Business Trip

Thursday through Sunday I was in Houston for the annual TASB (Texas Association of School Boards)/TASA (Texas Association of School Administrators) Convention. My company specialized in building and remodeling schools all over the state, so this convention is an every year thing.

Everything was great in terms of the convention (I'll post pictures of our booth tomorrow), the only thing that wasn't good was that I got sick while I was there. No worries though, my mom came to the rescue and stayed with me in the hotel. I said to her, "doesn't it feel good to still be needed?" and I think she agreed.

The main thing I missed out on was dinner. Every year my company will take a couple of school boards out to dinner to show them our appreciation for using us as a firm. This year I was responsible for finding the restaurant and setting up all of the reservations. The restaurant I chose was Vic & Anthony's Steakhouse, and from what I hear, that place is perfect. There was nothing bad to be said about the meal, everyone had a great time--so much so that we will be using them again next year! Hopefully I'll be able to make it to the meal then!

Anyways, we stayed at the Hotel Derek across I-610 from the galleria and it was a beautiful hotel, so I thought I would share with you what it's like on a business trip with a couple of architects.

This is the room when you walk in.

This was the bathroom, I didn't feel the need to take a picture of the shower and toilet for you.. that would be a little odd.

On the other side of the room was a window seat that was more like a couch than anything.

and of course, the flat screen

But even better, was the view I had of the William's Tower (formerly Transco Tower). And you see that CVS in the bottom left corner? Yeah, I walked there in the middle of the night to get medicine.. I was just glad it was that close.

One of the benefits of taking a business trip to Houston is getting to spend some time with family. Everyone in my family has an app. on their phone called Loopt where we can run the app. and see where each other is. On the app, there is a feature called Ping where you can send someone a text message to let them know to run their Loopt and see where you are. When we got to downtown on Thursday and started unloading our booth (a 3 hour process) at the George R. Brown Convention Center, I "Pinged" my brother Jason (who is in law school in Houston). He was a little confused to recieve that from me so he looked to see where I was.. we were 0.5 miles from each other! You can imagine how confused he was since he didn't know I was even coming to Houston!

That night, my dad came to pick me up from the hotel and we met Jason for dinner. It was a lot of fun hanging out and talking about anything and everything! Thanks for dinner dad!

Even though I got sick, I was glad I was able to go to the convention. It's such a priveledge for me to be able to go.. seeing as very few from my company have ever had the chance. Plus, I got to spend some time with my family!