Not sure why, but I always feel pretty haggard the first day I travel to a conference. Even though, I was only going from Little Rock to Dallas, TX, I felt just like when I travel from one coast to another. It was about a twenty minute ride from Love Field to the Omni Dallas Hotel, where I’m staying. Since my room wasn’t ready when I got in (which was around 3:45PM), I went down to the Convention Center, to pick up my badge. Also stopped by the ALA Offices, to pick up my ALA Chapter Councilor sticker. No big deal there. In additon, I did get to see some Arkies on my first day including Eva White and her staff from Van Buren Public, and two ALA Emerging Leaders, Johnice Dominick and Amber Wilson. Also said hello to Barbara Stripling, who is a former Arkie, now working at Syracuse University.
At around 5PM I got into my room and I found only one light that was working. At first I thought that was strage, since everything was plugged in. But, as it turns out, you have to put your room key in a slot, in order to run most of the electricity. Besides the one light the TV and the clock/radio, do work without the room key, and the TV was on when I walked in. I admit, I’ve never had that happen to me before, although I got the imrpession that it wasn’t by accident. Talk about mixed signals. 
After unpacking, I did go to Texas Spice, one of the restuarants in the hotel. Food was pretty good, I had a half free-range chicken with dumplings. The dumplings did have a little kick to them, as I thought they might given the name of the restaurant, but it wasn’t too hot. There were probably other items that were spicier. Anyway, that’s it for now. Tomorrow, after breakfast, I have an Arkansas meetup to attend to (at 10:30AM at the Network Uncommons in the Convention Center). I may try to visit a few vendors tomorrow as well, if not, then maybe Sunday. I’ll see where it fits in best. Also have a Chapter Relations Committee meeting at 1:30PM as well. We’ll see how that goes. Anyway, that’s it for now.
