The good, the bad, and the ugly.

Actually, there wasn't much Ugly to my trip up to DC. The traffic, of course, but one expects that, going up that way, and accepts it.

"I have trouble attaching importance to something with such a silly name," Matt said when I kisseed him goodbye. "SCAMPI. Next year, you'll be doing the L'ORANGE audit, and then in another few years, maybe you'll be ready for the A-LA-MODE!"

Despite fairly heavy traffice for a Sunday evening, we'd checked into the hotel by around six. We went to the Cheesecake Factory for dinner. (Heather, in fact, had Shrimp Scampi, for which we teased her endlessly. Until Mike ordered his second extremely generous glass of vodka, anyway.) I'd never been before; wow, was that good. And plentiful. If I'd had access to a refrigerator, I don't think I'd have eaten more than a third of my dinner, and taken the rest home.

As it was, I stuffed myself, and then - because it's the Cheesecake Factory, for petesake - I got a slice of cheesecake to go. I had some dry and boring reading to do that evening in the hotel; I figured the cheesecake could be my reward.

Back at the hotel, I settled in with my reading, and around 9:30 or so, decided I had digested enough of dinner to make it possible to fit the cheesecake in. I got it out and... realized I didn't have a fork. Or a spoon.

Alas. So I filled the room's ice bucket and put the cheesecake on it, to save for Monday.

One thing I confess I'd been anticipating about the trip - sleeping in. Penny likes to get up between 5:30 and 5:45, most mornings. We didn't have to be at the office until around 8, which meant we didn't have to leave the hotel until 7:45. I figured I could easily sleep in until 6:30, and still have time to shower, dress, and pack.

Except that at 5:30, something went by outside with a siren. I couldn't hear it very well, but it was just loud enough, and just the right pitch for my sleeping brain to equate it with Penny setting up a wail.

After which I couldn't go back to sleep. Dammit. But I did get to lounge around in bed for another half-hour, so that was nice.

When we went over to the office, our handler there greeted us and gave us passes for the cafeteria for both breakfast and lunch. I... could get used to having a nice cafeteria just down the hall. But it'd be the kiss of death for my diet. For breakfast I had an omelette, made to order. And milk and fresh fruit and a bagel. And for lunch, a lovely dish of ham-wrapped chicken with creamed artichoke sauce, and tomato-basil soup.

(I gained back just about all the weight I'd lost this year. I'm definitely going to have to go back to induction in April. But oh, it was worth it. I do love good food.)

The audit team was really nice, and it was nice to finally meet in person a lot of the people I've been on the phone with for hours at a time over the last half-year or so. They all said very nice things about my efforts and the speed with which I, well, came up to speed. (My acceleration, I guess that would mean?) The external auditors were very nice, too.

The interviews went pretty smoothly, according to the people who were in them. (I didn't have any interviews yesterday. I was there for support, essentially. I'd kind of expected, originally, to stay up there through this morning, because I do have an interview this morning, but that's not how it worked out. Okay, whatever.)

I did get a decent amount of work done while I was hanging around waiting for interviews to be over, so that was good - being away from the office meant I had fewer distractions than usual, so I got to draft a document that I've been meaning to draft for nearly a month, now.

We left right at 4, which was not early enough to avoid some nasty traffic. But we made it back to Williamsburg only a little past 7, so it wasn't as bad as it could have been.

So now I'm back at work, and writing this journal entry nice and long, because it sure as heck beats the alternative, which is to, y'know, do work.

--Liz