An April Weekend

I love my family.  This is Omayja who recently turned four.  She has the most delightful signature.  A big wobbly O;  an M that surpasses the grandeur of the golden arches;  a circle and a stick put together so that the end result looks like a little upside-down apple;  a cute curly little Y floating high above the other letters with it’s tail almost touching it’s face;  a large backwards L for the J, angular and strong and done in bold;  and finally, upside-down apple number two.  It’s beautiful, just like she is - a grandma’s treasure.

This is Kale, Saturday night before bed.  Popcorn and a movie for four, and a much more interesting DS game for one.  That’s Omayja’s foot on his shoulder.  He is oblivous to all distractions.

This is Madison.  She is zonked.  Her popcorn falls everywhere all on it’s own.  She finds the movie boring and yawns a lot.  Grandma gets the evil eye because she does not retrieve the fallen popcorn in a timely fashion.

This is Corey (who recently turned three) and Kenzie, cousins wearing  matching gray p.j.’s, joined by a big fluffy rabbit (no relation), sharing popcorn from the same bowl.  As long as Corey gets to hold the bowl, it’s all good.  I don’t know what’s up with the synchronized arm and head movements.    

 

We also had a brand new baby with us for the weekend who slept through this party;  a set of parents who went to a wedding and got a much deserved break (however brief) and some very rare alone time;  a daughter/mom/aunt who gave up part of her weekend to care for baby “Sadies” and help grandma order pizza.  Those are big responsibilities;  she did both very well.  Other miscellaneous people were grandpa and James, Clay and Jill, and the pizza delivery guy.  I think that’s everybody.

So now my house is quiet again.  I have a driveway covered in chalk drawings, a toyroom that needs some serious sorting out, and grass with a high soap content from all the bubbles.  I also have the sweet memory of a little girl telling me “Grandma, your house is too far away!”

The Conference

It really irks me to admit it, but the conference last weekend was excellent.  I was able to check my bags at the hotel around 9 a.m. and spend some lovely wandering around time waiting for a room.  Down the escalator and around the corner and into a mall.  Sat down and drank an enormous cup of coffee.  Watched busy Vancouverites rushing around doing whatever busy Vancouverites rush around doing.  My roomate turned out to be a lovely girl who has been with the company only six months, so definitely not into the whining stage of employment yet.  I tried REALLY hard to nix the negative comments.  She was newly married, newly licensed, young, cute, happy.  I think I was like that once. So I tried to imagine THAT me stuck with the PRESENT me for an entire weekend, and cleaned up my act considerably.  I can be nice.  Yes, that was meant to be serious.

The food at the hotel was delightful, although B.C. is a province that tends to go a little bit overboard in the seafood category.  W. told me to be sure to have the baked salmon.  How long have we been married?  Has he never noticed that I have not once  in my life ordered anything even remotely resembling a salmon steak?  Fish should be white and breaded and deep fried and taste like seafood sauce.  And come with fries.  I did eat some by mistake though – a big slab of undercooked pink stuff cleverly camoflauged on a bun stuffed with some colorful leaves and things.   Well, I’m no food review writer, obviously.  But for everything the presentation was a huge percentage of the appeal.  Everything tastes better when it looks good first.   Except for that undercooked pink stuff.  Yech.

At the afternoon optical session on Friday we were bombarded with all the new stuff that’s up and coming.  It was nice to finally put faces to the names we’ve been e-mailing about all our frustrating work related problems.  Then we joined the pharmacists and played that team game where everyone is assigned a position and together you have to construct a leggo thing exactly like one that is already made up.  Except the Builder is far removed from the prototype and never actually gets to see it and has to rely on verbal communication to get the job done.  The Director is supposed to give clear instructions on what is to be built and how.  The Runner must pass this information on to the builder also without seeing the finished model.  The Observer can see what is supposed to be built and what is actually being built but is allowed to say only “that’s right”, or “that’s wrong.”  A second observer takes notes on what works and what doesn’t work to share with the group when it’s all over.  And the Manager gets to leave the room and be accesible for meetings which the group never thinks to call because they’re too busy trying to get this stupid thing built before the time runs out.  So was this supposed to make us all aspire to be managers??  One team had it done and done right in about ten minutes.  I think our team got about four pieces put together.  Our builder was a pharamcist, so we could have been there all night!  HAHA!  Okay, final pharmacy dig, I promise.

Saturday was a full day of education sessions, new products, new technology, new slogan.  Our focus is supposed to be on health and living better.  It’s not about selling stuff.  Of course we’re hoping people who want to be healthy will BUY stuff.  In the afternoon we got to visit a whole lot of vendor’s booths and tables and fill up bags with free samples.  There was a pharmaceutical company giving away clocks.  So I took one.  Why did I do that?  Maybe deep down inside I think it would be rude to refuse a gift from a nice man.  I had a hell of a time stuffing that thing into my suitcase, but it’s now hanging in our doctor’s room.  I also have travel mugs, eye drop samples, lanyards, antimicrobial phone pads, tons of printed material, note paper, and three bazillion pens.  To end the day we all met in the lobby and in one great big group walked to another hotel for the awards banquet where they honor the pharmacist and optician of the year.  And also students in each category.  Two lucky people won GPS’s in a draw.  Sunday was more of the same, but shorter.  I’m really impressed with the speakers and the quality of the presentations.  I’ve been to other seminars that put me to sleep in less than five minutes, but that was not the case here at all.  I sincerely hope next year they don’t have restrictions on how many opticians can attend.  Everyone should have the opportunity.  (Well I’M not going, but people who express an interest should be allowed to go.)  (I’ve had enough optical fun to last me the rest of my career.)

It seemed like a long time between the end of the conference and the various plane departures, but factor into that a last quick shopping trip, having my bags go missing (they somehow made their way into a special locked room and had to be tracked down) (gawd, I could have lost that damn clock!!|)  and getting back to the airport and having a quick supper and making our way to the departure gates, all timed rather well but……sorry to inform you, your plane has been delayed.   It was only forty minutes, and only mine.  We all seemed to be booked on different flights even if our destinations were the same.  Just for fun, let’s put this one on a flight to Edmonton that stops in Kelowna!  HAHA!!  Let’s fly this one little Manitoban to Winnipeg at midnight!!  She has to be at work in Brandon the next day, so that makes perfect sense to us random flight bookers from hell. 

Oh yeah, I said I wasn’t going to be negative.  Okay, so I had a direct flight, when it finally got airborne, and I made it home.  W.  picked me up at the airport and I put his eleven dollar parking fee on my expense claim.  I also claimed mileage for his trip to the airport and back.  I did not claim for duress.  Because there wasn’t any, in the grand scheme of things.  Well, maybe a little coming back from the humid shirt sleeve weather to the dry and dirty snow.  But I’m glad I went, happy I saw a little bit of Vancouver, had a bit of a break, and that somebody else paid for it all.

What I’m Going to do Next

Well who ever really knows that for sure, but we do make plans, don’t we.  Okay – I’m off to Vancouver tomorrow.  All expenses paid for a Pharmacist/Optician Continuing Education Conference.  In all the written stuff they’ve given us, Pharmacist always comes before Optician, because pharmacists are VASTLY more important, even though O comes before P in the alphabet.  It’s just one of  the many little bones of contention festering in the hearts of opticians since our two departments were joined at the hip.  Well maybe only in my heart, but our DM is a pharamcist who looks down his nose at us as professionals and does not respect our work so I’ve decided to just lump the whole lot of them together.  He  originally thought dispensing glasses should be as simple as dispensing pills.   Just fill the prescription- why are you spending so much TIME with these people?  He’s gotten better since they made him give a talk on all the criteria involved in interpreting and filling a glasses Rx at the last manager’s meeting.  Which was all quite hilarious in itself, him explaining what information we need to get from and give to the patient.  But I digress.  As usual. 

I think it might have been a pharmacist who made up the timetable, although I could be wrong. It might also have been a room full of monkeys.  I arrive in Vancouver at 8:00 a.m. on April 3rd.  The optical program begins at noon and runs until 4:00p.m.  I guess I will just have a very long breakfast.  Check in time is after 3:00. So do I take my luggage with me for the first 4 hours?   The conference kicks off with a Welcome Reception at 6:00 pm.   Ummmm….what was that first 4 hours – warm up?  The conference concludes at 2:30 p.m. on Sunday, but check out time is noon.  This is all information taken directly from my faxed confirmation, stamped REVISED at the top because the first one had me rooming with a co-worker who suddenly was not allowed to attend since only one person from every Vision Center can go this year (they tell you the rules after you apply), although three people went last year from ours, and there are several Vision Centers that aren’t sending anyone this year.  Does that not open up some extra space?  Whatever.  Now I’m staying with a complete stranger.  From Manitoba.  Or Mars.  I’m not trusting anything I read as the gospel truth just yet.

On top of everything else, I have developed a stupid head cold just in time to go flying.  Someone up there hates me.  So although I fully expected to be mildly unhappy, I did NOT anticipate being completely miserable.  Perhaps if I hack and cough and sniffle all night long my Martian roomate will get her own room.  I had thought of doing that myself actually, but decided to spend my money on cold medications instead and be winged out for three days.  That should improve my attitude to some degree. 

This is the 9th Annual WM CE Conference, although it will be year two for opticians being included, but we’re not important enough for them to restart the count.   My flight home on Sunday is at 6:30 p.m.  Perhaps I’ll be so dazed by all that education that I’ll require 4 hours to find my way back to the airport.  And then I get to go back to work the next day where it will all still be very fresh in my mind so that I’ll be able to complain about it for my entire shift making it highly improbable that they will EVER let me attend another one of these things.  All’s well that ends well I suppose.