Thanks to the calendar gods and the founding fathers, I am starting to come off the high that is the four-day weekend. For those who know me, I love a break in routine and lately my life has been full of these breaks, which to me are reminders that I am indeed alive and not a mere corpse fueled into motion by injections of caffeine, sugar, and -- to bring me down at the end of the day -- bourbon.
Last weekend, I went up to Washington, D.C. to attend the annual National SHRM (Society of Human Resource Management) Conference, which I must say was really a great experience (don't let the title fool you, folks!). The best parts were the keynote speakers, and they were as follows:
Sunday the 25th -
Colin Powell (one of the best speakers I've ever heard, and he has a wicked sense of humor, too. How he kept a straight face while in the office of The Great W, I have no idea.);
Monday the 26th -
Louis Gerstner, Jr. (the former chair of IBM, since affiliated with The Carlyle Group. I did not attend his talk.);
Tuesday the 27th -
David McCullough (the noted historian; twice winner of the Pulitzer Prize and twice winner of the National Book Award, among other deserved honors. I was literally on the edge of my seat during his talk and caught myself actually swaying gently back and forth as I listened. I think I'm in love.);
Wednesday the 28th -
Liz Murray (grew up with drug-addicted parents in poverty, completed high school in two years while living on the streets, got accepted to Harvard. Her story was made into a Lifetime movie -
From Homeless to Harvard - but don't let that cloud your perceptions; she was a marvel to hear and a powerful speaker, with none of that schmaltz.)
The workshops were also exceptional; I only had two that fell beneath my standards, which at a conference that ran upwards of $1,000 a person, were justifiably high. I won't bore you with the details of what I learned from these, although the benefits were great, because I can see you want me to get to the good stuff. So, here goes:
Sunday night was the first night we all spent in D.C. (there were seven of us in all), so we decided beforehand to make that our one big dinner together. Pam made reservations at The Capitol Grille, which was swankier than swank for a troupe of public-sector HR jockeys, but swanky has its advantages, and if we had dined instead at Pizzeria Uno, we might have missed out royally on what became the inside joke of the trip.
I was feeling like crap, although admittedly I looked FABULOUS (well, I did!) in my little black dress, being in the throes of a wicked headache. (I later realized, after waking up the next morning with the ghost of the headache still rattling about in my skull and going instinctively for the mini-Mr. Coffee on the desk in my hotel room, that, idiot that I am, I did not have ANY caffeine on Sunday at all -- which, in and of itself wouldn't have been cause for such a rotten brain-ache if not for the fact that I had been overdosing on coffee and Vault at the office trying to wrap things up before I left.) Anyhoo, instead of excitedly joining in the conversation at the table, I let my swimming head wander toward the window behind me, where I caught a glimpse of a pimped-out black SUV -- spinners, tinted windows, the works -- parked at the curb just outside. It had one of those tinted plastic things that goes across the front of the hood -- those things on which here in Waynesboro, men have phrases such as "Git 'er done!" and "Gone huntin'!" painted in swirly script -- with the most amusing thing I'd ever seen printed across it in bold capital letters. I had to look at it several times before I started pointing wildly to accompany the laughter I was spewing involuntarily -- didn't want to draw attention to it if I was reading it wrong. But, alas, I was so right. It said:
BOWELICIOUS
Hmm. Ex-Lax Executive? Taco Bell CEO? Nope. Our knowledgeable waiter enlightened us all to the fact that the car's owner was none other than boxing great Riddick
Bowe, who was also dining at the restaurant. Undoubtedly Mr. Bowe (or Mr.
Bowel as Kimberly, our director, kept calling him) has an entourage of sycophant advisers and hangers-on, who would never dream of saying, "Uh, Mr. Bowe, uh, sir...you know that looks like
Bowel - icious. You might not want to put that on your vehicle," much as a shy friend might not clue you in to the large piece of broccoli crown wedged between your front teeth. God, how I wished I'd had a camera. Damn it.
The other amusing thing of note was the oddness of the hotel. We all stayed at the Park Phoenix, and it was an older building with a lot of great character. The Phoenix is an Irish-themed hotel, with Irish linens on the beds and an Irish pub (yess!!!) as its in-hotel restaurant.
The bed was indeed beyond comfortable, albeit four feet off the ground by the time the mattresses, padding, and the like were assembled like a layer cake. Sunday night, after somehow making it back to my room in agony, mourning the fact that I was missing out on Monster.com's Monstertini party -- free booze! dancing! -- I crawled into -- or, rather,
onto -- the bed on what has instinctively become my side, only to discover that the alarm clock was on the other side of the king-sized bed. Rather than roll across the bed and disturb all the covers, I decided to get out of bed and mosey over to the other side to get in. Well, not feeling myself as it was, I momentarily forgot the height of the bed and when my foot didn't immediately find a surface, I began wildly flailing, hit the wall, bounced back off the side of the bed, and hit the wall again before making full contact with the floor. Classic.
The Phoenix, unlike many of their cheaper, lower-grade counterparts, had no continental breakfast. So, on Monday morning, still feeling craptastic, I went to make some coffee in the mini-Mr. Coffee maker. After the caffeine gods descended upon me and I began to feel human again, I went into the bathroom to take a shower. So, being that this is my room and I'm not sharing it with anyone, and being that the bathroom has no $@!%& fan, I leave the bathroom door open so I don't turn the bathroom into a sauna while I shower. So, here I am, reveling in the hot steamy goodness raining down on my unfortunate head, rinsing off my shampoo before I repeat, when my smoke detector starts going off. Yay. I remembered that the day before, after checking into my room and while getting ready for dinner, that a detector in another room on my hall started wailing, and when I poked my head outside to investigate, the people who occupied the loud room explained that it was the steam from the shower causing the detector to go off. Sure enough, after fanning the door open and shut, it indeed stopped blaring. Armed with this knowledge, I kept on showering while the detector kept wailing, going so far as to condition my hair but stopping short of shaving my legs, not wanting the hotel staff to come barging in with a fire extinguisher. Each morning thereafter, I learned that a foggy mirror was better than an alarm, and kept the door shut and the heat lamps on.
In addition to having no continental breakfast, no fan in the bathroom, and an overly sensitive smoke detector, the Phoenix also had no vending machine. Knowing how expensive drinks can be at the bar, I brought along a small flask of bourbon, from which I could eke about five bourbon-and-cokes...assuming, of course, that I could get some Coke. Seeing no machine by the ice maker, I called the front desk and confirmed that there was no vending machine in the hotel. Not wanting to get a Coke to go from the bar downstairs (I wanted a capped bottle so I'd have some for later), I walked over to Union Station and bought a $2 20-ounce bottle of Coke from one of the cafes. The things we do for love.
Now that I've rambled endlessly about the SHRM conference, allow me to segue into the beginning of our four-day weekend. Not having time to really get into too much detail (it's after 1:00 and I'm still in my robe), I would like to leave you with an image of one of the best apple pies I've ever baked:
This was made on Saturday (or was it Sunday?) and yesterday on a trip to Food Lion to do propane exchange, I spied some $1.00 kitchen accessories that were must-haves. I scored two potholders and an apron, all for $1.00 each!
Now that I've bored you to death with run-on sentences, plenty of non-sequiturs, and pictures of domestic surrealism (this is what happens when I don't post often enough), I should go take a shower, put a rub on the pork ribs we'll be grilling later, and spend some quality time with my sweet monk and the fuzzy children.
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