California trip Monday and Tuesday

Well I was in San Diego this past week for work. Note to the bosses... NEVER schedule one of these conferences for right after Easter again! Security at the airports was atrocious, and parking wasn't much better. And our chiefs missed out on Easter because they had to fly on the holiday to be there bright and early Monday morning for a meeting. The rest of us didn't have to be there until late afternoon for a "mandatory" icebreaker social. (read, a chance for lots of free food and alcohol. LOL)

It is nice though because I get to see all my friends from other states that I only see a few times a year, if that, at these meetings. A few of them weren't there this time, but most of them were. And a lot of new faces this year too, surprisingly enough. I also got to see all of my old office mates, from where I used to work. I was especially happy about that because one of my really good friends form there I haven't seen in at least two years because his contract hadn't been renewed. But now he's back and has been for a year, so it was great to catch up with him.

Tuesday the real meat of the conference started. We had the usual "welcome speech" in the morning before we got into the breakout sessions for all of our different committees we have between all of us. My committee, I've been the chairperson for the last three years. My term was up though and I stepped down as chairperson and new blood stepped in. I was ready. As much as I like being involved in it, I was ready to stop running the show in there. We had the breakout sessions all day long until about three when we all reconvened for a status briefing on one program we all work with in Environmental.

Tuesday night I got to meet one of my internet friends for the first time. We've known each other online for a couple years or more but had never met in person. Marie lives near where we were all staying for our conference so she came by after work so we could go to dinner. We had a ball! She picked me up about 6:15 and we went to Roy's, a local restaurant specializing in "Hawaiian Fusion" food. The food was wonderful! We both ordered sushi rolls made up of rice, spicy tuna, avocado and I'm not sure what else was in it. That was wonderful and then we had dessert. I think our waiter was mad at us because we were there for THREE hours! and all we ordered was appetizers and dessert, plus a couple drinks. I had a cheesecake for dessert that was positively sinful and Marie had sorbet and fruit. We talked up a storm, never stopping the whole time, until she realized it was time for her to head home and go to bed. LOL She had a picture taken of us and as soon as I get it I'm going to post it here.

And if anyone can tell me how the heck to post pictures into the body of my posts, please let me know! I tried doing that Hello Blogger Bot thing but I can't figure out how to use that except to send pictures as a post. I thought I had it figured out how to host pictures for me, but it ain't working right. Also, I thought I had it set up so I could send posts through my e-mail but that ain't working either.