Alarm went off at 4:30 local time, which translates to 5:30 EDT, so basically I'm staying on the same internal clock. This is working out surprisingly well. It also gives me a good 2-3 hours to get ready for the day, which I am liking quite a bit. It helps that classes don't start until 9 and I can't really do anything with them before hand (other than register at 8 and browse the slides from the presentation to get familiar with them beforehand). Back home, when I get up and I am ready to go, I head into work to get stuff done sooner rather than later. It's just how I'm wired, I guess.
Anyway, had my Ionix, M/V cleanse, minerals and shake. The usual. Chatted with my awesome better half via Google Hangouts, made bird noises to freak the cats out, made strange faces in the phone camera to make Kelly laugh, it's all good. We've been keeping in touch all day via Facebook chat anyway (we get frequent breaks in the class, so I can always jump over to FB and see what she's said in the last hour and a half), so that has been really nice. Makes it seem not so bad to me, anyway.
So! On with Day 3! Finished breakfast, hopped in the shower (no singing), and I was ready for my morning shave. Normally I only shave every other day, but since I had all those extra free samples from the Art of Shaving, I made use of them. And quickly learned that one sample is good enough for 2 days at least. Unfortunately, I only learned that after I had squeezed the entire contents of the pre-shave oil packet onto my hand. Oh well, can't get it back in the packet, may as well use it.
Needless to say, my face was nicely pre-oiled yesterday. Even half a sample packet of shaving cream felt totally luxurious. Did the double lather-and-shave bit (once with the grain, and then once against the grain for a closer shave. Works marvelously). Some post shave balm and my face was nicely peeled. Right, time to go down and register for today's class. Well, I did get dressed first.
Registered for class, got my second thumb drive (collect the whole set! It's like Pokemon, only they all look the same!) and sat down in the hotel lobby with my laptop to pull the slides onto the local hard drive and review them before the doors to the classroom opened at 8:45.
About halfway through this, there came a god-awful screech from somewhere in the hotel lobby (I should mention that the hotel has an open-air atrium that goes all the way up to the top floor, so it's a huge vertical space) and air starts blowing at a very fast rate. At first I didn't think anything of it, but when I started noticing all the front desk staff standing in the middle of the lobby, looking in the air and frantically talking on their walkie-talkies, I got a little concerned. And at this point the air is blowing every napkin in the place around the lobby in little tornado patterns. Hmm. Should I be ducking for cover at this point?
Anyway, somebody twiddled some kind of control and the air stopped blowing, but I still don't know what that was all about (one of the guys at the social later said that we all almost died, but he also admitted that he was a pathological liar, so I'll take that with a grain of salt). I'll ask about it today when I go to redeem my green houskeeping coupon for the 500 SPG points.
OK, so the course starts. Different instructor, but also excellent. Good sense of humor, decent material. First break was the standard trail mix...but hey, fresh fruit smoothies! All right! I grabbed a strawberry one. Nom. I was very proud of myself in that I completely avoided the sesame sticks this time around. They're good, but I was saving my gluten for later. Actually, I was originally seeing if I could avoid gluten completely on this day. Ultimately, that didn't happen, but it was a fun little experiment. This morning's tea was organic chamomile. Oh yeah, baby.
OK, back to class. Lunch time rolls around. Debated doing the buffet downstairs, decided ultimately to go back to my room and have my bar, plus a banana I grabbed at snack time. Think that was the right decision. Caught up on my news feeds, took my minerals on time, got back down to class with minutes to spare. It helps that the classrooms are on the floor directly below mine, close to the stairwell, so getting from my room to the classroom is basically a 30-second walk. Very cool.
Those of you who travel, have you ever noticed how stark the stairwells are compared to the rest of the hotel? It's quite the contrast, really. Lush carpeting, soft lighting inside, vs bare concrete, big steel handrails, harsh lighting and general ugliness in the stairwells. You would think they'd try and spruce it up a little bit if they actually think people will use them. Then again, they've got these fabulous glass elevators for people to use; guess they want to promote those instead. Doesn't make much sense to me to use the elevators, but I might think differently if I were on the ninth floor.
Anyway, class resumes for the afternoon; really getting into the topics. Had a great discussion with the instructor about perceived affordance and expected behavior. If an interface has a picture of a button (or even what remotely looks like a button - just some text with a box around it), people will try and click it. If you don't make that clickable, that's not very good design. Interesting stuff.
Afternoon snack rolls around, and they really threw us a curve ball. The usual trail mix (I may be really sick of trail mix by the time I get back from Dallas, but I am enjoying it now), plus sliced vegetables and dip. I would have had the veggies (they had asparagus spears! Do I go 3-for-3 on asparagus consumption this week?), except that the dips were blue cheese and ranch. Gak. And here's the weird part. They also had candy bars. Yep, full-sized candy bars. Reeses peanut butter cups. Snickers. Hersheys. Etc.
I stuck with the trail mix. Still no sesame sticks. Go me. And my afternoon tea was, I believe, Relaxation. Organic, but I have no idea what was in it. Not as tasty as the others, but still yummy. I also managed to stay more hydrated than day 1, keeping my water glass filled. Good to be hydrated, but I had to make many trips to the bathroom. Today I might sit closer to the door so I don't disrupt anyone. We'll see.
So, class winds down, and I head back to my room to freshen up. Now comes the moment I have been waiting for...and simultaneously dreading. The cocktail social. Now, those of you who know me will know that I am a pretty chatty guy...with people I know. I tend to clam up when I'm around strangers...at least at first. Then I get nervous and won't shut up. So I have to find the happy medium between wallflower and lampshade-head. I very cautiously walk back down to the social, expecting it to be mobbed (something else I hate).
Got a very pleasant surprise: there was probably only about 20 people. I was expecting it to be packed (there are like 150 people at this conference). Guess everybody was too tired. Well, that's OK. A waiter comes up to me and asks if I would like Chardonnay or Merlot. Well, now, I believe some Merlot would be lovely. *sip*.
And, hey, there's today's instructor next to the cheese and crackers! Perfect way to break the ice. I walk up to her and say, "well, that was fun!" Which leads to a nice long conversation about life, the universe and everything. She lives in Cape Cod, went to school at Northeastern (where I spent my freshman year back in 1988-89 before transferring down to UConn), her boyfriend is from Canada, so I talk about Kelly being Canadian, which of course leads to the "well, how did you guys meet" story, and so on. Great chat.
Then her car arrives and she heads back to the east coast (quick conference for her, but evening flight. Eww), so I wander over to a couple of women who work for a medium-sized group insurance company (different from the P&C company that I work for) and we talk UX shop for a while (they're more well established whereas I am just starting out - neat contrast). Then I go over and talk technology and travel in general with another group, and we more or less closed the social hour out. Topics such as psychology (the pathological liar and how he amuses himself while traveling), technology (why do they still use a 3.5" floppy disk icon for Save), Spinal Tap (don't even ask), and other general items related to the conference. Really fun bunch; I will be seeing a couple of them in today's class (The Human Mind and Usability).
Oh, yes, the food selection at the social was mainly finger foods: cheese, crackers (I did partake, so there goes the gluten free day), coconut shrimp and beef satays. The latter two had some great sauces. And since the social was in the bar area of the hotel lobby, I stuck around afterwards and had "dinner", which were actually 2 different appetizers: grilled red curry shrimp over a pineapple pico de gallo and jicama/apple slaw, and 2 bavarian pretzels and mustard. With a glass of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc (Kim Crawford, I believe) that acted as both beverage and dessert. It was fun and tasty.
Unfortunately, the social involved standing for an hour and a half, so I had a pretty sore back afterwards that marred the meal somewhat, but the seats are comfy, and the server remembered me from the first night I was here, so that was kind of cool.
Limped back to my room (to hell with the stairs, I don't care if it's only 2 floors up, I'm taking the elevator, dammit), took my minerals and evening pills, caught up on my email and feeds, hung out with Kelly until we both almost fell asleep, then crawled into bed, and slept like the dead.
So, the gluten count was a resounding zero for most of the day, but then I made up for it in the evening with crackers and pretzels. And the coating on the coconut shrimp was most likely breaded. They also had some kind of triangle pastry as well, and I am sure it was awesome, but I forgot to get any before they took it away. Probably just as well. I still think I managed to keep it below 20%, so I am very happy with that.
So now it's Day 4, but I will talk about that in tonight or tomorrow's post. Not sure what my plans are, yet. Still thinking about that Indian restaurant around the corner, but there is also a Persian Kabob place right next door to that. Hmm. I'll probably wander up and see which one looks and smells better. I might end up doing both over the next few days. We'll see. Until next time!!!!
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