The flight from New York to Denver was canceled. Then the replacement was canceled too.
I had come east for interviews and time with somebody I loved. Both parts had gone well. I sent a friend the shortest possible report: “Interviews were great, high hopes.”
Getting home was less successful.
The first cancellation left me in New York another night. The second kept me there long enough that the consulting schedule in Denver started moving around it.
A new T1 circuit was supposed to be turned up for one of my side clients. I was answering the network thread from my phone between flight updates. We discussed timing, a backup interface, and what could be prepared before I was physically back.
The work did not care that I was stuck at the airport. It also did not all require me to be standing in the same room. If the router and firewall could be prepared remotely, I could finish more of the cutover once the airline released me.
That mixture was becoming normal. Beatport was in Denver. The side work was in Denver and Boulder. The job search was pulling toward New York. My personal life was already split across both places.
The canceled flights made the split literal. I was still in New York, telling Denver when I could touch the network.
After two days, I finally made it home. I could not say that I minded the extra time in the city, but the inbox did not pause for it.
The interviews had gone well. The flight had not. Both were part of trying to move east without dropping everything I was already responsible for in Colorado.