On my way back home

I'm sitting at the Phoenix airport now, enjoying my three and a half hour layover on the way back from Albuquerque at the Military and Veteran's Hospitality Suite, which is like the USO rooms, only not sponsored by USO. It's all the same--free internet, free snacks, and Marines playing cards and video games. Not much else to do.

Anyway, the conference ended on a strange note. Throughout the week, I noticed a definite lack of cohesiveness among the Madigan PM residents, which is unusual. Most residency classes are rather close-knit, but not this group. We had one van for the group of us, and at any given time, about half of us knew where it was and when it was leaving either the hotel or conference center. One of the majors was left behind in the morning almost every day, because nobody made any effort to make sure that they communicated the day's plans to anyone. This morning, for example, the two interns and I assumed that we were leaving at 7:30, because the first session started at 8. Well, we were sitting around at the continental breakfast, and finally saw one of the residents at about 7:50, who then informed us that the van was leaving at 9. In other words, we could have gotten an extra hour and a half of sleep. Not only that, but we missed the one good session today, which was at 8:30. And then, by the time we arrived at the conference at 9:40 (the hotel is about ten minutes away... we were just that delayed in leaving), we were too late to walk into a 9:30 session, and 10:00 was a break session. In other words, we had nothing to do until 10:30. So, to recap--the interns and I did NOTHING but sit around not knowing what was going on for three hours. By this time, CPT Wilson and I were so annoyed that we decided to go for a walk around downtown Albuquerque (which is not all that exciting, in case you're wondering) instead of going to any of the sessions, which we weren't interested in anyway.

Tonight, Kit's picking me up from the airport, and then Kit, Alex, and I are headed over to Moses Lake tomorrow to see family and for Thea's baptism on Sunday.