The NACHC Conference

It's Halloween tonight, but I all but missed it. Tonight while Johnnie was trick or treating, I was on a flight home from Las Vegas. That's because I was a speaker at the NACHC FOM/IT conference for the 2nd year in a row. This year though I was sort of blase about it. Even waited until Friday to finalize my presentation. It was simply an update of the 2-part webinar I did way back in May so I was very confident with the content. The only trick was logistics with my co-speaker Nick. And we hadn't actually done it in any kind of detail. It seems like he's just like me an hour. Really all I needed was someone to fill in the gaps should they come up when I talk. And make sure the talk lasts as long as it should. Anyway all that was later on in the day. First I had to get to Las Vegas, which meant getting up at 6 AM and getting to Lisa's house at 7 AM to catch an Uber. My plan was to take an Uber back on the return flight and pick up Johnnie right then. It should be before 9 PM. Just in time for his bedtime. And Lisa wouldn't have to do a thing different. <Of course she could have offered to give me a ride to the airport and/or pick me up... but she didn't so there's that>. I got to LAX in plenty of time, got through TSA quick enough and had lots of time to have breakfast, in this case, a breakfast sandwich from Urth Cafe. Yep, Urth Cafe had a presence at LAX. The flight itself was a 40 minute flight and we barely had enough time to ascend and descend and I was in Las Vegas by 10:30 and a $35 taxicab ride later, I was at Caesar's Palance at Speaker Check-In for my conference. Plenty of time to get myself prepared, mentally or otherwise. I was hoping to do another run-through with my co-speaker Nick at lunchtime but he wasn't planning on getting to the room until 2 PM so that's that. I just gotta walk around and hopefully burn off nervous energy. It would have been a perfect opportunity to get some steps in. After all, it was Monday and although I did a fair share of walking at the airport, I was lagging far behind the usual pace. And I had actually resigned myself to simply doing as regular a walking day as I could. I was thinking I'd make it up the rest of the week. I emded up having lunch at the food court. There was a 45-minute wait at the Noodle House I ate at last time I was here. I didn't even know there was a food court. I went to the shortest line, which was the Halal Bros and had a chicken and beef plate. It was enough to tide over the hunger until way later on. I knew I'd be running on adrenaline before I knew it. And that's what happened. The talk wasn't until 3 PM, but Nick did show up for lunch and he and I sort of ran through the presentation and did some timing stuff right there at the food court. It's amazing that I could walk through the casino and not cough out a lung that pervasive smell of smoke seemingly everywhere. Still I managed to keep myself as calm and relaxed as I could. And then before I knew it, it was game time.

I turn into a different person, I think, when I'm doing on of these talks - especially live. Like I turn into an entertainer almost. The "ham" part of me comes out. And really I could have talked about the material without a presentation for at least an hour. Answer questions for another half hour if needed. Anyway I thought the talk was successful and then I turned my thoughts on getting home. Since I left later than I did last year, there was a line everywhere. There was a line waiting for a cab from Caesar's to the airport. A line for TSA of course. A line to get food even though it was just Burger King. I passed up on much better options even though I really did have plenty of time. And so by the time I got done with my chicken sandwich, the adrenaline I was running on during my talk started to wear down. How did I know I was on adrenaline? My heart rate was up. So much so that I must have been over 105 bpm for at least an hour afterwards. It allowed me to catch up on my active minutes count. As in I was already up to 125 by the time I boarded the plane. I would actually finish at 160 AND still managed 15,000 steps. That's because I did almost 2000 of those just getting to the cab AGAIN when I landed at LAX. Needless to say by the time I got to Lisa's I was tired, cranky and it was already 9:05. Lisa was reading Johnnie a book. She seemed oblivious to the fact that I wanted to go home and I was only there to pick up Johnnie and Claire. It was Johnnie that finally "turned her off", stopped listening to her book reading and started goofing with me. THAT finally caught Lisa's attention and shortly thereafter, we were on our way home. It was a long day. And I was tired. But it was a good day. A second really good day in a row.