Back to the Grind

Man, I've never had so much pressure on me to get a blog entry done. All the mods at the Clubhouse are expecting an extra-long opus, so hopefully I won't disappoint too much.

As you can surmise, I made it safely back from out West. It was a pretty fun trip, even though I hated being away from home that long. If Meron and Benjamin had been there, it'd have been a whole lot better.

Last Wednesday, we (the group from the office) got up well before the crack of dawn and headed to Little Rock to catch our 7:00 AM flight. We got into Phoenix around 9:30 local time, which is only one hour behind my normal Central Standard instead of two because Arizona is one of those contrary states that doesn't recognize Daylight Savings Time.

Since we didn't have anything we were required to be at until Thursday (one of the drawbacks of being near a smaller airport is that you have limited flight choices) we headed up the road to see what we could see. We were trying to decide between the Sondona desert and the Grand Canyon, but one of our number really wanted to see the Canyon, so that's what won the day, even though it was a much longer trip.

It was the first time I'd ever been to the Grand Canyon and was taken aback by the colors, details, and size of it. I'd pretty much always thought of it as a "big hole in the ground", but the different levels and colors gave it more complexity than that summarily dismissive phrase conveys.

That said, I'm not a huge nature guy so after an hour or so of it, I was pretty much done, at least since we couldn't go around to the other side. However, the guy that wanted to much to go up there is a big photography guy, so he took pictures for about two hours. When you are just standing around waiting, scenery watching gets old fast. Though it was interesting to see the people there. There was a Japanese tour group going through, parents with their months-old baby (which of course made me miss Benjamin more) and other groups and nationalities.

Got back to the hotel/resort (which was gorgeous and fairly luxurious) around 8:30-9:00. We decided not to go anywhere to eat but to stay at the hotel and eat at one of the restaurants they had (I think they had about 4 on site). However, looking at the menu and prices on the board outside one of them made us reconsider. We saw one guy eating a sandwich with fries in the lobby area and asked him where he got it. Turns out one of the "restaurants" was that open seating, and they came, got your order and brought it to you. Sounds good.

So while everyone else is going with the turkey club, I see some tuna (just for y'all, mods!) on the menu along with some words I didn't recognize, but hey, let's go with the tuna. I thought it'd be a sandwich like the club was.

I had noticed that some dishes were listed "small plates" and some "share plates." The tuna fell into the former and when it came out, I understood why. While the others had large sandwiches and fries that filled their plates, I had an Emeril-style plate. Five tiny slices of tuna with a sauce dribbled around it. You know, the kind of thing that probably costs $50 in one of those fancy restaurants, but takes you 5 minutes tops to eat. And apparently some of the words I didn't understand were code words for "burn your taste buds off" because it had an amazingly hot kick to it. Thankfully the wife of the boss didn't want all of her sandwich and let me take half of it.

Thursday and Friday were mainly spent in classes and speakers. The classes weren't really that exciting, especially since they were hands-on classes for programs we'd been using for a year or so. We were expecting a little more advanced stuff. We picked up a few tips, but that's really about it.

Friday night was Casino Night, which was what I was pumped about since it gave me a chance to play Texas Hold'Em in a totally different environment. They gave you a voucher for $300 in chips when you walked in. I immediately headed over to a Hold'Em table, cashed it in, and began playing.

The first hand I got as Ace-Jack, so I should have known it'd be a good night. Won that hand in a semi-decent pot, but started to get the idea this wasn't a good test of how good I might be. Nobody had any real motivation (the chips were cashed out for raffle tickets at the end) and some would sit down that had no clue about the game, which doesn't help much when you are trying to figure out what people have.

The best hand of the night was fairly early on. I got the Ace-King of diamonds, and two more diamonds came up on the flop. I bet semi-hard, not enough to run many out. The turn was another diamond, so I had the nut flush. I went all-in, figuring that probably no one would call me. Three other people at the table stayed in, though. Only one of them even had a flush, which obviously wasn't as good as mine. I think some others had a pair or two pair.

After that, it was just a lot of small wins and a couple of painful losses. The guy next to me "had never played before", but I'm guessing he'd played at least some type of poker, if not Hold'Em. He finished the big winner at the table, but I was second, I think. After the initial $300 and another free $300 (they occasionally just came by and passed out vouchers), I wound up with just over $1500 in chips, so I doubled my money and then some.

Got even better when the raffle came around. Kept waiting and waiting to see if one of my many tickets were called, but I'd get close but not quite. Finally, Meron called to check in and I gave my tickets to Photo Guy to check for me so I could talk to here. The last prize was called out while I was on the phone and everyone started to leave, so I wrapped up the conversation and caught up with our group.

I made some comment about having all those tickets and they said, "Look, Photo Guy won the last prize, a $50 AmEx gift cheque". He, of course, had a lot fewer tickets than I did, but I figured that's the way it went, till he told me that he'd won it with "my 394 tickets", which were mine, and then handed over the envelope. So it was more profitable than my PPT nights usually are!

Saturday we wrapped up the confrence, then headed into Phoenix. We took the tour of Chase Field (formerly Bank One Ballpark), home of the Diamondbacks. It was great to be able to see inside some of the party suites, go into the visitor's clubhouse, and sit on the bench inside the Arizona dugout. We couldn't go on to the field, which would have made it just about perfect but did keep me from going nuts sliding into bases and such.

Got home about 12:30 CST Saturday night and was glad to be there. The best part, though, was when Benjamin woke up between his mommy and his daddy Sunday morning and had a huge grin and just shook all over from excitement. It was great to know he was glad I was home.

I took yesterday off so he and I could do things while Meron got a well-deserved break to do some scrapbooking. We ran errands in town and just had a good time. It's so hard to believe he'll be one this week, but that's a story for a different day!