May 13, 2013

A Little Japanese Jam

And I am not talking ’bout the kind you spread on bread with peanut butter.

I thought I’d get a bit into the “traveling” part of my blog today.

Travel is in my DNA. Daughter to a woman from South America and a man who had a military career, I moved every two to three years while growing up. While others may cringe at such a prospect, I could not imagine having grown up any other way; putting my fingers in bullet holes at the Alamo, finding Native American arrowheads in old burial grounds, living on the Pacific and the Atlantic, swimming with sharks (Yes, sharks! We’ll get into that more later), turtles, eating amazing food and meeting even more amazing people… while you can find all of this in books, I got to live it. I give thanks to my parents for giving me that life.
As I got older, I was always itching to go somewhere, to be somewhere else and to have a taste of other worlds. Of course, it was only appropriate and most inevitable that somehow I end up with jobs that require travel. And last year I began what some would call a dream job. I love where I work. I have great support and a great team. It doesn’t feel like work. And of course I have my old pal, travel.
I’d like to share a breakdown with you of the first half of my year. I’m including July since that’s when the wedding will take place. 
Heather’s handy dandy travel recap:
1/5/2013-1/10/2013   Las Vegas, NV – business
1/13/2013-1/16/2013 New Orleans, LA – business
1/25/2013-1/29/2013 Scottsdale, AZ – business
2/2/2013-2/3/2013     Scottsdale, AZ (I was too busy to stay the whole time, so left & went back)-business
2/10/2013-2/14/2013 Long Beach, CA (Queen Mary) – business
2/15/2013-2/17/2013 Rancho Bernardo Inn – our romantic, ladened with food poisoning Valentine’s weekend staycation (San Diego area) 
2/22/2013-3/1/2013   Barcelona, Spain – business
3/14/2013-3/14/2013 Los Angeles (day trip) – business
3/18/2013-3/19/2013 Boston, MA – business
4/29/2013-4/30/2013 Huntington Beach – took the bike up for Easter weekend
4/11/2013-4/13/2013 Arkansas-personal
4/17/2013-4/17/2013 Local event (San Diego) – business
5/5/2013-5/7/2013     Hilton Head, SC – business
5/17/2013-5/26/2013 Vegas (combined business/birthday trip)
6/16/2013-6/20/2013 Denver – business
6/22/2013-6/28/2013 Yokohama/Tokyo Japan – business
(Yes, you are reading correctly – I only have 3 days at home between my Japan trip and leaving to pick up the girls and going to get hitched)!
JULY 2nd DEPART FOR WEDDING – Arkansas/Colorado
July 5th GET MARRIED – Colorado
July 8th depart on honeymoon/family trip – Hawaii
Believe it or not, that is not a bad schedule at all! Except for that little Japan trip…it has me in a little jam.
Woo Japan, oh how I was pretty darned excited to go visit you! See that April schedule? My only two trips were personal. That’s because Japan was supposed to have happened in April. Then our Japanese counterparts came back with a postponement until June. And I held my breath they’d come back and tell us the meetings will take place the first week in June. And I hoped. And I waited. When I couldn’t hold my breath any longer, I hoped some more. Then the news came in that the Japan trip was officially moved to the last week of June and I think I shed a tear. Then I put on my big girl pants and decided to make the best of it. I head events for a living! I CAN do this.

Right?

Stay tuned… 

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