You might recall my last trip to Orlando was an adventure in breast pumping in public bathrooms whist making my boss and co-works wait for me and it was all kinds of fun. Well this November trip was an overnighter with just me and the girls. So armed with with the company credit card we set forth to do as much damage, ur productivity as possible.
We started the trip right by leaving a 1/2 hour late because I forgot my cooler filled with dry ice intended to hold all the milk I intended to pump for the next two days. I'm NOT going without my cooler so I picked the girls up at the office and came back home. I had also forgotten $20 for turnpike tolls so I was able to come home and collect both items and got to see baby awake - so cute!
First BP stop was the turnpike bathroom. Not my favorite stop but came up with a great idea for future trips. You know those beach chairs that fold up neatly into a bag with sling so you can carry them over your shoulder? That chair is going into my car for next trip. I can see it now, beach chair in the handicap bathroom! Perfect!
We got to Universal Studios 1/2 hour late and the meeting had to start at 11am. We didn't have alot to go over so didn't figure we were going to cut into lunch too terribly much but after asking our client about his vacation and discussing the historic election we managed to finish at 1:30pm. Starving we drive to Chick Fil A for lunch and I use their bathroom for 2nd BP stop and this time drag a chair into the bathroom.
We all forgot to ask for tickets (we are supposed to ask 1-2 weeks in advance) so we went back to the offices where our client had agreed to drive us into the park the back way on those little golf carts. That's fun - getting in the park for free and transportation all the way in! We stayed for two hours and looked for product options to enhance our product line - AND we rode the new Simpsons ride with our client who took us to the front of the line! Did I mention he is our favorite client??? Seriously this guy is too cool.
After Universal we spent an hour getting lost while finding the hotel - did I mention we had GPS on one girls Apple phone??? I'm driving and all I hear is go forward so I can see which way the ball is moving, okay you went the wrong way now do a U turn. It says go NORTH, which way is NORTH??? We are all geographically stupid.
After locating the hotel and doing my 3rd BP of the day, we head to downtown Disney and get lost along the way. Finally arrive to buy reference samples, admire our products and eat at Wolfgang Puck and here is where I swear to never go to that restaurant again. It's overpriced, LOUD!!! and I'm just so tired of the menu. Every trip to Disney I go to this restaurant and I don't care how tired I am (or lost), I'm going to find a better restaurant. Orlando is the restaurant capital of the world, seriously they have every possible variety of food and top chefs. It ends now.
Next day we have more meetings with another client, my mommy friend pre-reserved a room for me to use between morning meetings and we take our client out to lunch. Pause for insert story.
I look very young, I can pass for a collage student in my early twenties when in fact I'm early thirties. I know this so I tend to notch my clothing up a bit when I'm leading a meeting, particularly one where I've invited the client to lunch. I get to the restaurant first and tell the hostess to inform the waiter that I'm bringing a client to lunch and would he please bring the bill to me. I position myself at the right top side of the table. At the end of the meal, the waiter bounces around me and puts the bill in front of the client whereupon I take it from him while in mid-sentence and proceed to pay the bill. Is it really necessary for waiters to assume the oldest person at the table is going to pay???
We finish our meetings and make an afternoon stop at my favorite restaurant on the way out of Orlando - Mimi's, for my last BP break. It was a lovely stop with the sweetest waitress I've ever had. One girl inexplicably ordered Pot Pie to go and then realized there was no possible way to get it out of the crockery and into the take out container. The waitress, spotting our situation came over and popped the entire dish into the take out tray and told us to not bring the crockery back. I ordered two muffins to go and she gave them to me for free saying they throw more than that away at the end of the night. After consuming a latte and half a sandwich, we headed back to our neck of Florida.
I gotta say, business trips as a mom are really quite complex, that and I'm totally getting a GPS now that the economy is tanking and everything is 1/2 off in stores for this holiday season.
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