I never did give the promised Orlando post, so I guess I can write about that. I had to head down there with my bosses for 5 days, 4 nights for a conference with work. The conference was hosted by our parent company and was actually really good. We just became affiliated with the parent company a couple of months ago, so it was all pretty new to us, but was so necessary. It definitely got us all excited about the company and where we're going next year with it! 2008 promises to be a busy year! and the next 2 or 3 months may very well kick my butt, but they'll all be worth soon!
As I alluded (or eluded?) to earlier, the convention was actually being held at the same hotel that my high school prom was at! haha How random is that?! Fortunately, it wasn't in the same ballroom, b/c that might really have been weird, considering last time I was in that ballroom I was 18 and watching various friends and classmates bumping and grinding and doing all those things we do when we dance in high school! haha (I say "watching" but I was definitely participating, haha). Anyway, those who know me know that I'm pretty much a completely different person than I was back then. Well, maybe not completely different, but would it make sense to say "amplified"? I guess who I am now was always in me, I've just pulled it out more since high school. There are various reasons for that, but they are all beside the point right now.
Anyway, the hotel was definitely sub-par for our expectations and we made that quite known, haha. There were water stains on the ceiling and the bathroom wasn't all that clean at check in -- and this is at a major convention hotel at Disney World! The deal breaker for me, however was when I woke up at 9:00 one morning (I decided to be late to the 8:00 session) to the sound of drilling reverberating throughout my room! There was some horrible buzzing noise coming from outside my room and it wouldn't stop. I thought maybe it'd go away, but after about 5 mins. or so of it, I decided to handle it, haha. I got up and stumbled across the room to the phone and called the front desk. When they answered, I said:
"I don't know what kind of work you are doing on this hotel, but there's a horrible buzzing noise in my room and it has got to stop...NOW!"Haha! I'm so charming, aren't I? Anyway, she put me on the phone with the manager who told me she'd call me back in a couple of minutes. As soon as she hung up the phone with me the buzzing mysteriously stopped! Aren't I persuasive! When she did call me back she told me that the noise was from some sort of core drilling or something that was happening on the roof as part of their renovations (which also explains the stains on the ceiling, as my room had not been renovated yet) and that it would start up again at 10am and continue until 6 that night. She offered for me to change rooms to which I replied, "Well not right now...I'm SLEEPING!" I mean seriously! Anyway, I ended up getting a new room later that afternoon on the other side of the hotel away from the commotion. Oh yeah, and they took one night off my bill too! My boss laughed at me and told me she was having me do all her complaining from now on. I guess we'll file that under the category of "other duties as assigned" in the job description.
We went to the Mall at Millenia in Orlando, which is their really upscale mall, to have lunch one day and dinner another. It was really nice to go there, partly because it was out of the touristy-Disney-family vacation part of town we were staying in and partly because it's just nice to be around people with money! I mean we only ate at P.F. Chang's and the Cheesecake Factory, so it's not like we were exactly at the upscale restaurants, but just sitting on the patio of P.F. Chang's for lunch (in December, no less, which was a treat in and of itself) and watching the people pull up their luxury cars to be valet parked while they shopped and then returning with all their purchases, haha. It's just such a refreshing change from Columbia where most of the people have no money, don't really want money and wouldn't know what to do with it if they had it, and the people with money basically have to leave town to go spend it - either to Charlotte or Atlanta. I mean in Columbia, most of the people are afraid to shop at Dillard's because they're scared of the prices! (when in reality you should not want to shop their because of the quality of the clothes! Unless you're getting a recognized name brand, like Polo or something, don't bother. And Dillard's is slowly doing away with other brands and making almost everything one of their crappy store brands...but that's a topic for another post). We walked around the mall after dinner one night and just enjoyed the shops. No one bought anything, but we liked having the options of Louis Vuitton, Mont Blanc, Gucci, Dior, Jimmy Choo, Kenneth Cole NY, Hugo Boss, etc. around to choose from. Oh yeah, and some other store my boss was all excited about...Betsey Johnson? I'd never heard of her, but apparently she's some big designer in NYC who doesn't have many stores and is pretty exclusive. Anyway, there were many other great stores there, but too many to mention. Next time when we return for a convention we'll all be ready to shop...and purchase!
I also dragged my bosses across the street to Downtown Disney just so they could experience it. They thought it was alright, but agreed that everything was overpriced and that there were too many tourists around. Oh yeah...I also noticed that they changed Pleasure Island now to where you don't have to buy admission to it. Is there just a cover to each club, like at City Walk? When did this happen? My boss also wanted to go see the Bentley dealership just to admire them so I drove across town to find it. My parents came over for lunch one day and another friend from back home came to meet me for dinner too! It was nice to be back down there and be in the energy of the city! It was a much needed break from Columbia, but made it all that more difficult to return home after the trip. Overall I had a good time, but was kinda tired of being around my bosses and missed my life as a single person where I do what I want when I want, haha.
Now that that's done, I've spent the last couple days catching up on everything from last week, had some personal stuff to take care of, and now I'm spending the rest of the week getting ready to be out all next week for Christmas! Yikes! I can't believe Christmas is in like 6 days!!! EEK! I guess I'm not getting any Christmas cards out again this year...I don't think anyone is surprised, haha.
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