So where have I been?

St. Louis is lovely this time of year—just like Cleveland: hot and steamy. I just came back from a couple days in the gateway city. As secretary for the board of the Midwest Association of Colleges and Employers, I spent Wednesday night through Friday afternoon there in meetings. The president of our association works at Webster University, just outside St. Louis, so we all traveled there for the board meeting. He arranged for the board members to stay in on campus housing for $40 a night, so we appreciated that. The accommodations were typical college apartments, with a common area and kitchen and two bedrooms. The thing I appreciated the most was the fact that each bedroom had its own bathroom.

When I walked into the apartment, I was struck by how small it was. Then I remembered what my dorm rooms were like and I thought, “I’m back in school!” The bed was one of those extra long twin beds, but in order to be comfortable on the mattress you had to find the groove left by the previous tenant and conform to it.

I did have a roommate—a professor from Michigan State who had been invited as a guest speaker for a different event. I knew him from previous conferences and meetings. He showed up late Wednesday night and mentioned that a student had picked him up at the airport and taken him to dinner. Now I know he got special treatment since he was to be a speaker at an event, but it made me mad that someone had driven him out to the campus from the airport after I had just paid thirty dollars for a cab to do the same thing!

Our president did a very good job organizing the meetings over the next two days and we got a lot done. I did not bring a laptop this time since I didn’t want to lug it around, so I just took notes in longhand. (Friday night I had to sit in the airport for four hours waiting for my flight, so I used that time to transcribe them—now I still have to type them up. Hmm, maybe I will bring the computer next time.)

It is a fun group, this board. The president is very creative guy who doesn’t call these gatherings meetings, but rather, they are “information parties”. The board consists of eight people, but we were joined by another sixteen people who also serve in leadership roles for the association. (We all came together at one point for a big strategic planning meeting after the board meeting was finished.) One night we all trooped over to the president’s house for a dessert party and got to know each other a little better.

His place is a big old country house that seems to have at least two doors to every room. You can wander around in a big circle through the living room, dining room, kitchen, his bedroom and back to the front door again. A couple of us were standing in his bedroom talking and he came in and told us the story of his headboard. It looks like an ordinary headboard until you walk up to it and see that it’s a boxspring mattress standing on end with a rough woven blanket covering it. He had no headboard when he moved in and one night at 2:30 in the morning he got the idea to cut an old boxspring in half so he jumped out of bed and did just that. Manic behavior? You be the judge.

I shared a pleasant cab ride back to the airport on Friday afternoon, made even more enjoyable when someone else picked up the entire tab! I passed the time until my flight by writing up my notes and eating terrible airport food. The hour and half flight passed quickly since I had a great seat mate—a former English teacher from the Youngstown area. We talked books and authors and the state of education in the state of Ohio.

Not being much a of jet setter, it's taken me until now--Sunday morning to recover from all this travel. Time to check out the rest of your blogs and see what I've missed!