Rambling

Another week, another trip to Texas behind me. This was my seventh trip there since last August, and it is safe to say that I am not too eager to get back again anytime soon. As far as these trips go, this one was fairly standard- ridiculously busy days, and lots of eating. In my normal life I eat well- cook for myself, bring lunch to work, etc. On business trips, I eat 3 meals out every day, and after 5 days of that I'm ready for some sort of crash diet/detox/hunger strike. This trip included lots of bar food, some Tex-Mex that I thoroughly regretted the next day, cajun food, and a lot of Jimmy Johns, a damn good sandwich chain that hasn't made its way up north yet.





Anyway, I stayed at the lovely yet poorly named Gaylord Texan once again. It's always my first pick, despite the complete over the top nature of the place. As I mentioned earlier it's a bit like a big bio-dome- a gargantuan enclosed resort, complete with restaurants, bars, shopping, without ever having to step outside.














We tend to spend the most time at Texan Station, which is the big sports bar here. Not sure if this picture does it too much justice, but the square footage of the screen is bigger than that of my condo.




But even better than potentially watching 5 baseball games simultaneously (I did it, it is amazing) is the people watching in this place. Besides being a hotel and resort for regular people, the Gaylord operates as a major convention center. Which basically results in hordes of people moving in and out every day for some sales conference or convention. If there was any question that the business world remains male-dominated, look no further than late night at Texan Station. The place is crawling with, well, men, many of whom clearly don't have too many opportunities to go out drinkin' with the boys. Picture lots of loud and awkward drunkenness by guys in lanyards and matching polos with the company logo embroidered on the front.


Then there's the interactions with the very few women who actually are there, or even better, the local cougars who hang out at the bar waiting to get free drinks from the convention guys. And let me just say this- you have not seen a cougar until you have seen a Dallas cougar on the prowl. Frightening and fascinating.


To follow up on my earlier post, I was very disappointed in the Whataburger crowd- they started off strong with a weird rally outside the window of my room, but I didn't see much of them again. Besides them, we had a jet-ski conference, an elevator conference, and some group having to do with surety bonds (no idea).


What else? Listened to the Steve Harvey show every morning (awesome), drank lots of Shiner Bock (wish I could get that up here), tried something called Spudzilla, which is sort of a cross between a potato chip and a french fry (artery clogging but delicious), and realized that one of my Texas co-workers is a die hard democrat (didn't know we had any down there). She told me this is the first year that she could come out of the closet about it to other people. I felt so proud. She gave me this pin:





Maybe I could get to like Texas...