I bet you’ve been wondering where I’ve gone. I have been working like a dog. Brutal brutal work. I was busting my butt at my normal 12-hour-day-pace, and then I was asked to go to a high-end casino/convention hall for a meeting, which would kill my Saturday, Sunday and Monday. No problem, I packed up a bunch of laptops and clothes and plugs and dongles and clickers and toiletries and took a car to the casino, where I got to spend a lovely evening not gambling. I don’t gamble, so most of the charms of casinos are lost on me. But I did get to eat good food and sleep in a mad-comfortable bed and take a 900-degree shower where I came out looking like a boiled ham (that was my desired appearance, strangely enough. I like very hot showers.). I came back to the office on Monday evening expecting a nice relaxed week, but no! I was immediately told not to unpack because hey, you’re flying to Toronto tomorrow for another meeting! Jolly fun! Here’s the problem: I don’t mind working. I HATE HATE HATE flying places for business. To begin with, flying is a hassle of epic proportions. Now add two big ole heavy laptops and a projector to your carry-on, all of which you must unpack and lay out for the scanner along with your shoes and jacket and other possessions of DANGER!, and you have a colossal pain in the posterior. I make a very poor pack-llama. But for the bulk of this trip I was kickin’ butt, until The Incident. The pitch team and I were holed up in a meeting room at one of our sister offices, Publicis Toronto, which is in an old factory. The benefit of that are the giant windows and the wide-open spaces. The not-good thing is that the floor subtlely changes height all over the place by about and inch and a half. All over. So when everyone went to dinner, I decided to stay behind and work on some stuff, the CCO kept me company, and I got a phone call. So I’m not rude, I went into one of the cubicles waaaay on the other side of the building. I jabbered away, finished my call, and stepped out of the cubicle, not noticing the distinct difference in height. I then proceeded to collapse on myself like a fat deck of cards, lightly twisting both of my ankles, but mainly twisting the hell out of my right knee. I laid there like the Heisman Trophy on my side, making hissing and groaning noises and trying not to poop myself from the pain. Which is how my company’s CCO found me. Awesome. Really dignified. I made it through the meeting on the next day and got home with my 40-pound, $6,000 carry-on luggage, but I did it all while hobbling like Frankenstein. What tiny shreds of sex appeal I had blew away in the breeze when I entered the room with my stiff-legged Weeble penguin gait. Here’s the best part: I called my mom that evening of The Incident to inquire on the best type of care (apply ice). I then asked her to make a doctor’s appointment with an bone-n’-joint doctor. The next day she tried to make an appointment but they asked for my insurance info, which she didn’t have. So she called Cricket and asked him if he knew it, and she also called Börrke at the office and asked her. Now that Mummy had informed the entire planet of my debacle, I kept getting text messages like “ARE YOU OK????” and “Call me!!!! R U in a hospital?!?!!!” and the like. Lots of unnecessary drama. It turns out that I have what the medical community likes to call “a boo-boo”. Basically I just twisted it, now there’s a little swelling and a lot of ouchies, but it should go away by itself in ten days or so. Moral of the story: Jessica better not have to travel for work any time soon, because it sucks so very hard. I swear to God, I will go all Münchausen and break something on myself every time until they stop making me go.
In an unrelated note, I love how Canadians say the word “sorry”.