Escape

Tonight I returned from my weekend excursion to Cincinnati for the Mary Kay Career Conference. I go each year. It is a high energy event with a lot of motivation. It's also a chance to get away for a couple days and spend time with friends--and build new friendships. This was my fifth conference. I had Friday off for the occasion. It was great to have a day off! My friend and I drove together. We took her car because Hubby has issues wihttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifth me putting miles on my car (he freaks out about my daily commute). My friend is expecting so we took lots of breaks and alternated driving. As expected, we hit some pretty bad traffic in Columbus. It delayed our drive by about an hour. We still made it in enough time to check in and get to the convention center on time.
We stayed at the Hyatt Regency. Nice hotel! Had some quirks though--they lost my roommate's luggage! The entire trip she was going crazy looking for her MK bag that had her toiletries, change of shoes, etc. inside. She had arrived around 1:00 and the room wasn't ready. The hotel staff told her to check her bags so she did. She came back and one was missing. It drove her nuts the whole trip--poor thing!
Once inside the arena, it was not too difficult to find my director. She was holding up a sign with our unit mascot on it: a Wonder Woman badge! Can you guess the name of our unit? ;)
Overall, I was very impressed with the presentations and the directors who spoke. My National Sales Director Kathy Helou was there and as always, she was amazing. After the night of ceremonies was over, Kathy had a meeting with all from her area in attendance. Now this was very cool. She took time out to go over what's going on in our national area. I have some goals to go after.
By the time our meeting with Kathy was over it was close to 11:00. Many of us were starving at this point. I know I sure was! I found some other ladies from my unit and asked them if they were planning to eat now. ;) They were going to the restaurant at the hotel so I was ready to go, too! I quickly went to my room and changed into some jeans and removed all my MK pins--I needed a drink! ;)
Dinner was an inspirational experience. I shared the table with my director and her senior director. We talked about a lot of different things: obstacles, questions, goals, how things work in Mary Kay. Great conversation! The only downfall was that the service at the restaurant was extremely slow. I can't complain too much, though, I mean, I got some training, motivation, and a lot of fun out of the deal!
It was after 1:00 by the time we were finished with our meals. I went up to my room and started writing some blog posts from my notes. Those will appear on Shades of Pink in the near future (I hope!). I hope to have it all up by Tuesday night. It is hard to say. I have so much going on this week!
My roommates came up about 30 minutes later. She was at the front desk investigating the whereabouts of her bag again. We started talking and it was 2:30 before we went to sleep! We were planning to get up at 6:00 or 6:30. I have no idea how we got out of bed this morning! I was so tired, but managed to shower and get myself put together in time to get over to the first class. Well, OK, I was a bit late for the 8:30 class. I decided to check out of the hotel before lunch. Glad I did. It was more confusion. They told me my room was "taken care of." It made no sense. There were 4 of us in the room and the bill was to be split 4 ways. They told me they only charged the one woman's card and it was taken care of. The rest of us looked like we never checked in!
We had a break before going back into general sessions and my friends and I decided to look for the notorious vendors. For those of you who are not in MK, this all probably reads like a foreign language. Vendors are business people who sell business supplies and tools at our corporate events. A lot of it is unnecessary for consultants who are new or not yet building a team. My friend who was a director and has now gone back to consultant status said she won't touch it again until she is a director again. Honestly, I didn't miss the vendors, but it's always fun to take a look around.
I also caught up with my roommate who was the only one charged for the room. I told her that they didn't charge any of the rest of our cards so we would just arrange to pay 1/4 of her $40. That's right. I'm paying $10 for a $120 room! Fabulous! She said that when she went downstairs they had told her everyone else checked out already--an interesting detail seeing as she went downstairs before any of the rest of us! The Hyatt was a little crazy! They did finally find her bag later this afternoon. Well, "they" didn't find it. It turned up in a room with some of our area directors. None of them had bothered to open the bag because they knew it wasn't theirs. When they were packing they realized they had an extra bag and no one owned it! I'm just glad she got her stuff back and it wasn't totally lost--or worse, stolen.
One of the highlights of the trip was our lunch break today. Our unit went to a place called Churchill's. It's a tea house. The food was really good--and a decent price--and being a tea house, they had excellent flavored teas. I wonder if they have any chains up here. I am not sure, but it might be locally owned down there. It was so good!
My energy help up quite well throughout the festivities. Kathy Helou gave an excellent speech--as usual. I only started nodding off during the last speaker. That's pretty good for me!
Everything wrapped up around 4:15. Usually, I've found that things end early at the conference, but this year it was on time--just a few minutes over. It would be a long drive home, but somehow, I was regaining energy. I told my travel buddy that if she could get us about an hour outside of town, I could take over to drive us through Columbus again. She was actually feeling pretty good and we didn't switch until we got past Columbus! We made pretty good time getting home, too. After checking out, getting our bags in order, and getting to the car and out of the garage, it was about 4:45 when we left. We got home about 9:15. Now, I am really exhausted! But Hubby and I are going to watch a movie I rented!