Well, That was an Eventful Conference

But what could I expect from a conference in which I locked myself out of my room and had to go the lobby in my pajamas. And Gabriella may have been on to something; however, the problem wasn’t wine with dinner, it was wine without dinner. That’s why I was eating a room service salad at 10:00 at night. (And deciding that some friends are simply younger and more hardy than I am.)

So, ummmm, yeah. And although I walked through the lobby trying to look as invisible as possible, ignoring everyone else so they would ignore me (a trick I learned from Patches), I was apparently spotted. The next day I was telling a student, “oh yeah, so I looked myself out of my room and had to go to the lobby in my pajamas.”

“I know,” she said nodding her head. “K!a saw you last night.”

“WHAT!?” I started laughing. “Sort of like ‘I saw Dr. Bl@nchard walking around the lobby in her pajamas?’”

“Pretty much.”

Great.

But all’s well that ends well. There is one more story from the conference (which intellectually went quite well and I made several connections and my research was well received).

It was Saturday afternoon about 4:00. I walked up to a group of people in the exhibition hall.

Me: Are you all waiting for the drawing.

Group of People: They already had it.

Me: Who won?

GoP: You did.

Me: Yeah, right. Who won?

GoP: You did.

Me: No, seriously. Whose name did they call?

GoP (looking confused now and consulting among themselves): I thought you did. Your name sounds really familiar. I think it was you.

Me (turning towards the booth): Who won?

People at the Booth (holding the winning card they had pulled from the entries): You did!

Me: Oh My Gosh!!!

PatB: Yay! Here they are! Can we take a picture of you holding them? Here’s the CEO. We’d really like a picture of him handing you the diamond earrings in front of our company name. (Pictures snap; I am shaking) And here is the certificate of authenticity that you can use for your insurance purposes to show that your new 1 carat total weight brilliant cut diamond earrings can be insured at $2,806.

Holy Crap, I am not kidding!! They are .5 carats each and because they are brilliant cut, they look HUGE. And I totally won them, absolute luck. The company PSI is celebrating their diamond anniversary and since they are intricately linked to the people at this conference decided to give away a pair of big ass diamonds to attendees.

It is sort of funny to win such expensive jewelry. I’m used to that sort of jewelry as a gift, although if Dave ever bought me such expensive earrings, I’d be like “Dude, you are so taking these things BACK” unless, of course, the box also contained our winning lottery ticket at which point I would say “Cheapskate!” So I like them a lot, but I’m imagining being on my deathbed handing away my jewelry saying “Here’s Mommy’s engagement ring. Here’s Grandma’s wedding ring. Here’s the ring Daddy gave Mommy when she had Conor. And here are the earrings Mommy won at the S!OP conference!”

I’ll get over it though. They are absolutely gorgeous.