So, yesterday I went in to Houston for a meeting. Woooo-hooo.

Honestly though, it beat the hell out of having to fly to New Orleans for the day for a meeting. (Which was the popular alternative). Mind you, I adore New Orleans, but it is torture to fly in for a meeting and out the same afternoon. All of the hassle of travel and none of the fun of the french quarter.

So, I drove in for the meeting. It wasn't raining...no, more like the heavens had opened. I loathe driving in such heavy rain not only because you really can't see where you are going, but hydroplaning scares the holy jeebus (that's for you Jodi) out of me ever since that little ice on the way to San Antonio incident. (You know, the one that involved rolling my car off a bridge, ahem.)

Right.

The point of the meeting itself was ho-hum. That said, I always enjoy (and I use that term loosely) meetings, just because people and their interactions fascinate me. This meeting involved not only people from our regulated side (ie. moi and the arkansas contingency) but also from the free-market side. (Plus the consultant peddling his wares, and as an aside, he was somewhat interesting if only for the brief discussion that we had on quantum physics.) So, to me, it is always funny to see how people operate under completely different perspectives and think the other side is kind of kooky for not seeing it their way.

Anyways.

What I wanted to tell you was this: that building? Where the meeting was held? Creeped the fuck out of me. It was deserted. Like a ghost town. The women's loo was freakishly empty and industrial and cold and just creepy.

You know, sometimes I forget what a luxury it is for me to work for "the man" on the regulated side of things. The job stability has been great compared to the rest of those poor fuckers out there. But, yesterday, I was physcially confronted with what it feels like to work in a semi-deserted building of bare-bones survivors of massive layoffs.

It was creepy. Creepy I says.