to the doubts that complicate your mind

I finally made it home, and I'm so thrilled to be in my own bed. My third day in Vegas was mostly fun and mostly uneventful, and almost entirely confidential, so you'll just have to trust me. What's not confidential is that I used my lunch break to do some therapeutic shopping and have a steak and a glass of wine. And when the final session ended at four p.m., I met up with my friend Bethany from the Ann Arbor office (she also reads romance novels, which is v. lovely) for drinks and snacks at the Venetian. Then, I retrieved my luggage, changed, went to the airport earlier than I needed to, and then discovered that my flight was delayed by an hour. Boo. So, by the time I got home, it was 12:45am. Luckily, I used my corporate card to book a car service, since I wasn't going to take my chances on finding a cab in Oakland at 11:30, so getting home was pretty seamless.

But even though I'm glad to be home, the conference (and, of course, the time in Puerto Rico before that) was really fun, v. inspiring, and an awesome chance to reconnect with old friends. My new team probably thinks that I either a) skipped the sessions (like soem of them did, but I'm too diligent for that) or b) am a loner/loser/sad old person, since I didn't spend much time with them. And yes, I am old; I left last night's event early, and remarkably sober, because my ears were ringing from the noise. But I took the opportunity to hang out with all the old ads friends I haven't seen in ages and don't run into on campus anymore because we've gotten so big that their buildings are now miles away from mine. Today, I spent the morning session sitting with Gyre, which felt just like old times - it's moments like those where it feels like I never left. And when I got to the airport, I ran into a bunch of people who were also waiting for the same flight, so I spent a couple of hours talking to Jen, Danh, Brooks, Megan, etc. Jen and I ended up sitting together on the plane to Oakland, but I was tired enough that I tuned out of the conversation she was having across the aisle with Megan and slept for twenty minutes instead.

But twenty minutes wasn't enough, and I need to get a lot of sleep this weekend to compensate for my extreme sleep debt (and lowgrade liver failure). Goodnight!