Very Busy Week

Last Monday was a holiday in the United States *and* Canada. This meant a few things:

1. It was "family day" at the mall attached to our Ottawa hotel and the crowds were crazy.  Later, after researching the issue, I learned that this is actually the name of the Canadian holiday:  family day.

2. Most of my clients do not take all of the US Federal holidays.  A typical startup has anywhere from 8-10 officially observed non-work holidays, and many companies include non-federally observed time off for things like New Year's Eve, Christmas Eve, etc in this total.  This means that MLK day, Indigenous Peoples' day (or as the Feds call it, Columbus day), Presidents' day (or as the Feds call it Washington's birthday), etc. often don't make the startup cut.  So, it was safe to assume that most of my clients would have offices that were open and could need legal support.

3. Despite #2, many of my clients employ adults that have children who attend schools that do take the Federal holidays, so I can usually count on a *slower* day, and if I want to try to truly take the day off, Federal holidays are always a good option.

For the Canada trip, I'd taken a "holiday wish" approach.  I'd set my "out of office" auto-responder on our departure and hoped that nothing big would come up, but I was prepared to work if I needed to, since we didn't really have much scheduled that would prohibit me from working.

On Saturday (Valentine's day), I ended up taking a 2 hour conference call and doing mark-ups afterwards, but thankfully, E needed to work as well, so he didn't mind.

This put me in a frame of mind on Monday, for Presidents' day, where I was sincerely hoping I could take some portion or all of the day off.  And life agreed.

So, I woke, worked a few hours 'til my inbox was clear, worked out in the hotel gym, and took myself out to a 2 hour French Brasserie lunch (mmmm... Croque Monsieur, wine, salad, and coffee!) while reading my book.  Then, I worked a couple more hours and headed back to the gym for a second work out.  Now that's my idea of a pseudo-holiday.  E and I returned to the same restaurant for dinner and we were thrilled with the rich delicious French food and service.

Tuesday, after half a normal day, we headed to the airport for the long trek of working while traveling back to California.  On the drive to the airport, we followed the canal, which at this time of year is frozen, and people skate to work and to do their errands -- is this the most Canadian thing you've ever heard of, or what?

Zoom in, there are people skating on that frozen canal!

Upon landing in SF (after 8-9 hours of travel), we hopped in the car and drove to Santa Rosa, because E had to speak at a conference there on Wednesday.

Night time Golden Gate Bridge Crossing

Thursday was onsite at a client, and Friday, I finally fit in a decent mid-week medium run (7 miles) before taking the train to SF and speaking on two panels at an IP law event.

Look Mom, I'm actually dressed professionally!

Saturday, I spent 3+ hours driving to and working on bookkeeping issues with my bookkeeper (and added in another couple of hours of social fun including a 6 mile easy run, which was so great).

Sunday was the first true off day of work in a couple of weeks and I spent it driving 1.5 hours up to a law school colleague's baby shower, attending the shower and driving home.  I'd planned to do my long run after I got home, but yeah... that totally didn't happen.  Read my book and drank wine on the couch like a boss.  That's what actually happened.

So, total mileage for the week? 19.54.  Considering there was no long run, Monday's workout was a pure gym no run workout, and I'd hoped for 10 or more on my long run, this is actually not bad at all.  See what I did there?  I'm like the opposite of the running bloggers who get down on themselves.  When it comes to my running, I'm like pollyanna (which is also hilarious, because NO ONE who knows me would EVER accuse me of being pollyanna).