instead of clowning around let's look for some common ground

Hello friends. I have returned from my long sojourn in manager-land, although I have brought with me additional tasks and responsibilities. The conference that I was at was very interesting - the highlight was a session led by a Harvard Business School prof, who taught a case study on customer satisfaction at a major East Coast bank. She was amazing, and it was probably a bad idea to have her there because now anyone who hasn't gone to business school yet will want to apply immediately.

The lowlight was that we had a minor emergency back in the office, which I had to deal with via cellphone during the cocktail party after the first day of the conference...not one, but two directors tracked me down, as did my director's admin, to find out what was going on. In fact, my director asked me to give him the scoop while also encouraging me to get a drink, which led to me having two rather strong margaritas and almost no food, which was rather silly. At that point the issue had been handled as best as possible at that time, so I wasn't impacting my own performance, but still. Then I did the whole 'schmooze with important people' thing for awhile, before grabbing my laptop and sending out some emails regarding the emergency. The next day, the VP of our whole department also found me at lunch to ask what was going on, which was rather intimidating--but then again, I seem to thrive on stress, so it's probably good for me.

All in all, though, it was v. nice - I got to spend some time with the Irish and Alaska Matts, the discussions at the conference were v. interesting, and the bed at the hotel was extremely comfortable. I was thinking tonight as I was leaving that I could probably be happy in my current role if I let myself be happy - despite all the stress, this is the first time in awhile that I am satisfied with both the level and type of responsibility that I have and the management team that I'm working with/reporting to, and that's a good thing. So that probably means that the chances of me applying to school this fall are becoming increasingly remote. Too bad the chances of me turning 26 in the fall are approaching 100% :(

Okay, I'm exhausted from all this business-y stuff - it's time for me to go to bed. Goodnight!