There's a hippo outside my room....

I am at a conference that is being held, sort of coincidentally, at an African-themed indoor water park.

The food is not great, but it's better than what we got at the grocery co-op Board of Directors' retreat on Saturday (when it was 20 below) - we went down to the lunch room for our working lunch, and there was oh joy, salads .... nothing hot, no good dressing, processed chicken on top, even the rolls were bad. Here the lunch was also cold, it was make your own sandwiches, but the bread was good, (choice of mayo or bright yellow mustard, sigh) and a decent salad, in terms of the mix of greens, tho no decent dressings, and there was (hot) chicken noodle soup, that looked good, but was way too salty and artificial tasting. Thought we might get cookies for the afternoon snack (at least we did at the BoD retreat) but it was the chips, popcorn, pretzels and soda deal ...

For dinner there were roasted potatoes that started off as actual real potatoes, till they killed them with too liberal application of dried herbs. Just goes to show that even though food is getting so much better, in terms of good bread and good coffee almost eveywhere, there are still these small food wastelands in the midst of plenty.

Best part was the overheard in the bathroom conversation:

[voices from behind stall doors] "so remember when she had that bump on her ass?" yeah "well, she got another one and now she has to have surgery" On her ass? bummer. she'll be offa work for a long time "yeah can't sit, can't drive"...

and believe it or not the 2 year old, who's mom and I were smiling at each other as our eyes met in the mirror, repeated "bummer", not ass.