"Those must be some good chips!"

Out of the blue, the ticket agent's voice startled me out of my reverie. I had forgotten I was carrying a plastic bag with three bags of yummy Zapp's Spicy Crawtaters.

"Oh yeah, they are divine," I replied to her.

"They must be, if you're taking them home on the plane with you!"

Yessiree, after being away from my family for nearly a week, what do I come home with? Food. That seems to be the recurring trend during most of my business related trips where I've had to travel without my loving family. Whether I go to Baton Rouge or Lafayette, Louisiana, or Jackson, Mississippi (as was the case may this time), I usually return with some sort of local delicacy that I cannot obtain in Central Arkansas. In the past, I've been known to bring back dozens of Krispy Kreme doughnuts, Cafe du Monde beignet mix, and homestyle gumbo mix in a bag. To say I *love* Cajun cuisine is an understatement.

Usually you see travelers sporting bags of trinkets, souvenirs, what-have-you, the usual I've-been-gone-on-a-trip-and-went-shopping type of boxy items. I figure I made up the rare 0.5% of travelers who have a distinguished tongue for local foods which I long to share with my family back home. Not only does food spark the topic of conversation with ticket agents, security personnel, and passengers, I often get threats of bodily harm if I don't surrender my precious treasure, or at least innocent requests for me to share.

Never a dull moment when I travel, that's for sure. This time, I was returning home after being gone to Lafayette, LA and Jackson, MS for nearly a work week. In Lafayette, I was presenting the final set of results for a modeling study I've been working on for nearly a year now, and from there, I drove up to Jackson with a co-worker of mine from Baton Rouge to attend a training course in the use of a sediment transport computer model. My meeting in Lafayette went fairly well, but again, it wasn't "perfect" by any means. The perfectionist in me keeps waiting for the day when one of these meetings will go precisely as planned. But each time there's something that doesn't go exactly as we expected. Part of the reason I've been "absent" is that I've been preparing for this trip.

The training course in Jackson was also very interesting and I felt like I gained a lot of valuable knowledge, skills, and insight from the computer model we were taught to use. Talking with some of the other "students" there (most of whom are Corps of Engineers or ex-Corps personnel), it astonished me how widely FTN is known. If it wasn't adapting a model that FTN had developed, they had seen projects we had worked on. If they hadn't heard of our company, they knew the owners of FTN or my boss. Yep, FTN was definitely becoming a officehold name in the South.

The other thing that surprised me was just how many students (or instructors) had ties to Colorado State. A good 25% of the class either dealt with professors at CSU or had graduated from CSU at some point in the past. I didn't realize until this class what a good reputation CSU had established with their hydrology program. You (ok, maybe not YOU exactly, unless you're an engineer like myself) hear of UT-Austin and Univ. of Iowa all the time being the prestigious programs, but I suppose CSU has a nationally acclaimed program as well. Needless to say, I was able to reminisce with other fellow CSU grads about the virtues of Fort Collins, CO.

You would think after being gone for so long that my weekend would be a prescription of recuperation and relaxation. That's what I had intended at any rate. Instead, aside from being able to sleep in this morning, my Saturday was packed with fun and excitement. Because we need to be out of the house we're in by November, Jen & I have started the house hunting process which seems like the entire general populace of the U.S. has been doing with the low interest rates. Jen had her eye on a house not too far from where we live and we managed to get an appointment with an agent to see it today. At least for me to see it as she had already taken the $2 tour.

So at 1pm, we were promptly off to visit the house-which-Jen-loves. It doesn't hurt that it has 4 bedrooms instead of 3. And an extra bonus that it's located on 3 acres of land. Of course having over 2400 sq ft makes it an ideal size in which to raise a family. And being within our budget makes it even more appealing. So while you're waiting for an update, you can take a virtual tour of the house courtesy of digital photos I took today.

Being our 6-year wedding anniversary and with lots of pleading from the kids all week, we rounded out our day by taking them to go see Finding Nemo and dining at a chinese restaurant in town. Like I said, a day full of fun and excitement.

So as I sit here finishing this entry and munching on my Zapp's spicy Cajun crawtaters, I brainstorm ahead to what sort of food item I will be bringing back when I head down to New Orleans in a little over a week. Whatever it is, I guarantee it will be out-of-the-ordinary.

One year ago today: Happy Anniversary