I are back!!

Yes indeed, fans and admirers and the lovely studio audience, I have returned.

It was a long, long, long week away.

Where were I? I were in San Francisco, attending a conference. DW tagged along for the trip to see some of the city.

The conference itself wasn't bad, although on two different levels I didn't get as much from it as I'd prefer. I didn't get as much of the real "depth" from some of the case studies presented in the different sessions. Nor did I get as much depth from the 3-day workshop that ended the week. Second, and most important, I didn't get nearly as many goodies from the vendors who were there over the first two days. Usually when I go to some big techie conference, the vendors are there with all sorts of swag, goodies and handouts. I always come home with some cool stuff. Not this time. The conference was only 275 attendees, so the vendor area wasn't as large as other conferences, and I must say that the quality of the goodies was sadly diminished.

However, I found some trinkets for the wondertwins and this keeps them happy.

Shadow the Wonder Kitty was extremely happy to see us when we returned late, late, late Saturday night. At one point after going to bed, I awoke to find her sleeping on the pillow around my head like some kind of living stole. Endearing. Creepy, but endearing.

We pulled off the fastest airport clearance departure in my long, interesting history flying Scare Canada. I have, on some flights, waited nearly an hour for my luggage to arrive at the carousel, just to give you an example. This time, not only did we push back early because we were ALL boarded well in advance, we had a good tailwind that had us at the gate nice and quick. We deplaned, and had a very minimal wait at Canada Customs and then our luggage arrived down the chute in quick succession. I think we actually made it out of the airport (eg. out to the car and parking paid and moving) in less than 45 minutes. Probably closer to 30. That, my friends, is speedy.

Today, however, is largely dedicated to work. I have some pressing deadlines for a training package that needs to get burned to CD no later than Tues/Wed and I have a hockey game at 3PM. Needless to say, I didn't appreciate the Project Mangler harassing me via email asking when she could have a copy. ("Hey, Lady....I'm on freakin course here! If you and your brilliant scribes had the materials to me on time, we wouldn't be asking me to work while I'm away, now would we???")

I did manage to go 4-0 in my football pool this week. Gotta love some of those long-predicted upset wins...)

On that note, I will part. Enjoy the day, all!

(I was surprised to see how few blogs had been updated since I left. Surely I'm not the catalyst for everyone else, am I???? =oP )