So it's time to get caught up...as many of you know, in addition to my day job, I serve as Vice President of the National Business Travel Association and we just held our 40th conference - this time in Los Angeles. This has morphed into a global exposition and it really is an amazing thing. This year we had more than 6,400 people in attendance. I had to be "on" the entire time. Lots of smiling and hand-shaking. It was great to get reconnected, albeit briefly, with business partners and friends. While the leadership and board of the association is volunteer, we would be dead in the agua, as it were, without our full-time staff out of Washington DC. They did another INCREDIBLE job with this year's conference. They worked very closely with the good people of Los Angeles, Inc., to make it a great event. LA Inc was kind enough to host a pre-opening night meet and greet with the evening's talent last Sunday, Cindy Lauper. I was able to be a part of that event. It was fun to meet her. She's a delight in person - that speaking voice is the real deal - and puts on a very good show. We were in the NOKIA Theatre in the new LA Live area in downtown for her show and it's a cool venue.
Other highlights from the conference - a great Moroccan-themed dinner at the Hotel Figueroa; Craig Ferguson - a riot (watch the Late, Late Show!) I got the chance to speak in front of several thousand people, working the teleprompters for the first time. Kind of daunting, but got easier fairly quickly. I was backstage for that day with Alec Baldwin - an interesting cat. And that was the same day of the lovely earthquake - a nice 5.4 on the Richter scale to make the day interesting. You've never seen people haul out of a convention center like when it started rocking on Tuesday. I was in a meeting with some folks from Argentina and Brazil and I had to convince everyone not to high-tail it out of the place in Spanish and the little Portuguese that I could recall. Once things settled down, we had to convince a lot of people that it was cool to come back in, but we got it done. So it was quite the week for us.
I raced home Wednesday afternoon, arriving wicked late and was in meetings all day Thursday and then Friday it was out to Oregon, IL, to meet Parker for his last day at Boy Scout Camp. He'd been there for six days. When I got there, he was no worse for wear but was clearly ready to call it a week. The six boys in his troop are great boys and had had a really good week. My buddy, Jeff, is an outstanding Scoutmaster and I am really grateful for people like him that have it in them to do this. I don't - end of story. It was a cool night and we packed up first thing this morning and got the boys home by 1015AM. Now, let's talk about the sheer volume of dirty laundry. I am CERTAIN that based on the amount of mildew and stench that these boys are growing, dare I say culturing, a cure for cancer in their filthy socks alone. Parker's two bags full of laundry were nothing short of HazMat Level 4 toxic-see Shari below fully prepped to start going through the bags:
And the poor Odyssey...I brought all six boys home. Suffice to say, Shari's car was RANK by the time we got back to Chicagoland, so it was off to the car wash as soon as we got home and dumped Parker's toxic load o'stuff. With the Odyssey fully restored, we were able to press forward with our Saturday.
Courtney's back from Girl's Camp, Parker's back from Scout Camp, I'm back from LA, and Shari's one-week solo stint at home is over. It's good to have everyone back. It better be a quiet night.
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