I went on a little adventure to Memphis this week for work. I arrived Monday night at about 9 and got to my nice hotel room with a 42" HDTV at about 9:40. The moment I started to take my coat off, I got a call from another customer, and worked with them on an issue (which we didn’t solve) until 1:30 am. I told them at 1:20 that I’m getting off the phone in a few minutes, no matter what happens. I got up at 6:30 to get ready to visit my customer the next day and headed in to their nice campus on the outskirts of Memphis. They weren’t really prepared for us to come, so it was a mess getting there and about an hour into my visit I got an unpleasant email from a senior VP about the last-minute nature of my trip and how he didn’t know about the agenda until too late. So I wasn’t off to the greatest start.
Later on Tuesday I found out that Becky got a call that Amelia threw up over lunch at day care. She had some Europeans screaming at her about a work problem at the time, so that didn’t work out too well. Our day care lady was able to get Amelia to sleep, so she could come home about 3, and by that time Amelia was doing fine. My day onsite wasn’t too bad once I got passed the early morning shots. That night my traveling partner and I decided we should take a tour around town. In the song "Walking in Memphis" they talk about going down to Beale St, so we figured we’d better check that out. I wasn’t terribly impressed. It’s a couple block stretch that was blocked off downtown and it had some dive bars and a few nicer places like a Hard Rock Cafe. There was practically no one around on a Tuesday night at 6, except for us and some panhandlers. We walked up and down a block and then headed to find our hopeful destination, Rendezvous. This is apparently "The" place to eat in Memphis, because as we arrived in this back alley, about 50 people arrived at the same time. It’s also kinda a dive – you go downstairs and it looks like someone’s basement. We sat at the bar because all the seats were full. I had the brisket and it was really good – the barbecue sauce was pretty different than anything I’ve ever had before. It seems like they put a little Italian seasoning in there or something. Since it was only 7:15 when we finished eating, we decided to make the hike down to Tunica, MS for some gambling. We thought we had about a 30 minute drive, but it turned into an hour. There wasn’t much for scenery until we came upon 3 huge casinos in the middle of nowhere. We played some blackjack and I’m happy to say I broke even.
The visit went fine overall, but the left over work kept me very busy Thursday and Friday when I got back. On Thursday, I received some fun news from the IRS that I owe $22,000 in taxes, penalties and interest. I’m looking into it now and it looks like I made a mistake that will cost us about $6,500 more in taxes, instead of the $22,000. Nothing like the fun that comes with trying to revisit last year’s taxes with thousands of dollars on the line.
Today we’re headed to a water park for my mom’s birthday party – that should be a lot more fun than taxes and solving computer problems at 1:15 am.
Eric's space 