Sorry! Wrote a blog for my trip to Reno earlier in the week but never posted....here it goes....

I finally landed in reno a good 45 minutes late -- luckily, it was only 45 minutes. The luggage people took their sweet time and when asked about it, we were told to be patient and not to give up. 30 min later, the blinking red light, indicating life in the conveyor. Then it stopped. How fitting. People started climbing the ledges of the conveyor and crowding towards the areas with luggage density to grab theirs; it was already half past midnight. They were tired and they'd been patient enough. We upgraded our car to an SUV and headed out to the rentals lot.

The automatic doors opened and a tumbleweed rolled by. I was always amazed by the sight of tumbleweeds, half-expecting a cowboy to come riding along on a horse and lasso something -- maybe the tumbleweed. We piled into the car and headed out.

There are two things I learned that night. First, know directions. Trial and error is not good in small, desert towns when the next county is 25 miles away. Second, drinking the tap water there is not advised, apparently due to some nuclear testing nearby. Maybe that's just what they told the visitors so they wouldn't go hunting for Area 51, or at least, I half expected to see it hidden in a silo somewhere.

The hills were numerous. Desert and dried up vegetation and snow-capped, low mountains surrounded the freeway. We missed our exit because they decided to hide the name of the place we were heading to on a giant highway sign that you can only see if you've already exited or just passed the exit. Great planning, really. This goes back to point one on knowing directions. Luckily, our navigator was well-versed in this small place and knew we could take a city street (well, a non-freeway street) for a bit to connect back to the highway.

We eventually made it and the highlight? Free cookies at the check-in counter. Like a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Oh...and then there were 2 days of conferences and I think my presentations went well for the most part. I'm still employed -- that's the good news. We also had a big work dinner on the second night...apparently being the youngest girl there while being the only one to polish off a steak and still want dessert makes me look like a big eater. Doh :$