that's got to be the last time. Are you ok? " I have never been so glad to be back on the ground.
Cilla meets me at the gates and we have a joyful reunion. It's nearly midnight at this point so we quickly gather my baggage and get out to find it's pouring down rain. In a matter of minutes there's ankle deep flooding. By the time we got out to the car we were completely drenched and pretty well miserable. The drive home was slow to say the least. Once we got home there was no electricity. Needless to say I'm glad that whole night is over.
Today was my first day on "base". That's going to be a good environment and I like my OKC partner, we did lunch and pretty much spent the day exchanging tips, thoughts and other auditing banter.
From here on since I'm actually auditing on site I'm not allowed to "publicize" my locations so no more forward information by blog. If you want to know where I am, take a sworn oath that you won't disclose my location to any Aaron's employee and I can give you a general idea. They're extremely careful about that and it makes sense.
I've got to get some sleep.
This is my life
Its not what it was before
All these feelings I