Orlando

So my trip to Orlando. I'm sure the 10 of you that read this are just dieing to know how that went. Anyway, the first night there was a beach party reception that was supposed to be college themed. The first table that caught my eye had both Notre Dame and Michigan banners. Ok, that wouldn't have been my choice of school combinations, what else is around. Ah, Florida and Tennessee. Yup, these were definitely decorated by someone who has no concept of college sports rivalries. Anyway after the meal the DJ started going, he tried to encourage the crowd to act like college students. Um, yeah, not so much. As I drank and listened to things like Usher's "Yeah," all I could do was think back to what I was doing while listening to that in college and think "yeah, that's not going happen." After this soiree I went to Pleasure Island and proceeded to ditch anyone else that went there from my company. I ended up going to the rock club that was there and listening to the cover band. I met some girls from Houston who were probably like 7 years older than me, and had a good time. I was also pretty drunk by the end of the night.

On an aside, I was drinking Yuengling in Orlando. I thought this was impossible to get outside of Pennsylvania or New York. How the hell was this not available in CT, but readily available at frickin' Disney. Whatever. I'll take it where I can get it.

The next day I was kinda hungover, though I did drink a sufficient amount of water before going to bed/passing out so that it wasn't too bad. More than anything I was just exhausted. It didn't help that have NO interest in sales or marketing which is what this whole damn conference was about. But hey, when the VP says you should go, you listen. There was a pretty cool guest speaker from Harvard business school. He a gave a nifty lecture on why traditional big companies that were real successful and up getting into financial trouble when the seem to do everything they should. Unfortunately he went about 15 minutes too long for my attention span as I started to fall asleep at the end of his lecture.

Aside from getting sunburned while sitting outside for lunch, the rest of the afternoon is forgetful, at least to me, so I'll skip ahead to the NASCAR themed evening. I actually spent most of this evening watching the ND v. Michigan NIT game. There were several people from a Detroit office that were Michigan alumns, so a small crew was watching the game. Some of them were concerned since ND was up by like 10 early. I however, I had confidence in ND to blow the game because a.) its what we've done all season and, b.) we haven't beaten Michigan in basketball for like 7 years. Anyway, I had to leave before the end of the game. Most everyone went to a bar called Jelly Rolls, I went back to Pleasure Island (again note avoiding of my company, call it idiot insurance). I caught the end of the game here as well, and saw ND blow it once again. I was hoping to meet up with the Houston crew, but alas it was not to be.

One of the downsides of Pleasure Island, is you only need to 18 to get in, with an exception of the dance/hip-hop clubs, which just aren't my style. As I was again sitting in the rock club listening to decent live music, a bunch of 18/19 year old girls came in. Now, granted the last girl I saw was only 19, but this just seemed to have trouble writhing all over it, so I left shortly after midnight with just a slight buzz, and went got some decent sleep. Everyone else apparently got hammered at the other bar.

Tuesday made no real impressions on me. Though they did make mention of the ND/Michigan game as an "instant classic." Ok, I know the need to sell ESPN classic, but c'mon. This was friggin' NIT game. Nobody really cares that much about it. Also, if this is a classic, almost every game ND has played this year was a classic, because they all ended like this. I think I would be a horrible person to have at an actual sales meeting with a client. I should also mention that at the evening event someone was trying to convince me that ND was a good team. Uh, no sorry dude, when you start 1-8 in your conference, you're not good. It doesn't matter if you're in every game if you lose every single time.

We free time in the afternoon where I took a beautiful hour+ nap. In the evening we went to MGM studios. They left 2 rides open for us, the Tower of Terror and Rock'n Roller Coaster. Both rides I thought were a little disappointing as far as theme park rides go. Of course, I do love an adrenaline rush, and neither of these really provided as much as I would have liked. After this evening event, the majority of the crew went to Pleasure Island, while I decided to again dissent from the main mob and go check out Jelly Rolls, which during the day I discovered was a piano bar.

While this place was no Rum Runners (which is easily holding on to the my favorite bar of all time status), it was fun. It was also kinda nice to go out with some VPs, and have them buy you shots of Bushmills, even if they're all 40 :-)

What I did learn on this trip, is sales and marketing people love to spend money. For someone like me who more less runs his life like a college student, this was kind of a foreign concept. I have a feeling that my supervisor is going to look at my expense report of <$50 and be like "This all you spent?" Most people probalby spent that just to get to the airpot.

...I have no ending to this trainwreck of thought, and as I'm sick and tired, I'm goign to stop writing and go to bed.