Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Just Me and the Dog

In a little while, I'll be driving my BW to the airport. She is off to attend the annual convention of the American Speech, Language and Hearing Association (ASHA) in New Orleans. She'll be presenting three papers at the convention.

The ASHA convention is huge, bringing together more than 10,000 speech-language pathologists, audiologists, researchers and professors under one roof. As a comparison, my own American Meteorological Society annual meeting (which will be in Atlanta in January) usually only attracts around 2500 attendees. The "speechies," as I like to call them, will literally be taking over The Big Easy for the next four days.

In years past, I have often followed my wife to the convention city for the weekend, giving us a little bit of a short pre-Thanksgiving getaway. Not this year, however. Airfares from Hartford to New Orleans have been nothing short of outrageous, averaging around $750-800 round trip. Only a lunatic (or someone on a full expense account) would spend that kind of money for a couple of days away.

So it's basically Sammy (our dog) and I who will be holding down the fort here in Connecticut until my wife gets back. I hope she likes jambalya and crawfish!!