the next installment in the riveting saga of my life...

Okay, so my life might not be riveting, but I like to tell stories (as anyone who knows me knows), so a blog is fairly ideal.
Where was I? Oh, right. I was on my way to Detroit. So yeah. Being the boss lady of the club, I get to travel to exotic locales like Cincinnati and Detroit. So one fine day in September, Armen, Jessica, Joe and I decided to get in a large pickup truck and be the biggest rednecks to pull into the motor city. First things first, we decided not to accidentally go to Canada. The tunnel was literally right next to the turn for our hotel. Easy mistake, right? Once we got there, we discovered that we were staying in the Ritz. Actually, it was the Marriott, but it was stinking nice. We were actually staying in the small city that is the GM World Headquarters. It's got different towers, food, shopping (really really really nice shopping) and two Starbucks. Because one is never enough. Anyway, we got the high-class digs and decided to ask the hotel employees where to eat dinner. We ended up at this little place about 2 blocks from the hotel that looked so so so sketchy but turned out to be delicious (mad props to the chick at the concierge desk!).
Yes, I was trying to choke Joe. You know...
The next morning was a lovely 8 am meeting for Armen and myself. On the bright side, there was food and stuff. On the down side (for Armen), the apparently hot chick from Arizona sat by me and not him. Despite the letdown (he wasn't wearing his tux yet), the meeting was a success, as we actually have Keramos members at Clemson now. Wait. It turns out Mark was a member from years ago but his certificate was in the closet. Anyhoo, our member numbers are not nearly as cool as Dr. Taylor's was. 19-something. Meetings, registration, and orientations later, we came to time for Armen to kick butt at the speaking contest. He rocked it. I have video around somewhere. Despite an awesome presentation, Armen was jilted by the steel industry and denied the prize. Myself, the rest of our delegation, and a good number of the students from the other schools all agreed that he should have won. That will have to be enough for now. Sunday night meant dinner at another recommended restaurant in Greektown. Who knew so many Greek people were in Michigan? But man can they cook. My little Gyro-loving was extremely happy. And a big 'Opa!' for the flaming cheese thing. After this came a short ride on the people mover thinger that they call a train there. It was time to watch nerds try to socialize. Granted, they're not so bad, but there's a reason our group is all over the Material Advantage brochure. The key, as nationals has learned, is to give them free alcohol and a DJ. We'll dance. Just you wait. Of course I am never one to give up the chance to dance, so Jessica and I joined the party, then Armen entertained us with the hammer dance. Eventually we returned to our hotel with our feet in pain, ready for a good night's sleep, stopping to take a few pictures along the way... Lucky for Jess and I, we didn't have to report at 7:15 am like the boys did. We got our wonderful chai lattes and meandered to the convention center for the days activities. It was a morning of technical presentations and people presenting their research on varying topics. The good news was, there were thousands of abstracts to choose from, so there was a chance that something that interested you would be there. The bad news was, there were thousands of abstracts to choose from, so you had to mire through the gigantic book to pick the interesting ones out from the rest. After lunch at another suggested restaurant (mad props in this case to the security guard in the conference center), it was time to schmooze the grad schools at a fair that was set up especially for our students. Graduate schools and industry representatives were there to talk to and ask questions and stuff. Good thing I went. I won a grad school application fee waiver from UMR. After that, I felt like a steamroller had crushed my head (I had woken up with a head cold that day), so I went and napped until time to get ready for the banquet. We students were invited/ordered to attend the American Ceramic Society's annual honors and awards banquet with the faculty. One of our wonderful professors was being honored, so we were doing him the honor of supporting him. I ended up (looking fabulous, of course) pinned between him and our department chair at the dinner. It was a delicious dinner which I had not the time to eat, as I was being bombarded on both sides about graduate schools and my plans for the future. It was an enlightening dinner and I was on cold medicine, so that made it extra fun for me. Tuesday was an early start with Jess and I having to be there for monitoring rather early in the morning. We spent the morning in presentations, then had lunch with Dr. Kennedy and went to the expo to collect free stuff. I mean, who doesn't like free stuff? After a long afternoon of monitoring/listening to old guys (really important old guys) bluster and argue about things that have been set in stone (or so I thought) since they first invented them. After changing clothes, the fantastic four headed out into Detroit to see the sights. There are not many. There was a clock on a corner that was important for some reason or another.We discovered that most of the restaurants close really early unless you want greek food, so we tried to find this pizza place that was in our map thing. Turns out it was in the side of town (which was only a block away from the nice side of town) that one does not want to be in for long. There was 2 inch thick plexiglass between us and the employees of the restaurant. Thankfully it was still daylight out, so we headed to a little park in the business district and ate outside in the middle of Detroit.The pizza was very good, by the way. Joe held on to that soda bottle for the rest of the night. We may or may not have been yelled at to get off of the fountain. Apparently people don't have any fun in Detroit. We decided to stay on the street we were on (since it seemed nice enough) and walk to the other side of town...or maybe only 5 blocks away. We saw the Tigers' stadium and Ford Field and some cool looking churches, then we made our way to the People Mover station and waited for the train. There was an old dude reading the paper in the corner and he was nice enough to share it with Joe while I looked for the train. We rode the train and enjoyed the overhead view of the city all the way back to the hotel. May have had a little too much fun, but hey, we had the thing to ourself. The next morning, I happily loaded up on Sudafed and packed the mondo-truck up to head home. Armen rocks for driving all the way too and from Michigan, so he gets his thanks here.