Max's brother Aaron got married in Taiwan while we were away, so we heard all about that (none of the family were there - it was more of an official thing, ahead of a big wedding banquet in Taipei next year) and got very excited that we're now related to Chun-Yin, because she's wonderful.
Emily was kind enough to arrange a tour of the West Wing for Judy and Richard on Saturday, which Max and I kept a surprise from them and which they absolutely loved - they were blown away and very excited. However, I wasn't with them because I had to stay home to prepare for a 2-day work trip to Florida which I'd been offered by a friend in London while in Costa Rica.
The job was for a company making a video for HSBC. They wanted me to go to Boca Raton and Orlando with a video camera, to conduct casting interviews with two heads of companies who HSBC are considering making a mini-film about.
As seems to be the way with selling one's soul to the corporate devil, the money was really good, so I took the job, but was a bit nervous about using the camera by myself as, although I've taken courses on it and used it for fun before, I haven't had to operate a camera and conduct an intervivew at the same time. So I stayed home while the Devos went around the White House, practising with the camera and a teddy bear, so that by the time I landed in Florida, I'd come across as a very competent pro (not in the prostitute sense of 'pro'...).
Having got my head around the camera, and worked out how to erect the tripod without getting caught up in it like in an old-school deckchair, I went to check in online on Sunday night, only to discover huge hurricane warnings all over the place! There was a hurricane heading straight for Florida, due to hit almost exactly when I was there.
So I was pretty nervous yesterday morning, as I headed into the eye of the storm, only to be made more nervous by a pilot and his son who were checking the internet during my change in Charlotte, reading out progress reports about when the hurricane was going to 'make landfall' and giving us real-time updates as to its path. It felt like we were all in a disaster movie, as everyone was huddled round, listening, presumably all wondering what on earth we were doing, boarding a plane to fly somewhere which had been declared a state of emergency.
I was doing pretty well at being brave and approaching the whole thing as an adventure until I got to West Palm Beach airport, where the rain was more torrential than anything we'd seen in Costa Rica, and the mean lady at the car rental place wouldn't give me the GPS unit that this entire endeavour was counting on.
So I had to drive by myself through the driving rain with only googlemap instructions to guide me. No Maxy in the passenger seat reading the map, no robot-voiced British lady on the satnav to tell me when to stay in the righthand lane or whatever.
One sobbing phone call to Max later, I headed off and managed to get to Boca Raton, where my interviewee lived in this weird gated country club community that looked a bit like something out of 'Pleasantville'.
The chap I interviewed - Roy - was really nice and I was really pleased with the interview, but I got all flustered with the camera because I noticed its focus slipped halfway through our chat, so I had to try to change the shot and hope for the best.
Roy didn't set the world alight and I can't imagine HSBC using him, but he did give me a bag of pretzels for the drive to Orlando, for which I was very grateful, as I hadn't managed to get lunch at Charlotte (which didn't help in the resiliance-against-scary-hurricanes stakes).
Mercifully the drive to Orlando was fairly dry and went ok. I even managed to sing like a loon to some CDs. But there was a very real sense that I was racing the storm and that it was just on my tail.
The road my lovely Holiday Inn was on was really weird - it was a bit like driving through a theme park, with garish shops and hotels and random fairground rides on it. When I checked in, I was handed a piece of paper with warnings and advice on it for when the hurricane hits which, I was assured by the concierge, would be the following day. Great. So either I'll be driving to/from my second interview or in a plane during the hurricane.
What was weird was all the British tourists milling around, nonchalantly booking themselves onto bus trips to Disney World for the following day, as if nothing was happening. Either it's because British tourists are only too familiar with rainy summer holidays, or it was an example of the gritty British pluck at times of hardship, or I was wildly overreacting.
Advice like 'fill your bathtub with water as soon as possible, in case the water gets cut off' and 'keep your air conditioning unit on, even though rain in a hurricane tends to be horizontal so will come into your room via the a/c' and relentless scare-mongering on CNN and all other TV news stations just served to send me into a massive panic and Max The WonderHusband may or may not have received another teary phone call (he was a legend all day long - SO supportive).
My second interview was scheduled for 2.30pm and the hurricane was due to hit Orlando at 2pm, putting me in the car on a strange freeway during the storm. As it was obvious that my flight was going to be delayed or cancelled, I called US Airways last night to see if they'd put me up in a hotel if that happened. They couldn't tell me - conjuring up images in my head of scrambling through crowds at some information desk, desperately trying to get the last hotel room available to avoid a night spent sleeping in the airport like in news reports of baggage handler strikes - but the chap did mention in passing that I was allowed to make one change to my flight without incurring a fee.
In a rare moment of clarity, I called my interviewee to see if he could meet me any earlier and when he could, looked into any earlier flights out of Orlando. Already long story short, I booked myself on an earlier flight and went to sleep feeling way happier, if slightly disappointed that I'm such a massive baby.
Today went much better, no thanks to anyone I encountered wishing me good luck whenever I told them I was planning to fly back to DC this afternoon.
Getting to the interview went very smoothly and I arrived feeling really confident. Again, the dude lived in a weird gated country club community - that seems to be the Florida way of rich heads of businesses - and his house looked like a spectacular Middle Eastern hotel inside, all mahogony and exquisite furniture.
Vik (for that was my interviewee's name) wasn't as friendly as Roy and was way more businesslike - dressed in a sharp suit and with clearly not much time to spare. I thought I was looking pretty smart in my Mooks dress, but then I saw Vik's wife just mooching around the house in more makeup than I've ever seen in my life, a really fancy tight-fitting silk dress and vertiginously high heels. I wasn't that dressed up on my wedding day and I'm sure Vik thought I was an urchin off the street and certainly seemed surprised when it was only me - I think he was expecting a whole proper crew.
Anyway, the interview went fine. It only lasted 18 mins instead of an hour and the shot was shoddy again, but my eyes were firmly on the prize of getting the hell out of Dodge, so I didn't really care. Vik walked me out to my car through his garage, past his Lamborghini and Bentley, which I made suitably impressed noises about, while desperately trying to get out of there without letting the tripod swing wildly from my shoulder, smashing into one of the shiny cars.
It was a good thing that the interview was so short, because it took ages to offhire the car, but soon I was at the airport. Although none of the screens suggested a delay to my flight, I was taking no chances and indulged in a bit of panic buying at the shop - a comfy-looking blanket to sleep under, an absurd amount of bottled of water (probably enough to fill a bathtub) and a Patricia Cornwell book long enough to distract me from being stranded at an airport in the middle of a hurricane.
However, it wasn't long before me and my gigantic shopping bag were waddling onto the plane! Hooraaaay! I cannot begin to convey the relief. It felt like getting on the last chopper out of Saigon. And this was confirmed by the captain, who said we were very lucky to get on that flight, as Orlando airport was being closed in 20 minutes' time!! So if I hadn't rescheduled the interview and changed flights, I would've been stuck in Florida!
The flight went fine and I got back to DC, jumped on a SuperShuttle (where I met a very friendly Belgian man whose wife plays tennis and who told me about an amazing island of North Carolina that we must go to and talked me through the conflict between the Flemish and Walloons) and sped home to Maxy. Yippeeee!
I called Max to let him know I was nearby on the SuperShuttle, only to have the driver decide to drop everyone else off first, so it was ages before I actually got home - only to find a rather limp looking Maxy on the corner of our street with a 'WELCOME HOME SOPH' sign he'd been holding ever since I rang from around the corner about half an hour earlier!
I haven't really stopped clinging to Max since I got home. The grass looks greener, the air smells sweeter and I am categorically a massive wuss. But a wuss who's home and doesn't have to worry about horizontal rain or cancelled flights or having to read a Patricia Cornwell book under an airport blanket!
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