NP Conference, Etc.

I'm in the weird vacuum of a professional conference - the sort of time-warp where days start to blend together and you get to know all the obscure restrooms in odd corners of the conference center, and we're not even staying at the conference hotel.

We drove down late Wednesday night, after our first dinner with the brand new stove. Unfortunately it was just quick spaghetti and broccoli, the oven was unused other than the 30 minute trial after installation. We also have a new dishwasher, which, if all goes well, will not flood the kitchen on its maiden voyage.

Mom/Oma made us a reservation at the Sleep Inn; she was due for another of her injections for macular degeneration and her eye usually bothers her for a few days afterwards, so the hotel seemed to be a good alternative to having four house guests and feeling miserable after an injection to her eye.

Thursday we came to the conference center at National Harbor so I could register and check out where things were. Most of the attendees had gone to Capitol Hill for visits with their states' representatives, so it was pretty empty. The Gaylord is very nice, though grossly overpriced (bottle of water $3.00; large cup of coffee and a plain croissant $7.00). I feel sorry for those actually staying here because there is no easy access to a Wawa or grocery store - I could make a killing by bringing in provisions for people or shuttling them to the supermarket if I were so inclined.

The Sleep Inn has an indoor pool, which is nice if the weather is bad. Micah seems to love it; Thea had a slip and dunk in the whirlpool so she's a little water shy. Yesterday was day one of the 'real' part of the conference so Steve had to entertain both for the entire day - and I stayed for the 5:30 performance of the Capitol Steps, which was funny and fabulous. I think I saw them almost 20 years ago at another conference and they were just as hilarious then. Imagine a Robin Williams-ish rapid fire wit with a political bent.

Anyway, I'm sitting around waiting for the exhibit hall to open at 6:00pm. Both the sessions I went to yesterday and the ones today were really good; it's nice to feel somewhat energized and enlightened. Steve and the kids will be coming down and we'll have dinner later on.

Sorry this one is mostly about me, me, me.

L.

PS: On the Wednesday before we left for Maryland, in addition to the new stove and dishwasher being delivered and installed, going to Sound Beginnings with Micah in the morning, we also met with a speech pathologist to have Micah evaluated. He's more or less on track for sounds that he should be producing at this age, but she'd like to see more spontaneous production of language rather than response to our prompting, so she'll be seeing him for an hour a week for awhile.