Woohoo! Yea Spurs! We're staying in the Marriott in San Antonio and all I can hear from my hotel room is “HONK HONK HONK HONK!!!!” These poor folks from other states must think Texans are crazy! It's past midnight and we just came back from the hospitality room on the 38th floor. We didn't have to work it tonight, so we got to lounge and talk with an old Ag who is receiving an award at convention. Calvin Pigg was the editor of SW Farm Press and graduated from TAMU around '58 with, can you believe it, an Ag Journalism degree. It was great talking with him and his sweet wife (Tommiee I believe). He had a lot of great stories of “when there was plenty of parking.” Hahaha! I'm really enjoying this year's conference. Starting this morning, Meg, Crystal and I woke up this morning at 5:45 to walk across the street with the intent to pay for parking. From what we understood the day before, parking ended at 6 am… so off we went. Unfortunately, it was POURING! I'm talking lighting, thunder and wind. After trekking across the street, no one was there to accept our money! The very helpful custodian at the garage said the workers arrived at 7:30. Eeekk!!! We went back to the hotel and went back to bed! When we went back, the garage employees said payment wasn't necessary until we left the garage! We took sad face pictures just to be silly :O).
Our sessions were pretty informative, especially the graduate school help sheets! Man, working with Hispanic audiences just sounds more and more like something that I'd like to do! We had our awards dinner and I got 5th place in the news category! Well yea! We had ice cream on the river walk and just chilled. It was great! I love San Antonio, but right now I really need to sleep! Honking is not helpful, but congrats to them!
I'm coming to appreciate the role conventions play in the professional journalist's career. It seems every time you turn around, you run into someone you know. Being able to keep contact annually with great contacts can really improve your work, at least I think so :O). I've gotten to meet so many really neat people. Working with Extension has really helped start a lot of conversations since it's a national agency. Creating social based programs for Hispanic audiences would be FANTASTIC! Man, but so would writing for a living, photography, teaching and public relations. Hehehe, maybe I should start narrowing down my passions!

(honk honk honk)