Phoenix

Last week I was in beautiful Phoenix, Arizona, for a mutual fund industry conference.  In addition to spending 12 hours listening to technical presentations while sitting on uncomfortable hotel conference center chairs, we had a few fun activities!  One night at the resort was an outdoor desert event.  Corporate sponsors provided different parts of the food/drink/entertainment.  Two of my Denver co-workers and I are showing off our Deloitte margaritas.  The hats were provided by a fund administrator. 

 

Another afternoon the sessions wrapped up early, and we had a desert jeep tour in the Sonoran Desert between Phoenix and Scottsdale.  We had five or six jeeps full of co-workers and clients.   Although we were all warned ahead of time to beware of the cactus, there were a few of us who "caught" jumping cactus on our shoes.   A guy from the Denver office ended up with a dozen needles in his ankle that my jeep driver had to pull out with pliers! 

My New York co-worker and I took a picture to send to our mutual client.   They thought the desert was a pretty extreme length to go for team building! :-)

My flights each way were delayed around 90 minutes - presumably carryover from the air traffic control fire last week.  I got the bulkhead seat on the way home and was chatting with the flight attendant and co-pilot while putting my bags away.  Somehow in this one minute exchange, my lack of knowledge of physics was discussed, as was my son's fascination for all things that fly.   And with that, the co-pilot invited me for a photo op in the cockpit to impress my kindergartner.  When I got home and showed off this picture, I got lots of "cool!" comments.