Yesterday morning, I woke up to a siren... and then a voice saying... Warning, this is not a test, a fire has been detected on your floor. Please proceed to the nearest stairwell and exit... or something to that effect.

Yeah, at the Marriott, the fire alarm went off, at 6:20am. I had my alarm set for 6:30, so I missed out on a solid 10 minutes of sleep! Hey, 10 minutes could mean the world to me. Well, we all kind of go to the stairwells, walk outside. Some people really took it seriously... because women were in nighties, some guy was ONLY wearing boxers, etc. I took a few seconds to throw on my glasses, and some clothes... even a bra.




(Ugghh - Blogger just shut on me and lost the rest of my post!!)

I was pretty pissy that my sleep was interrupted and that my customers were seeing me with bed head, morning breath, and tank and shorts... but then I saw this, and suddenly, I was not so upset..





Then about 6:30 they let us get back into our rooms. When I went back into my room, I noticed that same rainbow above the golf course.




I was running behind, so I hurried into the shower (where the alarm went off - again, but I just stayed in the shower). I got dressed and ran down to breakfast before my meeting.

I was in meetings all day, one of which I had to do a 30 min presentation. After that the whole group had lunch and hit the golf course!

It had FINALLY stopped raining, and the weather cleared up for us, though it was really balmy. We played at TPC Heron Bay, and I actually had a pretty good game, especially considering that I am a pretty lousy golfer. On one hole, a par 3, my drive landed on the green, about 3 feet from the pin, bounced a bit, and rolled in. I guess that's a really big deal to golfers, but wasn't truly legit because I didn't start my drive from the correct place or something. Whatever, yeah, I rock.



After golfing, we all went back to the hotel to shower up before dinner. One of the guys in my conference offered to come to my room to help me, or discuss work, or something... Yeah, I am one of few females in my male dominated construction field. It gets weird sometimes, but I will explain more about that later.

We had dinner, networked, talked a bunch. Then I stayed out with a few from our group drinking a bit until pretty late. I was also raving about a product I use a lot to the rep that worked for the particular company. He was pretty amused that I loved his product so much. I was selling it to the other people in my group, essentially.

Finally, I went to bed about 1:30 a.m. (conferences are brutal because you kind of have to stay up with customers!), and had to be back downstairs in my meeting again at 7:00am... which I am struggling.

I must talk about something... So, I am in a male dominated field, and some people in my field have a rep of being, well, less than perfect gentlemen. Also, I think most people that travel, especially alone, are men, making me a bit of an anomaly. Well, men then give me some stereotypes... one is that I am a trampy type and will sleep around on my trips, another is my company sent me to flirt, and finally they think I am just some random at the hotel, and I could not possibly be with their conference.

Which makes it super inappropriate when you start telling me weird things about your sexual adventures last weekend while I'm eating my steak at the bar... and then you see me, at your conference the next morning. Oh, and I haven't been on a trip yet, where I wasn't propositioned by a married man - in fact, this trip the option was there the Tuesday night BEFORE my Thursday conference started! Funny, right? This is what women deal with all the time and it's awful.

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