National MNATO
seeing as how most of you who read this don't have an attention span lasting more than 30 seconds, i'll put this behind an lj cut and can read it if you so choose.
EDIT: OMG I'M SUCH A MORON!! i totally forgot to mention the fact that we got best delegation for canada and honorable mention for estonia. annnd that my most junior chair on the delegation won the best chair award. i'm so proud of my ladies!!!
so joe thought it'd be a great idea to leave tuesday night for MNATO. spending a night on the bus prior to a conference sucks btw. took my back a day to recover. so anyways, on the bus, joe's sittin' across the aisle from me and decides that i'm small enough to not need my entire bench. i sat from gaffney to DC with joe's shoes on my bench. how sweet.... he later remarked that he "hated sleeping in the same bed as me b/c i move too much." there are some things you just never want to hear your advisor say..... in the middle of the night we stopped at Sheetz, which just absolutely made sarah and i's night ("we're finally home!!!! haha).
i'd say we got to DC right about 7:30ish. it was reallly drizzly and gross--typical DC late winter/early spring. got our rooms magically enough. ended up getting my room comped by the MNATO ppl so me and 'cole had our own beds (niiiiice!). grabbed a quick shower, and managed to get downstairs in enough time to help schools register. went with 'cole, elizabeth, and mall over to Howard w/ dr. nwanze and had a chair meeting.
plenary... oh jesus mary mother of g-d plenary. worst experience ever, as usual. as much as i love general vitale, the man should never brief anyone... gave my little speeches, which seemed to go over well (they were short... like me...) so yeah. joe did my introduction, and made me sound fabulous somehow. i seriously didn't know i'd done all that stuff!!
saw a few ppl from last year at plenary--ryan lafountain and bobby the chair :). ken too, but i don't remember how i knew him from last year, just that i did. of course dr. chalmer and dr. rubin too. finally met carmen iezzi for the first time in person (she sent me to Iceland), and she was great! finally made it to dinner, which was abysmal...
went back to the hotel and met w/ a few of my chairs to get help. hung out w/ baldwin wallace a bit, as well as went out for a drink w/ morgan from the citadel. nothing major that night.
thursday is the day from hell in the committees, in that it's the longest day and everyone gets cranky from hearing the word "consensus" too many times. crisised the lower committees, so that was fun. hung out with lakeland, the citadel, and univ. of british columbia that night. rum and vanilla bacardi is quite good. stole a sam adams from a stupid canadian while he had his hand on the box, so i was quite proud of myself :-D. also managed to steal a hat from a newfoundlander. how many of you can say you did that on thursday night, eh? :)
friday mornin' made it down to conference. got out at one from committee and spent from one to 9:45 in the crisis control room with nicole/carmen/kels (sarah and mall were there for a bit) getting slaphappy and eating pizza. lakeland came down to help after a while... the tea and sympathy sort of help. finally finish up the summit packet and just as we're a/b to leave camilo starts telling the cheerio joke..... took everything mike, forest, carmen, sam, and i had to keep from beating the shit out of him 45 minutes later when the joke ended.
after that walked around DC for a while with forest. made it up to the washington monument and just sat under it for a while. played "find the moon" (yes, in DC sometimes that can be hard...) for about 20 minute. froze our asses off so ended up going back to the hotel. went back and hung out in the lobby bar for a while with ken, forest, sam, mike, et al. flirted my way into free drinks from ken and hungary (yeah i suck and can't remember his name). forest and i made our way up to a citadel room and we hung out w/ him and 'cole and zarah for a while. made it back to my room early saturday morning and crashed.
woke up feeling like absolute hell on saturday. popped some pills and went back to bed. kels and 'cole got me breakfast and helped w/ copies--can i just say now that they're absolute dolls? carmen was extremely helpful as well. meds kicked in long enough for me to chair--they literally wore off the second awards were over. packed in 2 minutes and flew downstairs. paused as long as i could to say goodbye to ppl and ran out for the bus.
stopped for lunch just south of the city. got back on the bus and proceded to pass out till richmond. had a good long talk w/ joe and then took another nap till a/b greensboro. stopped to eat on the greensboro side of charlotte (i forgot how good jalapeno poppers from arby's were). talked on the phone w/ ppl for a while, then realized we were gettin' back to spartanburg. joe had told me on monday that from tuesday through saturday i wasn't allowed to think a/b stuff but that the second we got back to sparkle city i was allowed to cry. i swear hittin' pine street did me in, and the waterworks began. joe saw me gettin' upset and came over and did the dad thing till we got back to converse. came upstairs w/ my stuff and fully intended on passing out. returned a call to salim that i'd missed on the bus and ended up chatting w/ him for about two hours. it was nice to catch up and to talk to someone that isn't going to be upset w/ me for being in the mood i was in last nite.
woke up this mornin' to 4 new facebook friend requests. some myspace requests as well. i'm prolly going to cross-post this at myspace as well.
love and hugs!!
if you made it through all that you're a better person than i.
quotes from the conference (names have been left off to protect the guilty):
"so this cheerio was drivin' a bitchin' lesabre"
in reference to a guy at the canadian embassy: "man i'd let that piece of canadian bacon top my pizza any day."
"some boyfriends leave you with goodbye sex; others leave you with goodbye flu."
"i'd love to penetrate _________'s (insert your favorite country here) borders...;)."
"for those of you in the room that are yankees, 'y'all' is a contraction of 'you all' and is a pronoun referring to a group of people in a room. 'all y'all' referrs to every single person in a room. therefore, for future reference, 'y'all' refers to the North Atlantic Council, and 'all y'all' refers to the NAC and anyone else present in the room."
"nicole, whenever you point to me, i'll take that as my signal to tell someone 'fuck you' for you."
"give me my hat back!!!"
and of course, my personal favorite:
"is that a point or motion, or are you just happy to see me?"
EDIT: OMG I'M SUCH A MORON!! i totally forgot to mention the fact that we got best delegation for canada and honorable mention for estonia. annnd that my most junior chair on the delegation won the best chair award. i'm so proud of my ladies!!!
so joe thought it'd be a great idea to leave tuesday night for MNATO. spending a night on the bus prior to a conference sucks btw. took my back a day to recover. so anyways, on the bus, joe's sittin' across the aisle from me and decides that i'm small enough to not need my entire bench. i sat from gaffney to DC with joe's shoes on my bench. how sweet.... he later remarked that he "hated sleeping in the same bed as me b/c i move too much." there are some things you just never want to hear your advisor say..... in the middle of the night we stopped at Sheetz, which just absolutely made sarah and i's night ("we're finally home!!!! haha).
i'd say we got to DC right about 7:30ish. it was reallly drizzly and gross--typical DC late winter/early spring. got our rooms magically enough. ended up getting my room comped by the MNATO ppl so me and 'cole had our own beds (niiiiice!). grabbed a quick shower, and managed to get downstairs in enough time to help schools register. went with 'cole, elizabeth, and mall over to Howard w/ dr. nwanze and had a chair meeting.
plenary... oh jesus mary mother of g-d plenary. worst experience ever, as usual. as much as i love general vitale, the man should never brief anyone... gave my little speeches, which seemed to go over well (they were short... like me...) so yeah. joe did my introduction, and made me sound fabulous somehow. i seriously didn't know i'd done all that stuff!!
saw a few ppl from last year at plenary--ryan lafountain and bobby the chair :). ken too, but i don't remember how i knew him from last year, just that i did. of course dr. chalmer and dr. rubin too. finally met carmen iezzi for the first time in person (she sent me to Iceland), and she was great! finally made it to dinner, which was abysmal...
went back to the hotel and met w/ a few of my chairs to get help. hung out w/ baldwin wallace a bit, as well as went out for a drink w/ morgan from the citadel. nothing major that night.
thursday is the day from hell in the committees, in that it's the longest day and everyone gets cranky from hearing the word "consensus" too many times. crisised the lower committees, so that was fun. hung out with lakeland, the citadel, and univ. of british columbia that night. rum and vanilla bacardi is quite good. stole a sam adams from a stupid canadian while he had his hand on the box, so i was quite proud of myself :-D. also managed to steal a hat from a newfoundlander. how many of you can say you did that on thursday night, eh? :)
friday mornin' made it down to conference. got out at one from committee and spent from one to 9:45 in the crisis control room with nicole/carmen/kels (sarah and mall were there for a bit) getting slaphappy and eating pizza. lakeland came down to help after a while... the tea and sympathy sort of help. finally finish up the summit packet and just as we're a/b to leave camilo starts telling the cheerio joke..... took everything mike, forest, carmen, sam, and i had to keep from beating the shit out of him 45 minutes later when the joke ended.
after that walked around DC for a while with forest. made it up to the washington monument and just sat under it for a while. played "find the moon" (yes, in DC sometimes that can be hard...) for about 20 minute. froze our asses off so ended up going back to the hotel. went back and hung out in the lobby bar for a while with ken, forest, sam, mike, et al. flirted my way into free drinks from ken and hungary (yeah i suck and can't remember his name). forest and i made our way up to a citadel room and we hung out w/ him and 'cole and zarah for a while. made it back to my room early saturday morning and crashed.
woke up feeling like absolute hell on saturday. popped some pills and went back to bed. kels and 'cole got me breakfast and helped w/ copies--can i just say now that they're absolute dolls? carmen was extremely helpful as well. meds kicked in long enough for me to chair--they literally wore off the second awards were over. packed in 2 minutes and flew downstairs. paused as long as i could to say goodbye to ppl and ran out for the bus.
stopped for lunch just south of the city. got back on the bus and proceded to pass out till richmond. had a good long talk w/ joe and then took another nap till a/b greensboro. stopped to eat on the greensboro side of charlotte (i forgot how good jalapeno poppers from arby's were). talked on the phone w/ ppl for a while, then realized we were gettin' back to spartanburg. joe had told me on monday that from tuesday through saturday i wasn't allowed to think a/b stuff but that the second we got back to sparkle city i was allowed to cry. i swear hittin' pine street did me in, and the waterworks began. joe saw me gettin' upset and came over and did the dad thing till we got back to converse. came upstairs w/ my stuff and fully intended on passing out. returned a call to salim that i'd missed on the bus and ended up chatting w/ him for about two hours. it was nice to catch up and to talk to someone that isn't going to be upset w/ me for being in the mood i was in last nite.
woke up this mornin' to 4 new facebook friend requests. some myspace requests as well. i'm prolly going to cross-post this at myspace as well.
love and hugs!!
if you made it through all that you're a better person than i.
quotes from the conference (names have been left off to protect the guilty):
"so this cheerio was drivin' a bitchin' lesabre"
in reference to a guy at the canadian embassy: "man i'd let that piece of canadian bacon top my pizza any day."
"some boyfriends leave you with goodbye sex; others leave you with goodbye flu."
"i'd love to penetrate _________'s (insert your favorite country here) borders...;)."
"for those of you in the room that are yankees, 'y'all' is a contraction of 'you all' and is a pronoun referring to a group of people in a room. 'all y'all' referrs to every single person in a room. therefore, for future reference, 'y'all' refers to the North Atlantic Council, and 'all y'all' refers to the NAC and anyone else present in the room."
"nicole, whenever you point to me, i'll take that as my signal to tell someone 'fuck you' for you."
"give me my hat back!!!"
and of course, my personal favorite:
"is that a point or motion, or are you just happy to see me?"