No va...La cielo no esta bien

2006-12-10 - 5:06 p.m.

Despite all evidence to the contrary, I have not actually disappeared or been swallowed into the fiery quarries.

Last week I had a work trip to Orlando for a conference. Smed recently commented on what makes a hotel pass muster for him. At this hotel, they poured me a glass of champagne as I checked in. I must say that started them out with a number of points in the bonus column.

The conference itself was pretty good. As has been happening at these, I spent my time torn between feeling inspired by great ideas I could apply at the office and being discouraged at how little we can really accomplish being such a tiny department with such a tiny budget. One speaker excitedly announced how budget-conscious her project plan was; they had only spent $50 per person. I flipped back to see the size of her group and found that she'd spent over half a million bucks. So much for economical. And that wasn't their entire annual budget...just one small project. Another talked about how they were limited with what they could do because their communications staff was "only" 30 people. Um, hello...did I introduce myself? I AM my company's global internal communications staff. And my boss? Yeah, he's external. Okeedoke. Harumph.

Anyway, as nice as it sounds leaving the dropping temps in Philly to head to Orlando in December, that was somewhat deceiving. In actuality we spent the time buried in a conference room in the basement from morning til dark. Phoo. There were at least Epcot's fireworks from my hotel room window.

I stayed an extra day with the plan to try to catch my first ever shuttle launch at KSC. Yeah, almost 5 years I worked at NASA and I never got to see one live. I didn't work on the sorts of projects that involve time at the cape (or, in fact, any business travel at all). Alas, the clouds did not cooperate and the launch was called off at the very last minute. No go. Boo. Snuffle.

Kennedy was pretty cool though. Most of the exhibits were put to shame by the Air and Space museums, but the rocket garden at night gave me goosebumps.

With no launch, I had to drown my sorrows in alcohol and pie. Although, as Meekay commented, that's probably the same way I would have celebrated had it gone on schedule after all. :)

Weekend's been good and relaxing. Only downside has been getting hit with some sort of sinus or cold thing. No fun. Woke up at 6am feeling like utter crap, so climbed out of bed and headed downstairs to drink breathe easy tea and watch the Incredibles in the dark to try to get sleepy. Partway through, Meekay stumbled downstairs and sacked out on the couch with me (and the felines of course) and I managed a little dozing in and out. The cats completely overruled our going back to bed, despite my efforts to block out sunlight by hanging a blanket over the blinds. Harumph.

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