Energize your business:  Take a weekend away from it and laugh!

Some of you may remember my post last year about getting together with some of my old high school girlfriends.  We have made it an annual event, and last weekend was our girls getaway for 9 of us.

This idea started at one of our big fancy high school reunions.  There were so many people there that we didn't even get to see some of the folks we had wondered about.  It was very nice and lots of fun, but expensive and crowded.  The group with whom I was closest with in school got together and decided that we should try to get together in smaller groups, less formally and more often than every 10 years!  It would be less expensive and just as much fun for us.

About 2 dozen of us (guys and gals) got together in Los Angeles a few times and we all chipped in to fund a scholarship for a worthy student graduating that year from our high school.  We have repeated that as an annual event, but my closest girlfriends and I wanted to also do some fun get-togethers for girls only, since we tend to giggle like teenagers when we all get together.  And we have kept that tradition as well. 

So twice a year at least, I run away from home and play with my old buddies and try to put business aside.  I warn my clients so they won't expect me to be here, although I let them know they should call me if there is an emergency.  My cell is always with me.

Three of us gals live in Northern California, within an hour of each other, another spends half the year at LakeTahoe, which is about 1 1/2 hours away from us, and the rest are in and around Los Angeles.  So some of our trips are to Southern California, but for those that are up in this area, one of the other gals and I pick up the others at the airport and we are the designated drivers to get to our ultimate destination. This year one of the girls met us along the way so we had three cars for the nine of us.

Last fall we went to Lake Tahoe.  This year we went to Grass Valley and Nevada City, California.  We had people coming in on three different flights, so we settled in at the Starbucks and waited for our whole gang to get together.  While we waited, we made the acquaintance of a very nice member of the Air Force who was returning home from Baghdad.  He was between flights, and was loaded down with duffels and satchels and one hard case that contained his weapons.  Believe me, he never turned his back on that one!  I didn't get his picture, but he took one of us.  His last name was Vincent and he was on his way to his home base in Colorado.  I hope he gets to stay home now.

As for us, as you can see from the photos here, we ate, enjoyed some wine and cheese, we shopped and toured places most of us hadn't been before with our guide Jana, who lives in the area.  Jana was a wonderful host to all of us, and this weekend was full of good food, good company, good laughs, interesting sights and fun shopping, and I returned energized and feeling eager to get back to business.

I wonder where we'll go next!