Business Trip Extraordinaire--Day 6

My temporarily one-dimensional life continues for the sixth day. I got some work done today, but there was also some discussion and setup for the Main Event coming up on Tuesday, and it wasn't as productive as I would have liked.

The good news is that I said good-bye to the freezing U-shaped server room and moved to the meeting room where the Main Event will take place. Now that I shouldn't need my jacket until I fly home, it's hanging over the edge of my hotel room's mostly useless jacuzzi, and there it will stay until Thursday.

The bad news is that I will undoubtedly miss most if not all of General Conference this weekend. For those who aren't aware, General Conference is a twice-a-year worldwide meeting of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in which the leaders of the Church, who we consider to be prophets and apostles, teach us. Most active LDS make it a priority to watch or listen to the conference, which takes place in Salt Lake. You can watch it online, either live this weekend or archived later.

I don't think I have missed conference since my mission in Brazil, where live conference coverage was not available at that time. Now I have it available on a computer, a phone, maybe the TV in my hotel room, and a few miles away at a church building, yet I'm going to miss it because I have to work. I always thought this was the kind of thing I could avoid with a college education and a professional career. And until tomorrow, I have avoided it. But I'm grateful to live in a time when technology will make it relatively simple to watch it any time I want over the coming weeks and months.

Tonight I joined several colleagues for dinner in a loud pub-type place. The food was good and they had root beer (memo to Least Coast restaurants: there's this new thing called root beer! Serve it!). The conversation was heavily about business, and since it was about my team in particular I felt compelled to stay the entire three hours or so, though I was not very interested. They're all visionaries and I'm a worker bee, and I like it that way, though apparently I'm not supposed to.

Six days are in the books. It looks like I miscounted originally, and this trip will include a total of 23 days, so I have 17 to go. Will I ever get home? Will I remember both backpacks and all three phones? Will I get stuck on a tarmac somewhere for nine hours? Only time will tell.