Writers Conference: CODE WORD: STARFIRE

I've never been to Arizona, until this trip.  Let's just get that out right now.  Judge me all you want, but I know I'm not a well traveled American and probably completely unaware of the world on some level. Oh well.  I'm happy in Idaho Falls.

Anyway, upon arriving at the airport, I brought the weather with me, though I guess I left behind snow, and not rain.  It rained while I waited for Destiny's flight to arrive.  Steam came up off the cement, people rushed from one building to the next, seldom did anyone look me in the eye. No one smiled at me unless I smiled at them.  My lungs experienced a heaviness in breathing, but my nose was on high alert, smelling a very different, but unrecognizable, scent in the air.

Meanwhile, I was FREEZING in the overly air conditioned building; shivering as I read a lame romance story, I dreamt of basking in the sun.  Idaho Falls residents can appreciate and understand my disappointment at this first time experience.

Finally, an hour later, she arrived.

Rental Car and Lunch.

Got lost a bit.

I'm a pretty good navigator, however.  It was the GPS's fault.

I was thoroughly enjoying the cactus and palm tree combos everywhere.

Wonder a bit at the trees whose trunks were painted.

Having never physically met Destiny, we laid down one ground rule.

If it was getting awkward or uncomfortable or I was being creepy, etc. there was one thing we could do.... we could use the code word:

STARFIRE.

This way, if the word was spoken, the other would know they'd crossed some invisible line of sanity and it would help ward off embarrassing moments.

Never mind that.  I still had embarrassing moments.  Like the two

HUMONGOUS

sneezes during one of the keynote speakers lectures.

So. Embarrassing.

T

At our hotel, we unloaded our things, repacked our purses and took of for some sight seeing and adventure.  And by adventure, I mean shopping.

Before the spree, in which I would discover that I had money to burn and NOTHING to buy, we did some recon work and check out the hotel that was hosting the conference.  Beautiful building. Delicious.

Skipping the boring details of my adventures in Forever 21, Charming Charlie, Crate and Barrel and Anthropologysomethingorother, we realized we were starving around 9 pm.  My body knew it was really 8pm, with the time difference, so I ordered a light salad with grilled chicken on it at The Grand Lux.

It took an hour for that salad to arrive.

I accosted the waiter with questions.

Fun times.

 Good sport.

Decent tip.

Oddly enough, STARFIRE didn't come out of Destiny's mouth.

Living in flip flops all day left my feet filthy, and after a quick and hot shower back at the hotel, we hunkered down, eager for Friday's activities.I foolishly read until 1 am, again my body clearly indicating it was 2am....and then crashed after a dose of Unisom.  Little did I know I would awake at 7:30am.

Ps. Destiny would try to convince me that TOTES is the new way to say TOTALLY.

So. Not.