caught in a good romance

I had a fantastic day and am now utterly spent. I managed to sleep for seven hours last night and still pull off everything that needed to get done today to make the summit finish successfully; I've gotten really good at making just-respectable-enough slideshows in less than five minutes during breaks, so it all worked out. The feedback from both days was really good, people seemed to enjoy the summit and each other, the energy in the room was pretty good, and we seemed to accomplish all of the goals we laid out at the beginning. Most importantly (to me), the big boss was happy, and at the end of it all she thanked me (using a slide I made, of course), but then gave me an official Team USA sweatshirt from the Vancouver Games, and also told me to take the day off tomorrow without counting it as a vacation.

So, I feel very good about all the work that I had put in over the past six weeks to pull this off, even if it nearly killed me. I left work about an hour after the summit ended at 4:15pm, grabbed a Philz Coffee on the way home, and then spent the evening on the couch finishing the bottle of sauvignon blanc that was in the fridge while watching the Olympics and wrapping things up. I had to catch up on email and finish a couple of small things, and send my initial impressions to the big boss so that I can write the official post-event summary on Monday, but I finished around nine p.m. and focused on the Olympics after that. I'm glad that the timing worked out this way -- the ladies' free skate was perhaps the best skating competition I've ever seen, given the number of virtually flawless performances, the incredible skating by the top three, and the heartwrenching performance by the Canadian girl who lost her mother unexpectedly last weekend. So, like Scotty Hamilton (who just said on the latenight coverage that his father died sixteen years ago tonight) I cried like a baby throughout her performance, and throughout the medal ceremony. It was incredible...and now I'm spent.

I believe it's time for bed; even though I'm taking tomorrow off, I need to get up earlyish so that I can go to the spa for some deep, deep relaxation. Goodnight!