Saturday, January 10, 2009
Go Bama!
The people from Alabama are huge football fans! Even the women can quote you statistics and players from a lot of the southern teams. Last year when I was in Alabama at a conference, I noticed people leaving the session fairly often. I thought they were really using the rest room, until I realized they were going out to check on the football game.
This year, the conference was at a wonderful conference center that Kimberly Clark (the paper and cleaning products people) gave to a college. It has a huge living room area (with a fireplace), nice kitchen with a large attached dining room (with another fireplace), a conference room with a backlit screen and all the electronics, and about 20 guest rooms (some with two queen beds and some with one queen bed). And to make it even nicer—it’s way out in the woods and right on a lake. We had a glass sliding door that opened right to the lake.
We actually flew in to Atlanta and drove to Oxford, Alabama, where we stayed the first night. The next day, we had some time, so we wandered through the Cheaha State Park and Talladega National Forest.
It was neat winding roads through mountains and lots of trees. Some of the trees still had some leaves with color left—so it was beautiful! It was fun wandering around through there, because we had Gertie (the GPS) programmed to go to the conference center, so we could just flip a coin to decide whether to turn right or left and then let her figure out where we were and how we should go to get to the conference center. Although when we got closer to the center, she gave up and said ‘the roads to your destination contain incomplete data’.
The center is near a town called Sylacauga which we never did learn to pronounce. We stopped there for lunch at a Chinese Buffet. They had really good food—a lot of seafood that was really good. That night for supper, they catered BBQ—there was chicken and ribs, baked beans, with banana pudding and chocolate cake for desert!
The conference was on Friday evening and all day Saturday. Saturday, we decided to move to the living room area and light the fire and talk around it. It was very comfortable and relaxed. It was funny, because one advisor asked if Bob could come and light the fire—both he and I laughed, because I’m the one who likes to start fires!
That evening, we drove back to Atlanta and stayed at Teresa and John’s. They love to play cards, so we were able to get a few games in. On Sunday, we went to church with them and then had brunch.
That afternoon we went to the King Tut exhibition, which was really interesting—there were a lot of artifacts, but no mummy and no big gold case that held the mummy. A lot of other Egyptian artifacts were on display in addition to King Tut—it always amazes me how much ‘bling’ royalty would wear and even bury with them to take to the afterlife. Sometimes it seems like they had the attitude ‘how much money can I possibly spend’. A few of the necklaces and earrings were so big, that it would hurt to try and wear them for any length of time.
Terry and Pam were at a conference and came home on Sunday, so after going out to eat, we moved over to their place that evening. We had a nice visit with them and Pam showed us their Church and the area where they live. We left for home on Monday afternoon with a totally uneventful trip—except that we had time to get a bowl of noodles (my favorite) and Bourbon Chicken (Bob’s favorite) at the Wok and Roll in the airport.
This year, the conference was at a wonderful conference center that Kimberly Clark (the paper and cleaning products people) gave to a college. It has a huge living room area (with a fireplace), nice kitchen with a large attached dining room (with another fireplace), a conference room with a backlit screen and all the electronics, and about 20 guest rooms (some with two queen beds and some with one queen bed). And to make it even nicer—it’s way out in the woods and right on a lake. We had a glass sliding door that opened right to the lake.We actually flew in to Atlanta and drove to Oxford, Alabama, where we stayed the first night. The next day, we had some time, so we wandered through the Cheaha State Park and Talladega National Forest.
It was neat winding roads through mountains and lots of trees. Some of the trees still had some leaves with color left—so it was beautiful! It was fun wandering around through there, because we had Gertie (the GPS) programmed to go to the conference center, so we could just flip a coin to decide whether to turn right or left and then let her figure out where we were and how we should go to get to the conference center. Although when we got closer to the center, she gave up and said ‘the roads to your destination contain incomplete data’. The center is near a town called Sylacauga which we never did learn to pronounce. We stopped there for lunch at a Chinese Buffet. They had really good food—a lot of seafood that was really good. That night for supper, they catered BBQ—there was chicken and ribs, baked beans, with banana pudding and chocolate cake for desert!
The conference was on Friday evening and all day Saturday. Saturday, we decided to move to the living room area and light the fire and talk around it. It was very comfortable and relaxed. It was funny, because one advisor asked if Bob could come and light the fire—both he and I laughed, because I’m the one who likes to start fires!
That evening, we drove back to Atlanta and stayed at Teresa and John’s. They love to play cards, so we were able to get a few games in. On Sunday, we went to church with them and then had brunch.
That afternoon we went to the King Tut exhibition, which was really interesting—there were a lot of artifacts, but no mummy and no big gold case that held the mummy. A lot of other Egyptian artifacts were on display in addition to King Tut—it always amazes me how much ‘bling’ royalty would wear and even bury with them to take to the afterlife. Sometimes it seems like they had the attitude ‘how much money can I possibly spend’. A few of the necklaces and earrings were so big, that it would hurt to try and wear them for any length of time.Terry and Pam were at a conference and came home on Sunday, so after going out to eat, we moved over to their place that evening. We had a nice visit with them and Pam showed us their Church and the area where they live. We left for home on Monday afternoon with a totally uneventful trip—except that we had time to get a bowl of noodles (my favorite) and Bourbon Chicken (Bob’s favorite) at the Wok and Roll in the airport.
# posted by bjm @ 2:34 PM 
