I Haven't Disappeared!!!

Ok so a friend of mine (deanster) wrote on my facebook wall today and told me I had disappeared. I'll admit I haven't been on IM as much as normal, but that's because I've been travelling. So without further adeiu here is what I've been up to for the past week and a half. (Yeah some of this is in previous posts, but consider this the Readers' Digest version for those who haven't read them.)

Saturday June 17

My dad, my boss and my boss' family went to see the Cubs play the Detroit Tigers at Wrigley. AT&T had given us tickets for their mezzanine suite which was awesome. Free food, free drinks and an awesome view of the game. Unfortunately the Cubs got pounded, but as a Cubs fan I'm used to that this season. After the game I drove to St. Louis and spent the night at the Hilton by the airport so that I could catch my 8am flight to Vegas for my Networkers conference.

Sunday June 18

After a very short night in the hotel (I got to St. Louis around 1am.), I caught my flight to Vegas. When I got into town I checked in and studied a bit for my certification exam that I was taking that night as part of the conference. I'm happy to say that I passed the test so I'm now a Cisco Qualified Specialist in Firewalls. It's the second test of 5 that I plan on taking to earn my Cisco Certified Security Professional certification.

Monday - Friday

During the week I attended the conference classes and convention floor stuff. I took the monorail down the strip a couple of times for dinner and found Gelato in the Venetian. I didn't win anything in the casinos, but I won a personal DVD player at the Websense booth. :-)

Saturday June 25

I took a plane to Phoenix and met up with my old college friend Pat who lives down there now. He's a science teacher for a charter school in Scottsdale. We caught up and had dinner that night and then both crashed early since he had just flown back from a competition with his students.

Sunday June 26th

Ah Sunday, what a wonderful experience. Pat and I went to St. Timothy's in Mesa for Mass. St. Timothy's is the birthplace of Life-Teen and amongst their parish musicians two names tend to stand out... Tom Booth and Matt Maher :-) It was a very upbeat Mass and you could just feel the spiritual energy from the congregation. Everyone was participating in the Mass, it was awesome. Man I wish I lived in Mesa.

Monday June 27th

Flew back to STL and proceeded to stop at my apartment long enough to unpack and repack. Then I picked up my boss and went to Chicago for the night so we could hit a NetworkWorld expo the next morning.

Tuesday June 28th

Got back home around 1am from Chicago. Thankfully the deer all stayed off the road. It was good to be back in my own bed, but it was all too short before the alarm went off. Of course that brings us to the present which is bedtime. Time to hit the hay and do it all over again tomorrow... well not the travel, but work.

See Deana I didn't disappear, just got busier than normal!