Your Seat, My Lady...

I'm TIRED. SchoolDude university is over and we're all a little worn out but it was honestly so much fun. I'm glad to be back home though, and sleeping in my own bed last night was absolutely FABulous!!!

As you can tell from my pic, I'm now dating Chad, knight at Medieval Times and former American Idol hopeful. Okay, not really. My section got to cheer for the yellow knight at Medieval Times on Saturday night and he was so adorable that I just HAD to meet him afterwards. He threw me a carnation at some point during the show so I'm absolutely certain he was digging on me. Possibly. Okay, probably not, but it did make me feel like a beautiful medieval damsel...who'd been eating chicken with her fingers. Medieval Times, you need more napkins. Seriously. If you're gonna make people eat with their fingers, you've got to give them a TON of napkins. Gross.

Anyway, I was so excited when I got there that I was snapping pictures left and right of everything. I'd wanted to go to a Medieval Times since first seeing the Cable Guy fifty years ago so this was a big deal, falling not much short of Disney World for a ten-year-old. Once inside, we all got our colored crowns, of course, and i noticed that my table ticket number was different than anyone else's. To put it short, I ended up at a completely different table than anyone else in my party. They were all at numer 9 and i was at 8 with a bunch of 30-something men. Right smack in the middle of 'em. It turned out to be a lot of fun though. They were really friendly and talkative and told me about how their kids loved the place. The show itself was rather cheesy at times but the horses were beautiful, the guys had to all be talented to ride and perform like they did, and the dude with the falcon rocked hard. I tried to take pictures of the arena inside but they all came out too dark. Darn. The food was okay and the Medieval Pepsi was, I'm sure, far advanced of the Pepsi they had back in the days of yore, but it was the whole package that made it a really fun experience.

Afterwards, we got to meet the knights and get our pictures made with them. I, of course, wanted a picture with our yellow knight and then i had to get one with the "evil" green knight and the King. With the pina colada machine glowing in the background...very authentic. In short, lots of fun. Not sure it was 42 bucks worth of fun but definitely a fun experience. Thank you Dude.

The rest of Dude U was just as much fun. Of course we all stayed busy, busy, busy the whole time we were there but the weather was awesome, our clients were entertaining at times, and the events were all definitely worth all the work. Our banquet tuesday night was probably one of the most well-planned and decorated event I've ever been to. We had a cruise ship theme so there were ship-crew waiters all over the place, tiki bars everywhere you looked, and even hermit-crab racing, believe it or not. There was a steel drum band, a woman weaving baskets (beautiful but mucho expensivo), and dancing, of course. We all had a blast.

What was the best thing about the experience though was that I got to know so many new people and made a bunch of new friends on our staff at SchoolDude. Doing what i do, I don't get to get out of my office too much and I rarely work with anyone. But this past week, I've spent so much time with the people in my company and had such a good time, I'm really happy to have made some new friends to have around the office. Erin and Linda played and sang with me for the Sunday morning devotional service, which went off without a hitch and they did a great job. It's been wonderful to have someone to play and sing with again.

So in short, it's good to be home and I'm absolutely worn out (and coming down with something, i'm fairly certain), but Dude U 2007 was a wonderful experience I wouldn't trade. What can I say? I love my company.

Did you know that Starbucks caramel macchiatos are absolutely magical?? I can't live without them now.