I had intended on blogging every day while I was at the conference in Rochester, NY. I forget how tiring conferences are. I think all I am doing is sitting and taking notes all day so I will have tons of time and information. What I forgot was that you are up at 6:30-7:00 am and don’t stop until after 9:00 -10:00 pm at night. I was dead tired every night physically, mentally, and emotionally. We were talking about fun things, truly heartbreaking things, and things that made you stop and think about who you are and about your organization. It was a great five days but I just could not blog during the conference.

The best things I came away with? The connections I made to others across the country and to pick one or two things to start to change. Don’t try to swallow the elephant whole.

Another great part of my trip was the food! I got to have a Rochester Garbage Plate (see picture above). It usually comes with fried potatoes (french fries or hash browns), macaroni salad, then 2 meats (hot dogs, cheese burgers, sausage patties, etc…). Then over the whole dish you can have mustard, onions, ketchup, relish. But the best part is the Rochester Meat Sauce (which didn’t make it into the picture because I get mine on the side because it usually has a real spicy kick to it!).

Then the cannoli! The cannolis here are just not the same. I love the heavy sweet cream taste of these. Yes, I ate both of them over two days. Delicious.

Then of course I had to make a pilgrimage to Wegmans. My family gave me a shopping list: salt potatoes, Grandma Brown’s Baked Beans, Country Sweet sauce, and sponge candy. These are all things we really like but cannot find in the Midwest. So, I loaded up my car and brought them home.

I will be back to regular postings hopefully tomorrow. But, I wanted to share a bit about my trip.