My friend (JV) who I've been helping with some of his Katrina/Rita efforts was asked to testify in front of a Senate committee. He'll be talking to one of the various committees that are reviewing government efforts and responses in the past two hurricanes. He's talking to the committee tomorrow and found out about the trip this last Saturday. That's not a whole lot of time to prep for a trip to The Hill.
Monday
I get a call Monday afternoon from JV pleading for my help and my laptop. Being the fabulous friend that I am, I agree to go help him out. As I pack up my stuff, I get another call from him.
JV - "I need you to something really, really important."
Me - "Sure."
I'm thinking Kinko's run, FedEx drop-off, something along those lines.
JV - "I need you to get mint juleps."
Mint juleps??? It's 2pm on a Monday, mint juleps don't come ready-made and who under the age of 50 drinks mint juleps on a non-Derby day? (Apparently him and his friend / newly-appointed handler .
I go pick up the ingredients for the very important mint juleps and hightail it downtown. My first job was to mix a couple rounds of mint juleps. My only request: red wine and a TV tuned to game 5 of the NL Championships. We spend the rest of Monday typing and researching while watching the game. We could hear the crowd literally across the street from us watching the game as it was projected on the wall of a neighboring building. At the 7th inning, we decided to take a break and join the screaming, cheering masses below. It was crazy, pumped and insane - in a good way. At least until the top of the 9th inning, 2 outs with 1 strike left to send us to the World Series. Thousands of screaming, joyous fans silenced by a home-run. OUCH! After that, we went back to office to drown our sorrows in more work. We were so busy that we lost track of time and realized that it was too late to get our cars out of the garage. So I worked till about 4:30am then crashed on the couch.
Tuesday
Wake up at 8am as JV's friend / handler comes bouncing into the office (he left at 9:30pm the night before, so he got plenty of sleep). More work on the report and its supporting evidence. The handler had us promise to get JV out of the office by 9:30pm since they were catching the 9am flight to Baltimore the following morning. Handler left the office at 6:30pm and we were pretty sure we could wrap things up by 9:30p - 10p at the latest. I (foolishly) make plans to go kareoking that night. 10pm turned to midnight.
Wednesday
Midnight turned to 4am as we finished the report and prepared for final assembly - or so we thought. At 4am, we get an email from the local Vietnamese community organization with some long-awaited numbers. Those numbers had to be plugged into the report and the appendices. At 5am, I announced the time and declared that we had to be out of the building in 45 minutes since JV still needed to change, pack and get to the airport. We finally left the office at 6am. I ran JV home to shower and start packing while I picked up his dry cleaning and ran back to help him pack. We finally headed to airport at 7am and made it to IAH in record time - 30 minutes during rush hour traffic. After I dropped him off, I spent an hour trying to make my way back home. I figured I could finally sleep after sending off some last-minute email. WRONG! Everytime I'd go to sleep, I would be awakened 1.5 - 2 hours later by a phone call. After waking up to field my 4th call, I decided sleep was highly overrated and not necessary. Besides, game 6 would be on in a few hours. I could sleep after the game. And meeting up with some friends to celebrated our 1st trip to the WORLD SERIES!!!!!!
Total hours of sleep in a 72 hour period = 7 hours (give or take 30 minutes)
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