California Weekend

Hope that everyone has had a wonderful long weekend! I, however, have class. Harding thinks that Labor Day is meant for you to continue laboring, not have a rest for it. No matter.

In case you don't follow me on Instagram, I wanted to catch you up on my weekend in Anaheim for the Excellence in Journalism conference and Disneyland.

Saturday morning was spent laying by the hotel pool and enjoying the lack of humidity and mosquitoes. (I was in for a rude awakening when I returned to Arkansas.) Followed by a conference session and dinner at the Cheesecake factory. Fun fact, the first time (I was 13) I was told that I would be eating at Cheesecake Factory I thought that we were touring an actual factory that made cheesecake. Let's just say that I was even more excited when I arrived at the restaurant and didn't have to wear a hair net.

Speaking of food, I also had my fist In N' Out burger experience and let me tell you it was pretty life changing. I was told to order a double-double with grilled onions and animal style fries and a strawberry lemonade. It didn't disappoint. 

Sunday was spent attending breakout sessions.Because swanky conference hotels do not believe in continental breakfasts, I was making a beeline for Starbucks every morning. Journalists and media LOVE Starbucks. I would sidestep the line 20 people deep and mosey over to the other restaurant, which also brewed regular Starbucks coffee. Jess for the caffeine addicts win.

I attended a lot of sessions on social media and how to best use your smartphone to report from "the field." I will share some of the highlights in another post, but I can't not tell you about the kid who said in a digital media session that he "hates the media." To which the speaker replied, "Well why don't you live in the forest and eat boiled rabbit?" Uhhh...what are you 1) doing at this conference and 2) majoring in journalism or communications??  Obviously twenty people immediately tweeted about the conversation.Turns out that he was with a school group that we had dinner with that night. Fun times. Then there was the session on Instagram with one of their developers and coincidentally, an hour after the session, Instagram crashes for a while. Hmm...were we to blame?

So on to Disney. It was my first time in Disneyland and because it was slightly complicated/time consuming to drive to the beach or Hollywood and our hotel was within eyesight of the Disney parking lot, I spent two nights and most of Monday at the happiest place on earth. So what if I may have ridden Space Mountain three times?  And maybe enjoyed "It's a Small World" just as much as the 4-year-old behind me who kept singing the song?

Needless to say, I was sad to fly back over the desert to Arkansas. While I was away, campus was experiencing a two day internet outage and the whole campus was at a standstill. The biggest concern was that payroll is done online and was due a few days later. Thankfully AT&T decided to get their act together and fixed the "dead optical card in the fiber hut." If I was going to open my own nightclub, it would be called the fiber hut. But thankfully all is well now on the technology front.