Greetings from Tucson!! Yes, i'm actually sitting here at the Tucson airport waiting for my flight back to Orange County. "What the heck am I doing in Tucson" you might ask? Well I'm here for a conference for work...its basically for a ticketing/database software we use. Oh wait...I think I blogged about that in my last post. This is my first conference I've ever attended for work and also the first time flying alone.

Anyhow, the conference went really well. Got to see some cool tricks and saw how other arts organizations run their company with the software. It kinda sucked cuz I was staying at an overflow hotel, not the host hotel, which was like about a 40 minute shuttle ride. So that meant I had to wake up earlier and also leave earlier to go back to my hotel. My hotel was ehh..stayed at the Westward Look Hotel, and was no where near as nice as the JW Starpass Mariott, where the conference was being held. The weather is pretty warm and humid. Its their monsoon season, and it rained here earlier in the day on Monday before I got here. So I came to my hotel room and found sandbags on my front doorstep. (My room was below street level.)

Didn't do much the first night, as most of my co-workers were staying at the host hotel. Just walked around the resort, took some pictures, and had dinner. Pretty weird, cuz it was the first time I've ever eaten at a restaurant all by myself. I'm lucky to have great friends I can eat with, hehe.

Tuesday, I checked out the PIMA Airspace Museum on Tuesday where I checked out a variety of historic planes, which they also hosted a catered dinner inside the hangars. They had some cool planes on display including the SR-71 Blackbird, an old F-18 Blue Angel Hornet, an old F4 Phantom, an A-10 Thunderbolt, and the best part was former Presidents' John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson's Air Force One. I got to go inside and take some pictures which was pretty cool. Everything was secured by glass casings, but it was actually pretty cool to go inside it. I wonder if that was the exact one in which Pres. Johnson was sworn in after Kennedy was assassinated. Pretty interesting.

I also took part of the 5K they had here. It was pretty fun, but since the hotel was nestled in the foothills, the path was a little hilly. It was okay going down but coming back up to finish sucked. Oh well, it was fun, and a lot of people particpated.

As i said earlier, the hotel was freakin awesome, and the staff was probably the best hotel staff ever. The people at the front desk, concierge, bell desk, valet people, bus people...you name it, they were all friendly. And the best part of the conferenece was THE FOOD!! Man, for breakfast, they'd be serving really nice breakfast burritos, fruits, cereals, and all, then for lunch we'd have different kind of wraps, hot dogs, angus beef burgers, etc. Even in between sessions, we'd have breaks and they'd have small snacks out there to enjoy. And dinner....awwww man last night was the best! Sea Bass, crab, lobster tails...yummy!! AND every single meal was a buffet! yum! =) oh yeah, and plus the free open bar too, although they didn't serve any hard liquor.

Anyhow, I'm glad I got to take part of the conference. I had a lot of fun here, but i also can't wait to get back home. I didn't actually go into the city since the hotels were sorta far away from everything, but that's okay. There isn't much to see here. Next year will be really fun as they announced it will be in Nashville. It's actually pretty cool now that they're going to smaller cities because if gives us an opportunity to go cities we never thought we'd ever go to. So hopefully next year, I can stay a little longer after the conference and explore the city more. And its all paid for by work!

So now I'm in the airport and I've never seen such a dead airport in my life. I got here and literally walked all the way to the security check machines. I wish John Wayne was like that. Okay, time to board...