Las Vegas

 Las Vegas is quite the scene, as anyone who has been there will tell you.  I had the HAPPIEST time with Mary at the Western Political Science Association conference.  We rocked our paper presentation: The moderator described our paper as "intriguing, well-organized, important, informative" then said, "and now for the compliment section...." and then gave us all kinds of additional positive feedback!  He was not so kind to the other professor on our panel, oops for her.  We kicked it with our presentation; Mary and I have very similar presentation styles (read: fascinatingly engaging).

Besides all of the awesome networking and the learning one does at a conference, we also got to do a few things strictly LV.  Cirque de Soleil has been on my bucket list (I had only 3 things on it; now there are 2) since I started showing a DVD segment related to how they recruit, select, train, and evaluate employees in my Industrial-Organizational class about ten years ago.  Mary was able to score tickets for the Michael Jackson version of CdeS.  She was a bit concerned that it would make me too sad, but I was sooo happy to be there, not sad at all.  We didn't have to wait in line to get in, and we made friends with a valet along the way.

Other activities: We posed with weird people dressed up in smelly costumes and toured many of the famed hotels along the north strip.  Caesar's Palace is ridiculously huge and full of decorations based on the Roman era.  Our room was awesome with two separate bathrooms and a long hallway.  We ate food we would not be able to get anywhere else and saw the famous M&M wall at the M&M store/museum.  The only bummer was UK losing, but we proudly wore our stylish Wildcats shirts anyway and consoled ourselves (mostly me) with frozen yogurt (actually, Mary didn't get any).

This trip will be a highlight for me for at least five years.  And Mary and I are already planning on how to expand our research so we can present at the international Lilly conference this fall!  We are a formidable research team!  Yeah Mary and Karyn!!!