Houston Trip

Last week I went on a business trip to Houston for a user group conference on the ERP system we use at Ross Equipment Company. I was in Houston for 5 days. It seemed like a very long time away from Ayrial and the girls. But it was so fun to come back home to see how excited Amora was to see me after a long separation. I haven't seen her so excited for a very long time.

Here is a little about my trip:

While in Houston I stayed in a very nice resort hotel called The Woodlands Resort.

The swimming pool behind my hotel room. The tower in the middle had a huge tube-like water slide inside and waterfalls on the outside.

I had 9 hours or so of conferences and meetings most of the days, but outside of the meetings there were some interesting experiences...

1. I definitely felt like I was in the mission field again. The first night they held a dinner for all the companies that were attending, commemorating one of the user group's influential companies. My boss (who was there the first two days) and I were the only ones from Utah. There was A LOT of drinking going on... I was asked a couple times by different people at my table, who were going to get a drink, if I wanted anything. I told them I didn't want anything and I would just drink the water at my place. Then when my boss left to chat with other people, a guy from my table went to get a drink and asked me again if I wanted anything. I said no, so he asked me if I was trying to impress my boss by not drinking. I said, "No I just don't drink alcohol!" So he stopped for a minute, as if wanting to ask something else, and then said, "Well, do you want a coke or something?" I told him that would be fine. I think when he paused he may have been thinking about asking if I was Mormon, since he knew we were from Utah and not drinking.



2. I was in Houston while the Jazz were playing the Houston Rockets in the playoffs and I couldn't go to the game. Bummer... We won that game, too!
   
   
   



3. I had a break on Wednesday, so I went to the new movie The Forbidden Kingdom, with Jackie Chan and Jet Li... Great movie!

4. I had another break on Thursday, so I went to NASA's Johnson Space Center. I was there for only about an hour, so I wasn't able to see everything, but they had shows and demos and they even had a mock space shuttle that I could go inside and see the cockpit and other control areas, the cargo doors, and the food and bathroom areas. They also had a lot of information about the International Space Station where 16 countries around the world contribute to space and other scientific studies that help make earth life better for all of us. It was very interesting.
   
   
   
   

The "cockpit" area of the mock space shuttle

It was a fun trip, but it's great to be back home with Ayrial and the girls!