Dallas Daze

It's almost 11:00 PM here, and it's been quite a ride in Dallas, Texas over the past five days.

I came here for a national conference for School Counselors-my chosen profession.

If you've ever been to a conference, you know what they're about more or less. You go, hear a keynote speaker, go to break-out session on topics that interest you (all related to the bigger theme of the conference, in this case School Counseling). They feed you buckets of food, the air conditioning is on full-blast so that even in 100+ degree whether you need a jacket, and then they fill your afternoon and evening with social events and raffles and oh, don't forget the exhibit hall where you will find booth after booth of vendor's materials for sale.

This was the same as any other convention that you would go to for your job. I enjoyed it and learned a lot but won't bore you with the details.

Some of you asked about Dallas and how the trip has been overall. Well, I got here a day early and was travelling to Whole Foods (to get my own food so I wouldn't be tempted to eat the mountains of fried chicken that was served at the convention). On the way, I young man tried to ask me out. He was about the age of the 8th graders that I serve as a School Counselor for. I knew this no matter how hard he tried to convince me that he was 21 years old.

While walking to get dinner, we came across a group of children performing on the street (singing a Michael Jackson song). On another night, we got to watch a very talented 9-year-old dance to "Billy Jean". He was stunning. I wonder if it is part of the Dallas culture to have children perform on the streets?

The convention center where most of the daily events took place was a five minute walk from the hotel where everyone stayed, but they had about three or four Greyhound buses that shuttled people back and forth all day long. I wondered how much gas they burned doing that.

I met a lot of people, including counselors from all over the world. (Korea, the Virgin Islands, Indonesia). I met a very nice man from Oregon. He was a little closer to my age so I was cool with him asking me out. No saucy counselor romance to speak of though, sorry. Just a very warm hug goodnight at the end of a lovely conversation and an invitation to email him in Oregon.

I went running this morning and checked out a little more of Dallas. It was difficult to really get a full picture of the place. Every street I ran down would have about a block of business offices and then maybe a condo unit and then industrial looking stuff. It seemed to be a hodge-podge of good and bad parts of town all wrapped into one. I think most everyone but the tourists drive everywhere they go. It didn't take long for me to run into the weave of highways criss-crossing the landscape. There was a lot of piss on the sidewalks and some human feces too.

I did get a sense when I attended a Weight Watcher's meeting on Monday that the women complain about their husbands frequently here. I don't know what that's about, but their accents were cute and I enjoyed listening to them talk.

Those are my not-so-insightful insights about the city, folks. It is a little more humid here, there is definitely a different culture here but it was a little tricky to fully discover what it was all about. Although I noticed pretty much everyone was married by the time they were out of college. I don't know if that has anything to do with the prolific spouse complaints or not.

Signing out for tonight, I say farewell to Dallas. I don't know when or if I'll see her again.

I look forward to getting back home.