I'm flying...

I know I’m feeling better when I get my sense of humor back. I don’t care if others think I’m funny, so long as I do. I can laugh at my jokes all day long. Just ask my family.

My family is often bewildered that I’ll be sitting at my computer and out of the blue I’ll start laughing. They find it quite funny because it’s often a “snot blowing” laugh. It’s either from me getting a funny tweet or blog comment or me sending one that I think is a zinger.

Beer also really helps “blow the snot”. Everything seems so much funnier when you’re drinking. I must say, who ever invented alcohol was a damn genius.

Could you imagine the world without alcohol? People would be high on pot and narcotics all the time. There would be no “blabbing” or “falling down and not being able to get up without assistance” or no “whiskey dick” or no “I love you mans”. I don’t know about you, but it’s not a world I’d want to raise my kids in.

Today was a planned no training day. I had to fly to the US and get a contract signed. It has the potential to be the biggest deal I’ve ever done in my career. To help me dress for success, Alice even picked me up a new pair of jeans. Unfortunately they didn’t fit. As a side bar, you know your getting old when your wife is buying you clothes and bringing them home for you to try on.

In the end it didn’t matter. I had damning video of the buyer in the back seat of a car with a transvestite midget hooker with a peg leg and scary bad teeth and breath. I really appreciated my brother helping me out on this one and I felt bad about his dress getting stained. I owe him / her big time. (Training Payne Sales Secret #141).

I should write a book, “How to win friends and influence people with a video camera” or “Never underestimate the power of extortion”. In actual fact, I earned this account the old fashioned way, I kissed ass. I’m just kidding, I didn’t kiss ass, I licked it!

I say all that in jest. It was a tough account to get. The buyer may have been one of the most pragmatic and thorough that I’ve ever met. I even told him about my blog and in spite of that he still chose to deal with me. It just shows how good we are at manufacturing.

The one thing I’ve always been most proud of is that I’m the same person no matter who meets me. Whether it is a customer, or a friend, they both think I’m an A-hole. It’s something I’ve worked hard at perfecting over the years. It requires a very high level of consistency, which is not an easy thing to do.

I had a bit of a scare that the deal wasn’t going to be signed today. There had been a LOT of work put into the proposal and pricing and due diligence and today was supposed to be the “ceremonial signing”.

Myself, and a couple of my key people flew down to meet with their key people. It was a large boardroom full of key people. Even the owner of the company, who is a self-made technology billionaire, was in the meeting.

One of the key decision makers hadn’t yet read the contract and was reading it for the first time as we sat in the boardroom. He was reading it intensely and closely and it looked like he was scrutinizing every word. The contract was very fair and reasonable, but it was unsettling to watch.

He then asked us to wait in the boardroom and asked his group to meet privately with him in another room. He had some things he wanted to discuss before he was prepared to sign. That definitely added to the drama. I was just thinking, "I spent a lot of money to fly our group here and I may not return home with a signed contract?" That’s not going to impress my new ex-boss. My sphincter was at level 11 out of a possible 10.

After it was all said and done, they were happy to sign it and I was happy to have it signed.

The best part of the day was the post beers celebration. This company has the coolest “digs”. They have lots of programmers and it’s a very creative environment. It’s very Silicon Valley. The lunchroom is filled with every type of free snack. It seemed like a convenience store, with all the goodies and no “Apu” (Simpsons Reference). I even took a couple of slim-jims for the ride to the airport.

After the agreement was signed, our key contact opened the fridge and pulled out four Molson Canadians. He couldn’t find an opener, so I used a spoon handle. I knew learning that skill would come in handy one day. Take that naysayers. We then toasted and enjoyed a nice cold one before our cab whisked us away to the airport.

On the plane, the person beside me was a young asian looking interning doctor named Jane who was researching obesity and was trying to understand what motivated people to lose weight. I told her I was a Previous Fat Guy (PFG) and I didn’t have an "on the spot real answer" for her on “what motivated me to lose weight”. I told her I’d post the question on my blog for other PFG’s to answer in the comments section.

So for all you PFG's or PFG wanna bees or skinnies that want to become fat so they can become PFG's, please answer Jane's question in the comments box.

I did tell her about my beer consumption and she was gentle about it and didn't bring out the traditional "doctor paddle" that I'm used to. It was more like "that's interesting, have you seen a doctor lately?".

I plan on having an answer to Jane's question in an upcoming blog post, once I think of what the overriding reason was, other than wanting to become a “Masters” Chippendales dancer.

The rest of the night was airport waiting, drinking beer, waiting, twittering eating, twittering drinking beer, waiting, flight delayed, twittering more beer, bathroom break, twittering and more beer. I didn’t get home until after midnight. Then I spent 90 minutes righting the blog and lost it all and had to redo it.

Rest Day – No Training.
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