Originally Posted By Lisann22 Tue, Oct 3rd & Wed, Oct 4th: This was a combination work trip and fun trip. I was taking advantage of being able to be with friends at Disneyland due to work travel. Coming in an out of this trip were the supporting cast of: Pixie Litter, her family, friendofdd, LPFan22, SuzieQ, IceKnyght, BlacksheepUncle, my mom, my aunt, JustDuckee, DisneyChica and quick cameos by Ursula and ilvdland. I caught a 8:10pm flight from Oakland to Ontario Tuesday night. My sister dropped me off at the airport. I thought I'd have time to check into my hotel and relax a bit, get a good night's sleep and be up super early. Well, the flight was delayed. They never really gave an explanation, we ended up leaving around 9:15pm. Got into Ontario at 10:20pm. By the time, I got my bag, shuttled over to the rental car lot it was 11pm. I was upgraded because they had given away all the cars in my category, so they put me in a Saturn Vue for which I fell in love with. What a cool little SUV. I got to the Hampton around 11:20 or so. It's at the Ontario Mills mall. Wow, it's been awhile since I've stayed in the area. Pretty fancy Hampton Inn. There was no parking in their tiny lot. I had to go Thelma on them. They wanted me to park across the street in the mall parking lot. I'm thinking I need to leave at 5am with a huge bag, my laptop and other misc. stuff. No, I'm not doing that. So with eyebrow in high gear I told them I was parking in the "check in roundabout" and please don't make me have to write a letter." It all worked out. ;> I finally got into bed around midnight and I was back up around 4:15am. It was going to be a long day. I hit the highway at 5am on the dot. I need to drive from Ontario to San Marcos, it's about 90 miles and mapquest says 1 hour and 28 minutes away. Being it's commute time, I allow 2 hours. I want to be there at 7am store opening as I have 4 stores to hit and a meeting to attend before finding my way to Anaheim and DL. I get to the store at 6:40am. So I head over to the local donut joint, buy 2 dozen (for customers) and head back to the store. I wait and I wait and I wait. At 7:27am, the store manager pulls in. Starts talking fast about the HORRIBLE traffic on 15S I listen quietly. He finishes his story and asks me when did you get into the area? Last night I say. He asks where I stayed? I say Ontario. I watch with evil satisfaction as he S L O W L Y realizes I just traveled the same route as him to get to the store. As he painful whinces I proceed to tell him let's get started because I need to write up a FULL trip report. I'm figuring he was pretty darn nervous all day yesterday. Poor guy, I didn't even go to work. ;> I'm 30 minutes behind now, so I hustle through my audit and leave around 9:00am. I need to be in Temecula by 9:30am. It's about a 45 min drive back up 15. As my route is making a huge circle of the Empire Valley. Needless to say, it's been a long time since I was in that area. I could have easily just flown into San Diego stayed with my Tia Berta in her hotel in San Diego and drove up 15 25 miles to San Marcos. LOL! Oh well. I roll into Temecula store at around 9:35am. Yeah baby, I left a smoke trail. I was cruising. Have I said how much I love this little Saturn? This store audit went much better. The store manager is on top of her game in this store. So we visit and I audit till 10am. The regional manager for the SoCal area was meeting me here. He and I talked till around 11am. We then headed over to a local restaurant for a MetroPlex meeting with his sales team. This meeting was a disaster. I forget that in my department there's the President of the company, my boss a VP and then me. Not a lot of layers or beaucracy. On the sales team there are layers and layers of VP's, managers, regional district managers, salesmen, store managers etc. They are so incredibly out of touch and clueless. I was actually pretty disappointed in their professionalism and attitude. I said as much to them also. I'm a Director in our company. Without sounding big headed, they should be nervous when I come to town. I didn't ease their discomfort, they didn't deserve it. The meeting was long as I stayed afterwards and spoke to the regional manager at length about this group of characters. They were more cartoonish than ToonTown. I jammed out of there at around 12:45pm. Next was Redlands, it's about 50 min drive through UGLY scenary. I just turned on ESPN and listen to baseball the rest of this road trip. Got to this store at 1:20am. Yeah, I was burning the rubber off this buggy. This store was in a really rundown location, not the fault of Ames or the store manager. Hard to spruce the joint up. Thankfully the lease is up next spring and they'll be out of there. Overall it was a decent audit. Nothing to write home about. I stayed till around 2:00pm. I had to hurry at my next destination was Upland. They closed at 3pm so this was going to be a quicky as Upland is about 30 minutes from Redlands. I made it there in 25 min. So I only had 35 min to do my work. Beautiful store. Good store manager, so the day as far as work ended well. I left Upland at 3:00pm. Pulled into the BWPPI at 3:40pm. I emailed along the way. LOL! Not a good thing to do. Got my room thinking I was next to Litter, but we weren't. I discovered this later. I hauled all my stuff up. Took me a couple trips as I bought a six pack of mini Cokes and Mountain Dews, along with some waters. I could not find any BJ's for this trip. ;> I changed my clothes and flipped through the channels looking for baseball games. No ESPN? This is weird. I headed over to DL at around 5pm. I checked out all the halloween stuff. Very pretty, love the colors. Main Street is decked out. The Mickey jack-o-lantern is very cool. Couldn't wait to see it after dark. I stopped in the Bakery and got me a grande hot coffee mocha to settle my very hungry stomach. I got so caught up in the ridiculousness of my meeting way back in Temecula that I only ate about 4 bites of a lousy chicken ceaser salad. I spotted LPFan22 standing in front of one of the grass cutouts next the Plaza and headed over to say hi. We talked and soon friendofdd and his lovely wife arrived. We decided to wait for the Glitters inside the Plaza outside seating. We just grabbed seats and here came Litter screaming my name. We all did our hellos. It was Litter and her daughter. We decided to eat inside, we grabbed some tables and soon Litter's husband and son joined us. It was a pleasant meal that lasted 2 hours. I give out big props to the Glitter kids for sitting for 2 hours with us adults. At 7pm, we decided to go ride Pirates. LPFan 22 opted to leave, so that left the Glitters, the friendofdd's and me. The Glitterette's asked to ride with me so we shared a row together along with friendofdd. BoyLitter didn't just sit next to me. He leans in and drapes his arm over my leg. Telling me pirate adventures and what's new. GirlLitter sits quietly and waits for him to breath, then gets in a sentence or two. When we were done we were going to ride the train back to Main Street but the next train wouldn't be till park closing so we headed over to Haunted Mansion. BoyLitter asked to ride with me so we entered the stretching room hand in hand and he never shut up until we exited the turnstiles - just like his mother. ;> We caught the last train for the night (8pm closing), said our goodbyes to the friendofdd's and headed back to the BWPPI. Litter and I went to my room and caught the last 10 minutes of Dancing with the Stars. I borrowed Mr. Glitter's charger for my phone because my mom had mine and the replacement I got was not working. I had a report to do, so I didn't get to bed until around 12:30am. Thanks for the commute tips from Peeaanuut, EdisYoda and Big Thunder. I did it! Day 2 coming up...
Originally Posted By 4Disnee Wow what a busy day. I bet that you were ready for bed when the time came.
Originally Posted By SuzieQ <-- was sitting at home going insane knowing Lisann22 and the Glitters were at DL with out me.
Originally Posted By quincytoo ^^^^^me too!!!!!! URRGGGHHH Then when I tried to find everyones numbers so I could at least phone URRGGHHH <---is really glad everypne had a great time
Originally Posted By Kira wow! what a busy day! I can't believe you were in my neck of the woods (temecula, I work at the DS in the mall there =) ), cute town isn't it? sounds like you had fun at disneyland even if it was for a few hours! I'm gonna skip off to the next topics and read the rest =)
Originally Posted By Lisann22 Kira - it's been a long time since I'd been down there. Temecula is beautiful. I fell in love with the scenery all over again. I'll have to look you up next time. ;>
Originally Posted By Kira all you have to do is check in at the disney store in the promenade mall...I basically live there lol! so next time your around that way I'm sure I'll be the one greeting you or ringing you up!
Originally Posted By Pixie Glitter Yes, it's true. Lisa managed to get details of my vacation itinerary once again and stalk me all the way to Disneyland. It's really quite touching how she follows me everywhere I go.
Originally Posted By joeysmommy Lisann22- You are hilarious! You must be great fun to hang out with. Sounds like you had a great trip except for the work part and driving all over the place. What part of the Bay Area are you from?
Originally Posted By Lisann22 Sure thing joeysmommy. Keep an eye on the LP meets section we usually do one every 3 months or so. ;>
Originally Posted By nevadarebel hey lisann, didn't you have parking issues the last time you went???
