AR is only OK

Oh Little Rock, how I wish I liked you just a bit more. Don't get me wrong, you are not as bad as I had feared. There was some fall color in the trees, if you could see the trees through the continuous fog. Lets back up a bit.
Eight of us arrived in Little Rock Monday morning around 9 AM. To greet us outside was heavy rain, wind, lightning, and an aqua/green sky, and.....Tornado sirens. Yes, yes, yes, we were under tornado watch. I wanted to cry. We got in our rental cars and, first, drove toward the aqua, but when we turned into the "city" the sky started to clear.
Well, my team is ok. They are all nice for the most part. But my gosh...even on the first day when we did very little work, you could have cut the tension with a knife!! The state of Arkansas gave us an audit (home base) room in the Revenue building. Your basic cinder-block /interior conference room...but big enough for our 10 person audit team. Besides, most of us go off to our assigned agencies during "their" working hours. Government workers leave the office between 4 and 5 PM, every day!
My co-workers are so serious and scared and dry. I was crying by the end of the second day, feeling trapped in Hell. What really helped was when everyone started talking about how much they didn't like this engagement and that they were going to schedule us for a longer time than originally thought.
Things did get better. My room was a nice single with a great view of the river. After 3 stays, I'll have my own access to the 14th floor for breakfast and happy hours. I've discovered who I can joke with and who I have to tip-toe around. I've discovered that, although the town is democrat obsessed (the Little Rock paper is called "The democrats gazette", my team is mostly republican and we are all planning on voting this Saturday in the early voting. We get to come home Thursday night next week. In one week, Southwest is canceling our normal 7:50 AM flight and replacing it with a 7:10 flight and a 10:00 flight on Monday mornings, But they also cancelled our normal 2:55 flight for Fridays and replaced it with a 2:00 PM flight, so we may have to wake up earlier on Monday mornings, but we will get home almost an hour earlier on Fridays. I was not picked up to work on Arkansas past January, I will be working for the North Dallas Tollway audit, and the Dallas YMCA audit. I think I may like those two better. Oh well.
Well, I'm home now and really looking forward to my bed, and sleeping in for the first time in oh, about 2 weeks, at Susan's house.
I love you guys!