Notes from work conference in Raleigh, NC

We left for NC really early on Sunday morning, caught a taxi to O'Hare then a red eye flight with N. on our laps. One thing I didn't realize about the South was that everything basically shuts down on Sunday. The hotel is beautiful, probably the nicest hotel I've stayed in for a work conference so far. Downtown Raleigh is also really nice - but it's small, compared to Chicago, and it seems a lot less populated than the equivalent part of Chicago, The Loop. One other thing - the Miss NC Pageant is here (was here?) so a lot of young girls wearing dresses and heels and lots of makeup, and a lot of what look like 'pageant mom's running around. N. has been running around and playing on the furniture whereever she goes, everybody seems to love her.

K. is really happy (I'm really happy). A friend of hers told her about a job opening up in another part of the city - some guy she used to go drinking with is now a principal and he told her to submit her resume for a teaching position he has open. So she sent him her resume and they set up an interview for when we get back from vacation. It's looking pretty good, more news on that later on I guess.

I've been getting up really early and running 6 miles around Raleigh before everyone wakes up. They also have towel service and a really nice exercise room at the hotel. Raleigh is really clean city, I have been sticking to one boring running route though as I don't want to end up in the bad part of town.

The conference is fairly boring, there's a lot of marketing presentations that I don't need to be at. And most of the technical talks seem like rehash to me, as I'm fairly advanced at what I do. My boss and one of my colleagues is here. I've been a hermit in terms of the conference though. When not at presentations I typically go back to our room and hang out with K. and N. They've been sleeping a lot, we all seem to be really tired lately, maybe it's jetlag. They've also been swimming at the pool here, which is really nice, and today I think they're going to the Children's Museum, which is only a few blocks away.

It's hot out, really hot. We go walking around the city when we have an opportunity, and we try out different restaurants. So far we've gone to some pretty sweet restaurants. I had an awesome veggie reuben for lunch yesterday, and citrus gazpacho soup. I could live here, I don't need to be living in a huge bustling metropolis. K. says it's too hot and the southern accents would get on her nerves. I also like how polite everyone seems to be. Oh yeah, physically I'm miserable - I keep falling asleep with my contacts in as I'm always so tired lately - and I think my left eye might be getting a little infected. So today I'm not wearing contacts as I don't want it to get worse, and hence I can't read any of the slide presentations at the conference.