Luxury Living

What a weekend. I've been gearing up for it for a while now and it's hard to believe it's over already.

Thursday afternoon I finished up my last minute prep for the board meeting and then followed my boss and another co-worker to the hotel where the board meeting took place. The route they took to get there was via Starbucks (works for me!) where I got a mocha valencia frappacino (valencia=orange) and an almond blackberry tart (my new favourite Starbucks pastry).

At the hotel we used the valet parking and the bellman took our bags and stacks of files up to our rooms. When I walked into my room I was greeted with the pleasing little selection on the right. The card was a "thank you for using XXX hotel for your meetings blah, blah, blah" Very nice :)

I was on the tenth floor so I had a great view of the parking lot, runways and off in the distance, the ocean.
I had some time to kill before dinner so I settled into my room. This is me on the king sized bed (yes Mere, I bounced on it just for you ;))
Dinner was with on other coworker (everyone else had to work) at the Boathouse. We took a taxi there and had a very nice, very relaxed meal.

After dinner I met with my boss and the "Event Coordinator" to scope out the room. Confirmed that we'd have a conference call phone available, leather chairs, what time breakfast was etc. etc. It was really cool. I talked stuff over with my boss but she made me do all the communicating with the hotel staff...which is how it should be, this was just my first experience with that. I feel like a real "Execuitve Assistant" :D

We finished around 7:30 and I went back to my room to relax. My friend Deb tried to call but my cell phone died (!?) I knew the battery was low but I expected it to last longer then that. My phone was completly dead. As in, won't-even-turn-on-so-I-can-get-a-phone-number-off-it-dead. In case she had something important to say, I decided to try and track down her number. First try, the hotel room. Okay, there's a bible here but no phone book. I have an address book in the car, lets try that. The valet dude didn't like me going into the car but I reassured him quickly. Address book was just that...addresses :P Try the front desk, SHE'S UNLISTED!!! Check with the "business centre". All the computers are busy. ARRGH! Back to my room, call home, "Aaron? I left an emergency contact number on the fridge. What is it?" FINALLY got through to my friend. No it wasn't incredibly important but it killed time and it was good to talk to her :P At this time I realized that my watch battery is also dead. OMFSM!!!
At this point I decided it was time for a bath in my lovely soaker tub. I took the plate of goodies, a wine glass with water in it (I could have raided the mini bar but I figured I'd wait until I've been at my job for more then six weeks :P), angled the tv, just so, so I could watch CSI while soaking and filled the tub with citrus scented bubbles. It was wonderful. I could definitely get used to that :D
The bed was very comfortable but I didn't sleep all that well. Nervous about having to get up so early I guess. I was dreaming about trains falling off the tracks. Very disconcerting.

Everything went well the day of the meeting though. Aside from the techies unplugging my tape recorder when the moved the conference call phone and then forgetting to plug it back in of course. I got great reviews from my boss, coworkers and some of the board members. All in all it was a very positive experience and it's something I am looking forward to doing again. Now to deal with the twenty some odd pages of notes I took :P

I'll put the rest of my weekend in a seperate post.

~Heidi