Possible to boot OSX from external drive using VMWARE?

Hello,

Is it possible to have a bootable copy of OSX on an external drive, that I can boot into through vmware on my pc at work?

I ask because my wife has a MacBook Air at home with very little storage. When I want to use osx at home, I boot from a separate copy of OSX through the MacBook on an external drive.

At work, I run a separate OSX copy on my laptop through VMWARE. But if I could, I'd much rather just carry my version of OSX to and from work. and just boot into it and work straight from the drive at all times.

Am I out to lunch???