Sunrise, Sunset

Up early enough to see a very pink sunrise to the east of the Davis Conference Center, over one of the sixteen bays scattered around the area. Here for a US Special Operations Command-hosted Global Synchronization Conference-6 (sign up now for #7!) with 729 of my closest friends. There are a couple other colleagues from other DTRA offices here, plus I got to meet some of the DTRA liaison officers assigned to other commands I've occasionally e-mailed with. Also ran into a guy in my Joint Forces Staff College seminar from summer '06, and a recently retired Colonel I worked with at the Pentagon.

I guess the conference is a big deal, since the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff himself showed up.

Via Video Teleconference.
But still.

He says hi. Go do good things, he said. Synchronize globally. Or something.

Listened to briefings all day, then broke out into ten different working groups we were assigned to for the rest of the week. Broke at 4, so I was able to stop by the BX and buy some flowers and AF trinkets for my dinner date with the Carsons, friends from my first C-Springs assignment I hadn't seen since my wedding 1.5 kids ago (theirs). Their youngest, a 5-year-old, got a simple keychain with the AF logo, the value of which she seemed to appreciate:

"Did you steal this?"

Tuesday was more of the same, only the first briefing/discussion after lunch ran almost two hours later than scheduled, so by the time I gave my DTRA briefing, the crowd and interest level had thinned out a bit. My compatriots said I did very well, so we'll go with that. I also gave out more business cards* in one afternoon than I have in my whole career.

*three

I gladly hit the gymnasatorium for the first time in several weeks to stretch out my weary chair-sittin' buns, then countered that productivity by joining the fellas for a couple pints, bangers, and also mash at a local pub called "Mad Dogs and Englishmen". The Boddington's was good, but the bangers looked sad and small in the middle of a large bowl. It must have been how the British felt in 1942.

No idea what that means. Moving on.

Today I hooked up with a coworker from the Space Operations School for lunch, sandwiched (har!) between another long morning and afternoon of briefings and discussing the war on terror (consensus: we're for it). Back up to Palm Harbor for a late grill-out with the Carsons, before they drove me over to the beach (not a mile from their house) to watch the sun quickly set into the Gulf of Mexico. Followed by a greek dessert and shark-tooth shopping in Tarpon Springs, Sponge Capital of the World (they were number two until Chernobyl went boom).

My first self-e-mailed cell phone pic!