October 20, 2011: SpiceWorld 2011

Medifast Status: Day 171, Down ~63lbs

I slept in a little this morning but only a very little.  I got up and started working for the office before jumping in the shower to get ready for SpiceWorld.  When I got in the shower is when I looked down and realized that I had been “branded” at Coyote Ugly – I had a large heart on my chest with “Jordyn” written in it in permanent marker.  Now that was pretty surprising.  I did not remember that at all.

SpiceWorld was a blast this morning.  It is awesome now that I’ve been here for three years because there are tons of people that I get to go back and see.  The first year was very much “meeting” new people for the first time and I was there by myself so I had to meet everyone that I was going to hang out with.  The second year I knew a lot of people already and had a ton of people who went with me as well.  This year I really just seem to know almost everyone.

Bob right away came up and had to get a picture of the heart.  There wasn’t much left to see after the shower but he got a picture and posted it online in the community.  So I was pretty famous for that before the conference really even got going.

Everyone was really surprised to see how much weight I had lost.  I’m used to it and I really do not see myself as being much thinner than I was a year ago but just one person after another mentioned it to me and some people even didn’t recognize who I was who knew me from previous conferences.

I spent much of the day running between the conference and my hotel room, which was only feet away, to work from my laptop as it was easier than bringing it into the conference itself and trying to work from a presentation session.

Lunch was quite good.  The AT&T Executive Training Center really does an awesome spread.  I was quite impressed.  Overall I was exceptionally impressed with the venue this year.  I liked the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema the last two years but this is definitely a significant step up in quality compared to that.  The conference felt larger but not nearly so cramped.  There are places to go and sit, places to work, more rooms for more sessions, enough room to actually get to see the vendors and nice places outside to go enjoy a drink or snack.  The training rooms were really nicely done too.  I hope that they use this venue for a while.  And being walking distance to hotels is a huge factor.  The Alamo is so remote that it is extremely cumbersome to do anything there.

This evening’s activities were out at the Salt Lick which is a Texas BBQ place far outside of town.  Had I realized where and what it was, I would have just skipped.  The bus ride out to the Salt Lick was about forty five minutes and that long on a warm, rocking bus does nothing to make you feel good after a long day at a conference.  I was pretty worried about the drive back once we finally arrived.

The food was purely meat.  Not a single thing that I could eat.  There was corn on the cob but I’m not supposed to be eating corn on my diet and that was pretty much it.  From the Texans they all seemed to be really impressed with the meat.  From the New Yorkers the consensus seemed to be that it was alright but certainly not up to par with barbecue in New York or elsewhere.  It is hard to say if it is a difference in preference or if New York barbecue is just the superior.  What sets the groups apart is that New Yorkers tend to eat BBQ in both places and compare but very few Texans eat NY BBQ – and avoiding the unknown implies that you are convinced that it will be better and you just don’t want to find out.  The meat did not look very appetizing as meat goes, I can tell you that.  It would remind you of a firehouse fund raiser back home.

What was interesting at the Salt Lick were armadillo races where I got to pet my first armadillo in person – I’ve seen them in the wild living in Texas but have never touched one – got to see people riding the mechanical bull and they had live karaoke.  Good entertainment stuff although it was pretty chilly outside and being so far from the hotel and being basically an all outside venue meant that people didn’t have access to jackets and stuff from back at the hotel.

So when a friend with his own car was leaving Salt Lick early I hoped in and got a nice, quick ride back into town.  I got back and hit the bar in the hotel with one other SpiceHead who was also escaping early and had a nice, healthy salmon salad.  We talked for probably an hour or two.  We had a good time.  I’m glad that I skipped the main event.  You really miss out on the one on one time at a lot of those functions from the noise and commotion.

After there was no one left from SpiceWorld around I left the hotel and walked down to sixth and hit Touche’s for a couple of hours.  I just hung out down there on my own.  It is Thursday night so the place is packed – just wall to wall people.  I met and had drinks with several random people.  Austin is a very social town.  It was fun but a very quiet night.  At two I walked back to the hotel and called it a night.