I'm Back!!!

I am home again....early on a Friday afternoon so I can start to relax (maybe). I now need to unpack and do laundry and some grocery shopping wouldn't hurt since I've not done any in about two weeks (why bother why I knew I was leaving town).

I picked up my car this afternoon. It was fun driving the loaner (of which I forgot to take a picture--believe it or not) but it's nice to have my car back...and it's clean inside and out! The body work looks great--you'd never know someone put a huge dent in it. Now to deal with the insurance company to get reimbursed for the full cost of the loaner--which was nearly $300 more than they initially covered. Nice thing is that even though the final repair bill was more than the initial estimate and the check I received, the body shop will get the balance from the insurance company.

Now for the oddities of the last few days. I say odditites because this is the first conference I've attended since April of 2007 in Austin and since all the turmoil in the student loan industry. There were so many missing due to the company downsizings and closures. So many familiar faces, gone. The party atmosphere was no where near what it used to be and other than dinner last night, I never left the hotel. And even then it wasn't one of the huge dinners with lots of colleagues--just my coworkers. The major oddity of the evening....I was not only in my room before 10p, I was in bed by 10:30p.......