I Saw a Moose... Really!

Back from still yet another recycling conference, this one in New Hampshire. This is how it went down...

Early Sunday morning I headed for the airport. I stopped and got coffee and a jelly donut on the way there. I had just thought to myself, "it sure would be funny if jelly were to spurt out of this raspberry donut and land on my shirt," when, mid-bite into said donut, a big spurt of raspberry jelly shot out and landed all down my shirt. Ahhhhhh! I love that shirt! Plus, how embarrassing for me to have to walk through the airport with a giant raspberry blob all down my front. Luckily I had a light jacket with me. I put it on and zipped up, never mind that it was 90 degrees outside. After checking in I bought a Cherry Blossoms of Washington DC shirt for 8 dollars which I changed into.

Now, NH is A.'s territory and I just went to this show to help her out. Lord knows she needs all the help she can get. Remember how she couldn’t be bothered to pick me up at the airport during the NY show? Well, she did it to me again. At least she got one of her suppliers to pick me up and take me to the hotel, an 80 mile drive. I’d met Stheve at the NY show. And last week when he came to the office for a plant tour I went out to lunch with them. So it’s not like he was a total stranger. But it was still a little awkward. Anyway, my flight from Dulles had left at noon so I hadn’t eaten lunch yet. I figured I’d get something from the hotel restaurant or maybe even order room service.

Stheve dropped me off at my hotel (he was staying at the one next door) just before 4. By this time I was STARVING. And the hotel didn’t have a restaurant. CRAP! I got 3 different kinds of chips and a root beer out of the vending machine. The hotel was okay. It was actually a ski lodge but June is the off-season. I decided at 5 to go over to the conference center and see what was up.

I haven’t mentioned where A. was all this time. She was meant to have left Virginia on Saturday afternoon since she was driving up to NH. Well, Saturday night she called me and left a message that she was getting a late start since her dog had to be taken to the emergency vet. I talked to her again on Sunday after I had landed. She said she probably wouldn’t make it to the hotel until maybe 7 so could I just make sure all our boxes had arrived?

It appeared that all the boxes were there. I decided to go ahead and put the booth together myself, since I was already cranky and I knew I wouldn’t feel like doing it at 7 am the next morning. It wasn’t easy, but I did it. Then I got cleaned up and went to the exhibitor reception that was being held next door. FREE BEER! Stheve was the only person I knew there, so I got stuck talking to him for a while. Fortunately I struck up a conversation with a very nice Canadian lady whose name I don’t know. Stheve came back at 9 to say he was going to find some dinner, did I want to go? Hell yeah I want to go. All I’ve had to eat all day was half a jelly donut and three snack-sized bags of chips. A very large guy from Maine joined us. As we were driving down the road, Stheve suddenly slowed then stopped the car. "What’s that?" he said. I’ll be damned if it wasn’t a moose! A MOOSE! It stepped out into the road and looked at us. Stheve flashed his high beams at it. The moose slowly crossed the road and wandered off into the woods. Wow. My first moose sighting. And I was so stunned that I forgot to take a freaking picture.

We found a tavern that was still open just down the road. I think Stheve must have called A. about 5 times. First he called her from the reception to find out how far away she was. Then he called her to tell her that we were going to eat. Then he called to tell her to watch out for moose in the road. Then he called to tell her where we eating. Ack! I should have known the food wasn’t going to be very good from the menu. There must have been over 50 entrées listed. Not a good sign. It was about as good as I expected. Just as we were finishing dinner, A. shows up – with her mother! She sat down and for nearly 2 hours told us why she was late and what was wrong with the dog and why she has brought a 5 week old kitten with her, which she intended to smuggle into her hotel room. I finally got back to my room at 11:30.

The conference started at 8:30 Monday morning. On my way to find some breakfast I ran into Mike Wazowski (not his real name). We met at the Michigan recycling conference a few months ago. He was at the same table as me and bestest friend/coworker at dinner one night. I remember he seemed a bit shy, but that could have been because BFCW and I were drunk and loud and he was sober because he had to drive home that night. Anyway, we chatted for a few minutes then I went back to our booth. Mike Wazowski stopped by several times during the day. I think he was bored. Lord knows I was. The thing about these conferences is the exhibit hall is open all day but there are meetings that the attendees are... well, attending. So really the only times there are people visiting the booths is during breaks or meals. Most of the day the exhibitors just sit there staring at each other.

Lunch was terrible. Some kind of tofu salad and a lasagna with sausage. A.’s mother hung around all afternoon asking me questions like, "Who drives the Mobil race car?" (Like I’d know) and "Do you think they’ll have strawberry shortcake for dessert?" (????) Mike Wazowski invited me to a sports bar nearby to watch the Pistons basketball game and drink beers. I don’t really care for basketball, but I do enjoy drinking beers. Unfortunately Monday night was supposed to be the big "Dinner and Dancing" event of the conference. I told him I’d see what was going on with that, then give him a call. After the exhibit hall shut down at 5, I took a quick walk to the Town Center. It was just a few little shops and restaurants for the ski resort. Most of them were closed because June is in fact, NOT prime ski season. I went back to my room and watched reruns of Angel and Charmed, then went to A.’s room. She was of course, not ready. Finally we all set out for Dinner and Dancing.

Everyone was there, having a pre-dinner drink. A. said she’d get us all drinks. I said, "great, get me a beer, I don’t care what kind." She went up to the bar and started talking to someone. 15 minutes later she came back, "These are the beers they have," and listed all the beers. I said I didn’t care just get me a beer. Her mother said she wanted a white wine. So A. goes back to the bar. 5 minutes later she comes back. "You know, they don’t have a very good beer selection, maybe you’d like a mixed drink?" I said no, just get me a beer. I chose Blue Moon because she wasn’t going to take just "beer" for an answer. Her mother decided to get a Guinness. A. goes back to the bar. 5 minutes later she comes back. "Hey mom, they’ve got Amstel Light, would you rather have that?" A.’s mom decided to have Amstel Light. "Jen, I had Blue Moon once and I don’t think I liked it, mom, did we like that Blue Moon beer?" I said I’d try it anyway, thank you very much. A. went BACK to the bar and started talking to some guy. 10 minutes later she came back with 3 beers and the guy. He was 50ish and very very tan. He followed us to dinner and sat next to me, telling me how I should avoid getting a reverse mortgage unless I have a really good lawyer. Thanks buddy, I’ll keep that in mind. Dinner was awful. Dry chicken and rice with some weird flavoring and carrots. I don’t much like carrots on a good day. The only carrots I really like are the ones at Cracker Barrel. I don’t know what they do to the carrots there, but they are delicious! But I digress. Very Very Tan Guy heard that I was flying out of Manchester, NH the next day and generously offered to drop me off at the airport, since he was going right past there. I said no thank you. Weirdo.

After dinner I’d had enough of A. and her mother and VVTG, who looked like he was there to stay. I called Mike Wazowski to see what he was up to. He said he was back in his room because the sports bar was closing but he had a six pack if I wanted to watch the game there. I politely declined. I’m just not that into basketball. Sorry. I went back to my room and turned on the tv. Wouldn’t you know it, The Ring was on. Ahhhh! Too scary. So I turned off the tv and started reading Memoirs of a Geisha. It turned out to be really good. So good in fact that I stayed up til 1:30 reading it.

Tuesday morning A. told me that she ended dancing with VVTG all evening. So glad I wasn’t there. We give away stress balls at our booth that say something stupid like "Take the stress out of recycling" and have our number on them. I was excruciatingly bored at this point so I wrote on one of the stress balls "You win a FREE KITTEN!" and put it on the table with the others. I figured it wouldn’t hurt, since A. and I both have kittens we are trying to find homes for. I actually had two different people pick up that ball, read it and then put it back. One of them I told, "Wait here while I go get your prize!" but he laughed and ran away. Oh well.

Mike Wazowski and I went to lunch and hid in a corner from A. and her mother but they found us anyway. Lunch was, predictably, crap. After lunch we went back to the exhibit hall and started putting things away. A. had brought so much crap with her! She had two boxes that we didn’t even open! I helped her put all the brochures back in the boxes then she said something about getting shipping labels and wandered off. I figured, well, I put this booth together myself I can take it apart too! So I did. It took me 30 minutes. She didn’t come back until at least 15 minutes after I was done. Where the hell was she all that time? We ended up leaving the conference center after 3 (we were supposed to be out by 2:30) and went to the hotel. A. still hadn’t checked out. I waited in the lobby with my book while she packed up. We left at 4:15. I got to the airport at 6 for my 7 o’clock flight. And then I came home.