It was broiling when I got down to the pool, but nevertheless I made do and ordered a giant bottle of water and a mango margarita. I lounged for a while, putting on tons of sunscreen (one of the few things I purchased with my own money while I was there, at the steep cost of $12.95) and -- of course -- people watching. People watching is an Olympic sport in Vegas. You could spend hours speculating and wondering. I saw a lot of people from the conference (wearing their badges) and men in suits sunbathing. I don't know how they were still alive, as I was about to pass out from heat exhaustion by the time I finally decided to head inside a few hours later. I did take a picture to commemorate my first ever 10 AM - 2 PM poolside work day.

As my mom said, karma has a funny way of working. I spent so long "traveling for work" and being miserable the entire time (two weeks in Glen Rose, Texas anyone?). Not just miserable but working my ass off and hurting myself in the process. So this was indeed a strange sort of reminder to me of my past life in the horse industry and how things have changed so much in barely a year's time.

As a sort of celebration of that fact, I headed upstairs and showered, then passed out for an hour and a half, in my coveted 3 PM naptime. Blackout curtains are miracle workers, aren't they? I then woke up and spent a luxurious amount of time primping in the bathroom, which was the highlight of my room, since it had a plasma screen TV mounted to the mirror and allowed me to watch CNN while putting on mascara.

My $80 eBay dress made its first appearance that night. I believe it paid for itself. Matt and I grabbed a bite to eat at a restaurant in Caesar's called Mesa Grill, a sort of Southwestern-style place where I had the best chopped salad of my life. We stopped for some photo-ops along the way.

At the New Professionals Mixer, we were sent on a scavenger hunt of sorts to gather signatures. Of course the first person I walked up to was named Doug. Irony not included.
Then it was on to the Welcome Reception in the exhibit hall, which was our time to shine and hand out t-shirts.

The turn out was really good. Basically we were there to promote ourselves at a learning conference for relocation professionals - people who arrange the entire door-to-door move for corporate employees. They arrange all of the vendors - the movers, the packers, the realtors, the schools, the visas, etc. As a service that is attempting to relocate pets, we went to spread the word about our services to those companies who might not have heard about us or in some cases might not even know that a service like ours exists. By going to these things, not only do we network with people who are in charge of their company's vendors, but we also get to preach the gospel (so to speak) about what we do and why they should promote our services not only to their team members but also to their clients. While we move a lot of people just off of internet hits and leads alone, our real niche is in the corporate relocations.
Most of the people who were there were relocation specialists, although there were also tons of realtors, van lines and various speakers as well. The people who were exhibitors (us) didn't have to go to any of the learning classes, and so basically we were just the people who handed out free stuff along with the rest of the vendors. You'd be amazed at how many services exist, similar but different to ours -- people who sell corporate furnishings, corporate housing, all sorts of services to help what is becoming such a booming industry: the global relocation of employees. As it gets easier for people to do business abroad (thanks to Blackberries, teleconference capabilities, etc.), more companies see the benefits of opening offices abroad and having their employees relocate. The expat world is a crazy thing -- if you ever start looking around on the internet for it, it's amazing how many resources exist. There was an exhibitor at the conference who basically specializes in the "trailing spouse" -- the husband or wife who follows their executive spouse around the world. The service provides assistance with helping the spouse find a job, helping them find social circles -- pretty much everything some woman moving to Dubai would need to keep herself sane while her husband was gone all day. A lot of this seems to me to have taken the lead from the Army and military services, which have been around forever and have been providing spouse services and relocation services forever, in an effort to keep recruitment and reenlistment rates up. There were also a bunch of people from MWR and the Army there.

Anyway, the party was fun. The reception, rather. Although there was an open bar, a singing Elvis, a flight simulator with "Take My Breath Away" playing on loop outside, a fortune teller machine named Zoltar, several masseuses, and more shwag than you could shake a stick at. So I suppose it was a party after all.

The coolest part of the night, hands down, was this: A woman walked by from a relocation company in Geneva, Switzerland. She talked with Kevin for a long time and then meandered on, while I was busy talking to someone else. Afterward, Kevin asked me if I had moved some parakeets to Geneva a while back. In fact, I had and strangely enough, I blogged about it at the time. Well, evidently the woman who had sauntered by was the person who had referred the client to us. Kevin told me to go chase her down and tell her that I was the one who had coordinated the move. So I went down the row and caught up to her. When I told her about having moved the birds (I still remember their names: Mr. Blue Bell and Junior), she lit up. "You were the one?! They were so, so happy with you! They loved you!"

It was great to have a full circle moment, to kind of see the way the industry works and how people do remember their clients' praise and keep it in mind for the future.

The not-so-cool part of the night was the losing streak I was on at the black jack tables. I didn't know how I would survive another two days at that point.

Wednesday

This was the one day we had a 7 AM - 8 AM breakfast reception, so we stumbled through an hour-long smattering of early birds and then Matt and I went to the Bellagio to check out the breakfast buffet. It was overwhelming, so I just went for the omelette bar. I then took a 10 AM - 12 PM nap, which was fabulous. I decided when I woke up I needed to at least get out and stretch my legs, so I took off down the strip and headed for Treasure Island.

I'm not really sure why I went to Treasure Island. Mainly because it allowed me to walk by Mirage, which is one of my favorite casinos from the outside for some reason. I like the golden windows. I stumbled across some ducklings sitting on the lawn of the Mirage and watched them for a while, feeling as though they'd been placed there by the fence just for me to observe.



We (as in Shiri and myself) started a tradition the first time we went to Vegas where we would go to Kahunaville at Treasure Island and have margaritas with floaters of tequila in them (I hear Gingy's ears perking up). So I wandered into Kahunaville and had the obligatory margarita, then proceeded to drink vodka tonics and read my book, Water for Elephants. I finished it tonight and will work on a review of it for tomorrow. It felt a little weird to be reading at a bar, with "Because I Got High" playing in the background, but at the same time, it was Vegas. I wasn't the only weirdo there.
Matt texted me and I told him where I was. A little while later, he met up with me and talked me into playing a few hands of single deck black jack at TI. We actually did really well -- they were dealing the cards face up, so it was very easy to predict what card would come next. There was an elderly couple from Midland that sat down with us and a chainsmoking man from Cairo to the right of Matt. Sometimes that is why I love Vegas - you can sit down at a table and be engulfed by people from down the street or around the world. It's one of the few remaining visible melting pots.

We were on a timeline, as we needed to be back to the exhibit hall by 4:30 for yet another reception of some persuasion. So we hoofed it back and attempted to show up in jeans. But as we walked nearer, we realized everyone walking to the exhibit hall was in suits, so we went back and I changed into my suit. We met up with Kevin and began hustling our shirts again, which was easy to do since the turnout was great again. This was when a somewhat comical event occurred, which my military-savvy readers will probably find humorous.

The night before at the Welcome Reception, I made a man who was wearing civilian clothing pinky swear to bring his business card to me the following day in exchange for a t-shirt. So, this night, he walked back up wearing ACUs and a name badge that said -- get this: IS2's last name, spelled the same, minus one "f". No kidding! Turns out he was an LTC and a speaker at the conference. To which I kept thinking "I made an LTC pinky swear?" He was really nice though and I think he packed about seven shirts into his bag. He brought with him his buddy from West Point, who had apparently written a book by the name of Combat Golf. I made a joke which I thought was hilarious but apparently fell on deaf ears. He said it had turned into quite a success and that Bill Clinton had handed it out at the White House. I replied "So it was the Catch 22 of the dot-com war?"

Anyway, I still find it incredibly witty and well-timed.

Through a well-played negotiation with the LTC, I somehow talked my way into having them send a signed copy of the aforementioned bestseller to my work address. Granted I may never see it, but it was worth a shot. No pun intended.

I managed to chase down the singing Elvis as he was leaving the building. He was toasted, propositioned me, then attempted to kiss me, and then posed for the obligatory picture. A hard-earned photo, indeed.


We had dinner at The Palms restaurant inside Caesar's where we ate even more red meat (ridiculously large amounts of red meat, crab and vodka were consumed over the week -- don't worry, I'll boot camp my ass off for the next few weeks). Matt's friend from back east showed up, who now apparently lives (!!) in Las Vegas. I asked him how he decided to move to LV and he said he had gone their on his honeymoon with his wife and loved it. Dangerous! I didn't need to hear that.

The last photo that was taken in Las Vegas is below. I don't remember this picture, I don't really know why we took it, but I do remember handing my camera to a very intoxicated female.