…stays in Vegas.

Except I’m a blogger, so I don’t believe in secrecy.

But now…close your eyes, and imagine that it’s the middle of March, instead of the beginning of May.
Imagine…
Imagine…

Hey! No peeking!

The NJCL had their Spring Planning Meeting in Las Vegas this year. I can assure you that this sounds far more glamorous than it actually was. We stayed at an Amerisuites about a mile away from the Aladdin. I flew in on Friday after math class was over. For whatever it’s worth, the flight from Nashville to Las Vegas was a lot longer than I expected it to be—two different times, I looked at my watch and thought our plane must be coming in late, only to realize that we had crossed into a different time zone.

The meetings on Saturday were really very uninteresting, for the most part. We got a lot done at FPM, so we weren’t left with much to do at SPM. The only thing I can think of that other people care about is the Officers’ Skit. Assuming Zach turns out to be a prodigy screenwriter, we should have a good skit.

Also, there are currently two board members who don’t have laptops: Laurel and me. This is ironic, because our positions are more technology driven than anyone else’s. As a result of a long drawn-out support fiasco with Dell, Cain had an extra laptop, so he brought it with him for me to use, but he only had one power adapter between the two laptops. Since the room where the Officers met didn’t have WiFi, he brought an extra switch and we both brought as many ethernet cables as we could lay our hands on.

Every couple of hours, the Officers would stop meeting and go down to report on our progress to the Committee. Every time, Zach would assure us that this we would be down there for a little while, so every time, Cain and I packed up our equipment and schlepped it all down four floors. And every time, we would report on our progress and then be sent away, forcing us to lug the electronics back up. This happened 4 or 5 times over the course of Saturday.

After the meetings were over, we headed into Las Vegas for a little fun (and some cheap photo ops at Caesar’s expense). The hotel ran a shuttle back and forth from the Aladdin, so we started there. Next, we walked past Paris and headed for the Bellagio, where Laura’s parents were staying, because she needed to stop by her room. While she went up there with Dr. Fu, the rest of us waited to watch the fountains. Unfortunately, there was some wind, so the fountains were cancelled.

Drew then decided that he wanted to take us to his favorite hotel, the Venetian. We rushed over to the Venetian, but we only had 30 minutes before we were supposed to meet everyone at Caesar’s Palace. By the time we got there, we had to turn around and head back.

We then ate dinner at the Caesar’s Palace Planet Hollywood (we ate so much better during FPM). After dinner, the Officers were allowed to wander around the Caesar’s shopping mall. We sort of looked around at some clothes stores and then discovered the F.A.O. Schwartz with the 30 foot tall Trojan Horse. And on the top floor? DDR machines and an air hockey table. Those kept us occupied for the rest of our free time. For the record, I have indirectly beaten half of the Officers at air hockey (I beat Cain and Preeti, who beat Drew, although Cain beat me the first game).

That’s about it for Spring Planning. We headed back to the hotel, slept, and left the next day. Personally, I was very glad to have scheduled the early afternoon flight, as opposed to Cain, who I believe had to wake up at something like 4:00 to catch his flight.

Also, all the Officers proudly proclaim the fact that we are but ants under the heel of the National Committee at each meeting by giving gifts to everyone else. This time, most of the Officers brought some form of chocolate. Zach’s gift, however, amused me, because he gave us purple and gold M&Ms.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 3rd, 2006 at 7:51 pm and is filed under JCL. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.