Shalom

Guess where I am?

I'll give you a hint. Today it was sunny and in the 60s, my body is still all jet-lagged, and now that the sun has set and Sabbath is over and all the restaurants are open, I'm going to go grab a quick dinner.

That's right, I'm back in Israel! Shorter trip this time; back in May, I was here for 3 weeks. This time I have a week of work, and then using a couple of days of vacation time to give me a 4-day weekend of sightseeing with my mom. She is flying over next week to join me, arriving on my last day in the office. Tomorrow I go into the office and meet with my Israeli counterparts in Customer Support. The rest of the week I am attending the Applications annual meeting - which oddly enough, looks to be focusing mainly on sales. Ah well, it is a good experience and good face time with some of the other guys as well. Plus, they are taking us off-site for a couple of days up to Tiberius, which will be cool as I didn't get to head north last trip.

The trip over wasn't bad, though didn't go exactly as planned. My flight out of NH was delayed an hour, and then we were delayed again after we boarded the plane and pulled away from the gate. I was supposed to have almost a 3:30 layover in Newark; instead I had about 45 minutes between getting off one plane and wheels-up on the next. It was just enough time to switch gates, go to the restroom, stock up on water, Pringles, and sleeping pills, and then go through the secondary security for the Israeli flight. By that point, most of the passengers had boarded the plane, so I got to scramble for overhead space and crawl over my two seatmates to get to my window seat. Although I was stuck in coach, my carry-on suitcase got to fly in business class, since there was not enough overhead space available in my cabin. Harumph. I hope my suitcase enjoyed it.

As usual, I forgot things. On the "still at home" list this time are both sleeping pills/melatonin, as well as workout clothes. Boooo. I picked up some Unisom in the airport and already had Advil PM with me, so fingers crossed that will work to get me on the right sleep schedule ASAP. As for the workout clothes - well, I may be the girl going running in a bathing suit top and yoga pants along the Tel Aviv beachfront. We'll see!