I’m reluctant to let it go not because of 2009 or that I’m just being whimsical.  I fear what will happen when I look at myself in the mirror without something to pet as I contemplate the world and wish I hadn’t done that.  And I’ll be too impatient to wait the six weeks for it to be the way it was.  I’m a sentimentalist in that regard – it’s hard for me to let go of things that represent something much more than I realize.  Which, I think, is why, subconsciously, I’m unable to move away from DC.

DC has lost the luster it once had in the mind of an impressionable 18-year-old.  When I came to DC more than 8 years ago (you read that right), I couldn’t think of a better place to live (well, I could think of a few, but this was at the only realistic option).  I’m a lot less impressionable than I was back then.  I may have come to DC not knowing anyone – and those I do know have largely left and moved on to the next chapters of their lives – but it scares me more now to move to a new, unfamiliar (yet exciting) place and having to start all over.  Which is why I’m being pulled to the next place of familiarity.  Which is why I’m scared of what would happen and what people would think as I move to be closer to home.  A place I was running from and swore I would never run back to.  A place I then thought, well, maybe I could retire there.

And that scares me because I’m supposed to be in my prime live-where-ever-and-do-whatever years.  I’m not tied down to anything, but the fear to truly let go of the past.  I need to slay the dragons keeping me prisoner in my tower of stagnancy.  But I look around at my weapons and realize I’m not MacGuyver.  I can’t make a bow-and-arrow out of a paper clip and roll of toilet paper.

But 2010 brings with it the opportunity to at least try.  But first the mustache needs to go.  It’s itchy.

The professor that brought me to Torino, Dr. Lisa Delpy Neirotti, is collaborating with Sports Business Daily to provide insights on her current trip to Beijing.  They are definitely worth checking out.  She also has a video blog and photos at the GW School of Business website.

It was reported that some of the fireworks were digitally engineered – still seen by those on TV and in the stadium, just not in their entirety.  We also learned that the little singing girl lip-synced her performance.  Questions abound as to whether or not these elements heightened or lowered the experience of the Opening Ceremonies.  My thoughts: were the Opening Ceremonies any less spectacular because of the small elements?  I think we still would have been blown away.  Were either of the girls hurt by their performances?  The girl we saw on TV has already modeled in several campaigns.  And learning that the “less cute” girl has such a beautiful voice can only help her.  I don’t believe the Chinese officials were trying to pull one over on the audience.  It’s reminiscent of Marni Nixon singing for Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady.  It’s still a spectacular movie all-around and the dubbing fades to the background.

I remember standing in Piazza San Carlo in Torino watching the Opening Ceremonies in 2006.  Listening and watching Pavarotti sing “Nessun Dorma” brought me to tears.  The audience was silent, erupting in the enormous applause after he finished.  My thoughts after learning that he had been in so ill-health that he lip-synced his performance: who cares.  (Sure, it was his voice he was syncing to, but he still wasn’t actually singing).  It’s still a moment I’ll never forget.

Here’s to another seven days of Olympics!

Which should be fairly easy as I’ve noticed I’m not watching TV at all anymore.  Save for the 20 minutes or so of NBC as I get ready in the morning.  I used to get home from work at 6pm, check email/blogs/news, make dinner, then watch TV from roughly 7pm – 11pm.  And talk to mom.  Which put me right up to my bed time.  Now that I’m not watching TV I’m finding lots of time to do other things: like read books and sleep.  And dishes.  Laundry.  But mostly sleep.

A preview of things to come (i.e. – this weekend): Wicked (the book) vs. Wicked (the musical); new photos!; and book and movie reviews (as promised).

I also hate how he tries to move past something by saying words like “bunny rabbits” and “rainbows” and “starshine.”  And then gets upset when someone brings anything up afterwards and he says “Wait, I said ‘bunny rabbits.’  BUNNY RABBITS.  That means, ‘I’ve addressed it.  Get over it.’”

My other favorite is the argument is “Super delegates should vote like the pledged delegates.”  But only when it’s convenient.  My favorite example: Gov. Bill Richardson.  “Super delegates should vote like the pledged delegates.  Like me.”  “But Gov. Richardson, your state went for Clinton.”  “Oh, well.  She only won by half a point.”  Right, and in these days that doesn’t mean anything.

Not that I approve of Hillary’s campaign.  It’s like Obama has a two-month-old Shih Tzu and Hillary has a five-year-old Schnauzer.  Cute, but not the kind of cute everyone runs over to and goo-goos and gaa-gaas over.

People will realize how much a Shih Tzu sheds and what a pain it is to brush it’s hair.  Schnauzers have a bit of an ugly schnoz, though.

Which is why I’ll take my Phil any day.  (Phil is a little Jack Russell terrier, doofus, and miniature greyhound.  But sweet as can be.)

Then I moved to Adams Morgan, the Morg, for grad school.  It was like living in a whole new city.  The cosmopolitan neighborhood of DC (which, coincidentally enough, a friend and I had walked through a few years prior saying “Oh, wouldn’t it be nice to live there?”  Three years later…I was).  But, if I wasn’t living amongst the office buildings of DC (in Foggy Bottom…where GW is located) or traveling through those parts to get to campus or work (which I did living in Adams Morgan), I could have been living in any old city.  It was still DC, but not everyone’s vision of DC.

East Capitol Street has changed all of that.  I can’t go outside without seeing the Capitol down the street (unless I turn to the right).  My commute brings me past Union Station, many of the Smithsonians, the US Capitol, the Supreme Court, the old townhouses of Capitol Hill.  This is what I imagine people had in mind when they asked about what life was like living in DC.

Democrats – 42 to 40 – voted to impeach Bush and Cheney on the electronic surveillance, torture of prisoners, indefinitely detaining “enemy combatants” without charge or legal council, and for basically being bad people.

Republicans supported the definition of marriage as one man and one woman and opposed civil unions, stated that they “prefer” adoption by heterosexual married couples, opposed “special status” for “groups of people based on sexual practices,” opposed “hate crime” [their quotes] legislation, and supported “the elimination of the designation of AIDS as a disability.”

Fine and clear – I don’t think anyone’s surprised on the actions and stances taken on either side, really.  But what I think is hilarious is a letter to the editor in this week’s Register discussing how “Republicans spent their time on the gay rights debate and the Democrats bashed President Bush all day.”  Did you notice how Republicans “debated” and Democrats “bashed.”  Me thinks the Republicans did a bit more than “debate.

What really makes me laugh are parts of the closing paragraph: “As a conservative Republican, and I think many other Republicans would agree with me, we are a party tolerant of many different viewpoints on many different issues…The Republican Party wants to be an inclusive party, but we will not compromise our morals or beliefs.”

I’m sorry, but it’s because of your morals and beliefs that you will never be inclusive.  You can’t have it both ways.  [I'm generalizing, and the Opinionator is generalizing as well.]  That’s like me saying, “Oh, well, Fred Phelps is a great man, but I just don’t agree with his beliefs.”

But, our society is like that.  You are either for #2 or you are for #4, but you can’t be #3.  You can’t be a 2nd Amendment supporter AND believe that hand guns are the worst things to happen to Washington, DC.  You can’t be pro-Abortion, but only in cases of rape and incest.  You are either FOR abortion.  Period.  Or you are not.  Period.  You are either FOR gun rights for all.  Or you are not.

It’s too bad we can’t create a multi-party system or a coalition government in the US.  Bipartisanship is a myth.  Get over it.

The reasons for such debate: 1) loss of representation in Congress, and 2) loss of influence my vote would carry in elections. As Iowa is a swing state, I can more directly influence national elections. If I don’t like the Democratic candidate for president, I could vote Republican and the results would be close either way. I lose that influence in DC as more than 75% of the population is registered Democrat (which is why the primaries are more important than the general elections in the District). If I don’t like the Democratic candidate – tough noogies. Especially this year (I was hoping to at least hold on to my Iowa residency through November).

So it was with reluctance that I went to the DC DMV to get my DC driver’s license. My friend, Kara, had gone to get hers a month or two before. She ended up needing a whole morning off of work to do so. And I was going to try to get it on a Saturday. I was prepared for an equally long stay and trying to be there promptly at 8am – fifteen minutes before the office opened. Well, I finally left at 12noon, and was in and out in an hour. Entirely painless – except for the part where I had to forfeit my Iowa driver’s license for them to shred.

I also found it interesting to see my ID photos displayed side-by-side.

From left to right: June 2001 – 18 years (student ID taken during undergrad orientation); December 2003 – 20 years (passport photo); spring 2004 – 21 years (bank card photo – I didn’t want my photo taken and was pissed at the bank employee for making me do so); June 2007 – 24 years (AARP staff id); and March 2008 – 24 years (DC driver’s license).

(It all serves as background for later in my story. Mostly to tell you that it didn’t go as I had originally planned.)

I made it down without incident. I flew into IAH (Intercontinental) and, on the taxi ride in, noticed how office buildings, restaurants, shopping centers, 24-hour fireworks stores, etc followed car dealerships. One on top of the other – there wasn’t maybe 30 feet between each establishment. And this went on for miles. I later learned this was because there are no zoning regulations in Houston.

I stayed at Club Quarters Houston, which I found on hotels.com. It was in a great location and a great deal for the money. It offered free bottled water (from a chilled machine…you fill your own bottle) on each floor – a pretty cool offering. They also offered room service and would deliver from restaurants near the hotel. It was a nice facility and I would stay again in a heartbeat.

The first day I took a tour to the Johnson Space Center, about 40 minutes out of the city. I don’t know what I expected, but I may not have been in the right mood to truly appreciate what was there. We were shuttled…shuffled…into an IMAX theater and shown “To Be an Astronaut” (I think that’s what it was called). It was a film about what it takes to become an astronaut, from the selection to the training to landing safely back on Earth. It was a bit dated (late 80s, early 90s) and as dramatic as a film about space exploration should be. Interesting, nonetheless. After that, we had about another 3.5 hours, so we all rushed over to line up for the tram tour. We waited about a half our, and I was one of the last six people or so to make the 12 o’clock tour. It lasts 90 minutes, so I would have made the next one (at 12:30), but it would not have allowed time to explore the rest of the visitors’ center upon re-entry.

The one thing the tour guides kept repeating was “Please use the restrooms before starting the tram tour. It is 90 minutes long and there are NO restrooms on the tour.” So, of course, people were leaving the line to use the restrooms before boarding the tram. But was anyone not surprised when… on the first stop at Mission Control, we were told to wait on the first floor while the group ahead of us exited. What was right around the corner, restrooms. And what did people do, use them. They used them just because they were there. Not 10 milliseconds after they entered the tour guide told us to start heading upstairs. So, husbands and parents went after their children. Annoying.

In any event, we saw Mission Control, the training facility, and the Saturn space rocket – those were the highlights. They tell you “That there is a RBT – really big thing.” They said something like Rocket Biotastical Thingamagig…in a manner expecting us to remember what it is and what it does. I won’t even try to make something up. So the tour’s about as interesting as their thinking you know what they’re talking about.

Back at the main visitor’s center they had different films about space exploration and a presentation stage with a mock-up of what it looks like inside the space shuttle. Velcro on silverware…liquids in squeezable pouches, also with Velcro. Pencils wrapped in Velcro. Velcro covered in Velcro. Too bad I caught the last five minutes of it, since it wasn’t really advertised. After eating lunch and the tram tour, you knew you didn’t have enough time to see everything, but some time to see everything. You didn’t know where to start, so I wasn’t able to take my time. I think it contributed to my unremarkable visit. That, and the fact that our tour bus drivers didn’t know when we were leaving or where our on-site contact was. And no one was told when the buses were leaving…so we also weren’t surprised when we left people behind.

I had one of my first “wait…what happened?” moments when I went to a dinner hosted by the St. Louis CVB at a restaurant around the corner from my hotel – Sambuca Restaurant. I was invited by a GW alum that works in the DC sales office. Two things: 1) it’s an amazing restaurant with an equally amazing singer – Yvonne Washington. AMAZING! 2) As I sat down at the end of the table (I was a little late) I was trying to make conversation with those around me. I asked the lady across the table “So, what do you do at the CVB?” “Oh, I’m the President.” “Oh. I bet that’s a lot of fun.” I said something like that, but not more foot-in-mouth. Come to find out later she’s one of three past MPI president’s I would meet happenstance in Houston. She’s super nice and it would be a blast to work with and for her everyday. It just goes to show me that you never know when or where you’re going to run into someone.

I spent the rest of my time attending workshops on strategic meetings management program(s) (SMMP). With an SMMP, you determine what meetings and events your organization is holding and look for ways you can save money.

For example, you may notice that a lot of your departments are holding meetings with the same vendors, but you are not negotiating to receive a discount because you’re giving so much business to that vendor. Or, you may notice that the departments are using a third-party to negotiate hotel contracts. On the rooms that the third-party negotiates on our behalf, the third-party receives a commission. If I were able to negotiate that contract, I could save money by not having to pay that commission. That’s what I’m doing every day at work! It was great – and a past MPI president led the sessions.

(I met the third past president at a supplier reception prior to the St. Louis dinner.)

True to my travel track record, I left early for the airport, skipping a networking cocktail hour. Only to learn that I could have stayed – since my 8pm flight was delayed until 11pm. This was during one of the many storms that swept through the Midwest and Ohio River Valley. I was glad I didn’t get stuck in Chicago – which would have happened (and did happen the next day to many of the conference attendees). So, I was happy I was able to change my flight – even though I didn’t get home until 3am. And made it to work on Monday by 9am.

The most amazing part of the whole trip home was flying above the clouds, at night, with the stars twinkling above, and the clouds being illuminated by the lighting below. It was spectacular. I looked around the plane and everyone was asleep. I was soaking it all in – too beautiful for words. Beautiful! Successful trip!

—

* Gladys Knight’s signature song was originally titled “Midnight Train to Houston.” “Midnight Train to Georgia” was originally recorded by Cissy Houston, Whitney Houston’s mom.

And you’ll notice this is my first post in almost two months so you know it has to be good!

Either that or I’m just in a really weird mood.

(from ICanHasCheezburger.com)

Prepare for some major post-age this weekend.