Fun times in San Antonio

I recently returned from my second trip to San Antonio, TX in a span of about 2 months. This time I went for a users conference for a software application we use at work. Its one of those rare conferences that includes plenty of practical learning opportunities and more fun than any one person should ever get to enjoy on the company nickel.

Because this is a personal blog, I'll focus on my more memorable entertaining memories:

• Remember the Alamo! - The battle cry of Texans. I remembered it as well when I arrived because I got tossed from the place for trying to drink a beer the last time I visited.
  

• Hearing a motivational speech by former Notre Dame football coach and current ESPN college football analyst, Lou Holtz. I have to admit - I wasn't the biggest Coach Lou fan going in. Much of my opinion was shaped by my University of Tennessee diggin' dad who hasn't liked him since his days as coach at Arkansas. But its not every day one gets to meet a championship-winning coach. After his presentation, I was humbled to be invited to meet him and have our photo made together. He also gave me an autograph on the back of his business card.
  

• Finding Schaefer Light beer again in another H-E-B Grocery. There it was - nestled amongst some of the top yard beers of all time: PBR, Schlitz, and the Beast. All 24 cans made it back to Tennessee safe and sound thanks to Southwest Airlines. (The whole Schaefer story is too much to explain here. Follow our Schaefer adventures at Bench Racing from the Volunteer State if you want to learn more.)
  

• Saddling up on the back of a long-horned Texas steer. I look pretty good after 8 seconds of rodeo riding, don't I? And how 'bout that dime-store cowboy hat! If I had another day or two of beard growth, I'm sure some folks would mistake me for Chuck Norris.

• Spending a few minutes with some amateur astronomers who brought their telescopes to our hotel. I got up close and personal with the crater-riddled moon. I got to see Jupiter flanked by four of its moons. A third telescope allowed me to get a closer look at Jupiter - including its amazing horizontal bands. And a fourth telescope was focused on a cluster of stars. (Supposedly I was looking at star clusters and the Andromeda galaxy. What do I know? It sounded impressive, so let's go with it.)

• Varying shades of purple, orange, and red of a Texas sunset. But more important, a pick-up loaded with all-you-could-consume Shiner Bock! (Out of frame was a second truck - just in case we put an undue hurting on this one.)
  

• Experiencing the burn of a habanero pepper-infused tequila margarita. From my lips ... down the chute ... to my pit of my stomach. Cue Johnny Cash: ... and it burns, burns, burns. The ring of fire, the ring of fire.

• Hanging with two friends from the U.K. who I met at previous years' conferences. I excel in speaking with a southern accent - even a bit 'hick' some may say (though I prefer the more sophisticated derisive term: toomuchcountry). My southernness gets more pronounced as the nights get longer and the tab grows larger. The same is true for the British brogue - and unique sayings - of my London brethren. When the hotel sports bar we were visiting closed at 2AM, one of them pleaded for them to they stay open. “Me still has a tab mate.” When the bartender insisted he had no choice, we reluctantly accepted the night was over. But the UK bloke told me he wanted to say “Ahhh, jump off ya bloody wankers”. I'm sure it would have been a true British insult yet understood by Americans as a comical PG smack down.
  

The three of us also discussed types of beer and drinking habits - both in the US and the UK. I mentioned the planned opening of Mayday Brewery in 2011 and that Ozzy Nelson had given me a growler or two of some of the brews he's begun making.

Upon mention of the word "growler", they both started laughing - snickering at first, followed by gut-busting laughs. Clearly I had missed something. I soon learned my definition of the word as a half-gallon beer bottle in the U.S. has quite a different slang meaning in the U.K. I'll spare you the alternate definition here. But if you insist on knowing, I've got two words for you: Urban Dictionary.

Who knew work-paid training could be so much fun?

TMC

Continuing Education Memorable Moments: The Sequel

Last year around this time, I blogged my list of most awkward moments from our annual department continuing education seminar. This year was my fourteenth such event. Once again, all 130 or so of us spent four days together in early September off-site at a state park for training, company updates, obligatory team building activities, and late night "social festivities".

Several days ago, Ozzy Nelson (click to follow him on Twitter) blogged the details of one of his memorable moments from this year - one of his own making! I'd now like to blog a few of my most memorable moments of the week.

• One of our speakers presented on the subject of Accounting for Impaired Assets. The subject was quite appropriate considering the hungover status of much of his audience.
  

• A motivational speaker urged us to shoot for an epic failure and study lousy customer service. (Actually, the guy was quite funny AND had a meaningful point at the end of his presentation re: the aligning of failure and success.)

• Multiple 20-somethings informed me they'd never heard of Wendy’s “Where’s The Beef?” ad campaign.

• PowerPoint FAIL - by a PricewaterhouseCoopers statistician. (OK, so maybe its a double-fail. I don't know.) This fellow works for what is known as a Big 4 public accounting firm. These folks know accounting, tax, technology, economics, business and personal financial planning, etc. But one thing is clear - they don't know JACK SQUAT about composing a PowerPoint presentation. Did he really think delivering about 50 slides of 8 point font and 200 words per slide with teal-colored font on a white background for a 50 minute presentation was going to work? The only things missing were overdone animation and swishing sound effects.

• Everyone was asked to dress up for 80s night for our gathering at a local restaurant-beach club-dance hall-bar thing place joint. Two male co-workers showed up with bras on their heads a la Weird Science. This memorable moment could have become an unforgettable moment had they been able to bring Kelly LeBrock with them.

• After the bra-men worked the room a while, I then got an overview of bra shopping and fitting tips from a female co-worker. Shortly after this informative session, I inhaled, then exhaled, and nodded to our bartender to say "Another beer here please? Um, better make that two."

• The hired cover band - Rubik's Groove - kicked off Jessie’s Girl by Rick Springfield. I grimaced at the sound of 80+ people on the dance floor shrieking with glee as the band hit the opening riff. In my opinion, the song was a pretty rotten one when it was released. As far as I'm concerned, it hasn't improved with age. For crying out loud, the singer was an actor on the General Hospital soap opera! I was stunned at the number of our younger staff who not only had heard of it but screamed delightedly and danced merrily as the band played it. This poor, poor generation...
  

• A co-worker made a chest wig from hair he shaved off his dog. He had several co-workers stroke it. Sadly, a few of them believed the hair to be his own! While not explicitly saying who did this, you can discern it from... cough... namenearstartofthisblogentry... cough.

• The lead singer of the band went into the audience with his wireless mic. (If it had been a true 80s band, they would still have used corded microphones and slung them around like Roger Daltrey or Iggy Pop. But I digress.) He approached one of our female staffers who wanted less than zero part of his attention. She tried to feign interest in him - including acting like she was texting someone. But he stuck with it and yelled up at the band “Hey guys, guess what she’s doing. She’s texting someone back here.” Another co-worker - who was truly enjoying her frequent visits from our waitresses - leaned in and asked “did he just say she was tasting someone?”

• On the return shuttle trip from our 80s night event, multiple co-workers started belting out a lusty, off-key, a capella rendition of Bon Jovi’s Living on a Prayer. After making it through the chorus, the loud voice of a lone female sitting next to one of our department VPs suddenly jumped up and interrupted with "Hey mutha f*****rs, everybody sing Windows to the Wallllll!" A unison laugh resulted - followed by a noticeable pregnant pause - followed by someone thankfully kicking off Journey's Don't Stop Believing.

• During one of our late nights of "social festivities", another co-worker presented her case to me of the benefits of stripper pole exercising. It wasn't really a debate - I certainly wasn't presenting any counter-arguments. I merely listened intently, asked a few clarifying questions, agreed with every point made, and wholeheartedly supported her endeavor.

With each passing year, I realize more and more how past my prime I am in terms of hanging with the younger crowd. Yet sitting back and absorbing memorable moments such as these keeps me Forever Young (Rod Stewart - 1988 - 80s theme continuance).

For the record, my get-up for 80s night consisted of a Member's Only jacket adorned with buttons of Where's The Beef?, I Want My MTV, and the 1982 World's Fair.

For those who grew up in Nashville in the 1980s, you may also understand this one - one of Carl P. Mayfield's alter-egos:

To complete my ensemble, I snapped a SONY Walkman cassette player to my belt - complete with Synchronicity by The Police.
From time to time, I think I've had enough. Find something else to do - within or outside the company. Yet, sitting around with a smirk on my face, a willingness to observe and listen, and watch others 20 years younger than me rattle off an arsenal of career-limiting moves is generally enough to motivate me to stick around for one more year, one more year, one more year...

TMC

Continuing Education: Most Awkward Moments

Last week, our department was off-site at a Tennessee State Park for some training, company updates, juvenile "team building" activities (some of which bordered on code of conduct violations), golf, and parties that often sparked quicker than a California wild fire.

Earlier today, Ozzy Nelson (click to follow him on Twitter) succinctly blogged his five favorite moments of the training week. I'd now like to blog my favorite awkward moments of the week.

• Several of our speakers during the week were company management leaders who once worked in our department. Routinely, our senior vice president referred to each one of them as a "former alumni" - the rare, double, grammatical faux pas.

• One expects to encounter a bit of wildlife when in a state park. Squirrels, mice, snakes, rabbits, loons, and deer live off the land as people and cars visit amongst them. When the wildlife arrives, however, uninvited to a late night party where more folks are packed into a cabin than the fire marshal allows, well that's a different scenario entirely. That's apparently why it made perfect sense (?) for one of my fellow seasoned directors to take issue with a raccoon climbing a tree just outside the front door. He went into the night screaming "get outta here!" like a banshee and tried to cold-cock the coon out of the tree with a half-full beer can. He was unsuccessful but received an 8 score from the judges for his animated behavior and creative use of bland Miller Lite.

• An otherwise funny, engaging motivational presentation was suddenly made awkward by the inclusion of ebonics. We were introduced to the words "dillipline" (supposedly discipline + diligence) and "excellecution" (excellence + execution I believe it was). I tried to search for these words at merriam-webster.com but got the blue screen of death.
  

• Representatives from our external accounting firm were with us for a couple of days and contributed multiple awkward moments including but not limited to: (1) using dozens of PowerPoint slides with way too much 10 point font detail, (2) asking trivia questions such as "who can name all the characters on Saved By The Bell?", (3) having no swag or candy or anything to give away to the one person who actually answered that question, (4) grabbing the booty of one of our female co-workers during a roller-skating game of capture the flag - after he'd already snagged the bandanna from her hip pocket, and (5) opening his remarks the next morning with the line "Its good to see so many young, good-looking ...uh...um...folks in the room." Yes sir, they didn't get to be one of the Big 4 by accident.

• And my favorite awkward moment of the week is courtesy of our assistant vice president for training who uttered these two memorable quotes during the week:
  
  "I could just spend all night with [unnamed speaker]. He makes me giggle.", and
  
  "I like it. That was long AND hard." [her response to a sustained round of enthusiastic applause for her two employees who did the yeoman's work in planning and executing the week]

TMC