On the night before I was scheduled to head out of town on a four day trip, I was quietly reading in bed when I heard a strange gurgling sound coming from the bathroom. Further investigation revealed that the water in the toilet bowl was looking like a volcano about to erupt.<\/p>\n
Since my plumbing skills are nonexistent, I decided to flush it and see if that solved the problem. Moments later, water was flooding the floor and I was bailing water and mopping up with a towel.<\/p>\n
I shut the water intake valve off, but spent the next couple of hours fretting when I should have been snoozing.<\/p>\n
What if the toilet erupted while I was away? Would I flood my downstairs neighbors in the condo below mine? Would I return to a home in shambles?<\/p>\n
On Friday morning I headed to the airport still carrying trepidation along with my luggage. Later in the day, my daughter sent me an e-mail assuring me all was well (or, more literally, all was dry). I relaxed a bit.<\/p>\n
My attention shifted to teaching the liveliest seminars I could to three groups of students in Sacramento. When I shared my mini-disaster, I got all sorts of advice on dealing with my plumbing problem.<\/p>\n
Early on Sunday morning, I headed to Las Vegas to meet up with the folks from International Living<\/a>. They were running a Fast-Track Your Retirement Overseas Conference<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0 where 600 people were investigating what it would take to live abroad.<\/p>\n Since I have no plans to retire either here or abroad, I wasn\u2019t there as a participant. I had come at the invitation of International Living publisher Jackie Flynn to discuss a product they\u2019ll be launching in the new year.<\/p>\n On Sunday evening, I shared dinner and ideas with Jackie and her writing team. I went back to my room feeling quite excited about their new project.<\/p>\n Monday morning I woke up and had two e-mail messages that took me by surprise. The first was from Southwest Airlines alerting me to a delay in my late afternoon flight back to California.<\/p>\n The second was from my long time online merchant provider announcing that they were closing down shop at the end of the year.<\/p>\n I shared my bad news with my Facebook friends and promptly began receiving messages of encouragement. Once again, the dark cloud lifted quickly.<\/p>\n The truth was that neither the bad news nor my overflowing toilet is what I\u2019ll remember from this journey.<\/p>\n In fact, there were so many delightful moments in these four days that when I recall the trip, the first things that come to mind will be the fun I had spending time with my friend Judy Miranda in Sacramento.<\/p>\n I\u2019ll also think about meeting Facebook friend Lisa Montanaro<\/a> for the first time and the engaging participants that showed up for my seminars.<\/p>\n