Friday

It's a very surreal moment. I attended a building information modeling conference with an emphasis on LEED applications, and not once did I feel like I was getting old. I guess not feeling it is a sign of arrival. I was probably one of the youngest people there, but at no time did I ever feel awkward or out of place (other than the usual trade conference awkwardness). We signed in and got our little tote bags, tee shirt, pen, and bouncy-foam globe ball, everything with The Cad Store's logo emblazed on it. Couldn't complain about the food though, fresh coffee, bagels, orange juice, plus lunch was catered BBQ.

The conference actually had some really interesting information, although a lot of it was "why we green" and the second half had a lot of really redundant stuff and showcasing of Revit because the event organizers and lecturers were, incidently, CAD product sales reps. Overall, a good way to spend a day on a project which has dropped down to a crawl pace.

Friday, Saori and I both took off the day to drive to Tucson. In the morning, I changed the oil in the Prius, and Saori went to the UPS store to attempt to pick up a package they were supposedly holding for her. They lied. They put it back on the truck after the second delivery, so even though she made the lady at the customer service counter change the destination, and then called the dispatcher location to make them repeat to her the new destination for the package, of course, they tried to deliver it to the apartment again while we were gone. Additionally, UPS informed her that she was supposed to come to pick it up from the UPS distribution facility instead of delivering it to the second address.

I don't know if its just the Arizona UPS who are all completely incompetent, or if there were just an unlucky series of really stupid, lazy, and whiny employees. I typically prefer DHL or FedEx anyway, but Saori didn't really have a choice from her shipper.

We had a delicious and greasy lunch at Lucky Burger, a tiny burger dive near downtown, and then we took of for Tucson around noon. The drive to Tucson between Phoenix has to be one of the most god-forsaken stretches of wasteland in the entire southwest. At least it goes by in under two hours. Tucson currenly has half of its exits closed along the freeway for construction, so we sat in traffic for a bit until Saori navigated us out to Cassie and Kevin's place. We stopped by a supermarket and picked up balloons and flowers for Cassie's gradution, and Kevin's acceptance to UCDavis grad school.

They keep a little engine of destruction, about a year old, black, white, and compeletely unstoppable feline, extremely rambunctious and super-fast. They call him "Charlie" for the Chaplin-esque little black patch under his pink nose. They're looking for a new home for him, as they're leaving town in a few months for Cali.

We all drove down to the university and hit one of the local coffeeshops. There are immediate and apparent differences between ASU and UofA, all of which become clear entering places near campus. If ASU wishes it was cosmopolitan, UofA wishes it were bohemian. Which is not entirely a bad thing as it leads to great coffeeshops and hole-in-the wall open bar restaurants with great food.

At the UofA memorial union, we attended a small gallery opening of one of our friends from high school, Laura Atchinson. She had filled the space with drawings and paintings inspired from her travels around Europe and New York. There were a few pieces that I really liked, and most of her work I thought was better than the typical First Friday offering. She also baked cookies for the event, which was cool. Actually, there were quite a few of my old schoolmates who showed up whom I'd not seen in years, so it was interesting to catch up with them a little bit and find out how their lives were going.

Someone on Facebook raised the question of a 5 year reunion of our graduating class from Desert Mountain, but other friends of mine raised the point that the people that we really care about and are interested in, we stayed in contact with. There will be no 5 year reunion, guaranteed, because the class of 2003 from Desert Mountain just never shared that much goodwill with each other.

After the show, we walked over to Zachary's Pizza, a surprisingly extensive restaurant and bar which looks a lot smaller from the outside. We split a pitcher of beer and ordered a deep dish pizza of which I ate a slice and was done for the night. By deep, I mean this thing was 2 inches or a hair shy, and so big that the server had to put it on a different TABLE. So we all stuffed ourselves.

Saori and I crashed on the couch once we got back to Cassie's apartment and we quickly passed out, despite being woken up a few times from first the heat, then the cat, and finally the cold of the morning.