Kentucky Trip #1: Louisville

April 6-8: AACC Conference

I headed to Louisville, KY, for the weekend (who schedules a professional conference over a weekend?!!) to co-present with two colleagues at the AACC Annual Conference. This is the second time that I've been able to co-present a session about the Finish Line Scholars Program to a national audience, and it's always great to be able to spread the word about the program and share our promising practices with other scholarship providers and community college professionals. Our President & CEO was attending the conference as well, and she came to our session, which was really thoughtful and supportive.

It was a very quick trip, since there aren't many good options for itineraries from Sac to Louisville, so I flew out on Saturday morning, arrived Saturday night, presented on Sunday morning, attended one session on Sunday afternoon, and flew home on Monday morning, arriving back in Sac in the early evening. Mr. E was in Chicago during this time to visit his Mom. He was away Thursday-Monday, and we ended up meeting at the Denver airport during our respective layovers on Monday, just in time to get a great view of the partial solar eclipse! My connection on the way to Louisville was through Las Vegas, my least favorite airport whose only advantage is the bulk candy store that also sells freshly popped popcorn. I always stock up when I'm there!

I stayed at the Louisville Marriott Downtown, which was right across the street from the Convention Center where the conference was hosted. There was even a pedestrian bridge on the second floor of the hotel leading to the Convention Center, so the short walk was easy and avoided the need to deal with any sort of outerwear. When I arrived on Saturday evening, the front desk staff had some difficulty finding a room with two queen beds, which is my preference, so I had to wait for a bit while they figure out what to do. They ended up giving me an accessible room, which was just fine, and also provided access to the M Lounge for the inconvenience of the long-ish wait. Sweet! This meant that I could grab breakfast there each morning and also partake of the evening snacks (enough for my dinner on Sunday, which was very helpful since most of the other nearby restaurants were closed over the weekend!)

Since I didn't have much time, I wasn't able to explore the city very much, but I did manage to have lunch with my cousin, S, on Sunday at the hotel restaurant The Porch. She lives in Crittenden, KY, which is about 75 minutes from Louisville. I reached out to her at the last minute (Friday afternoon) to see if she might be available, and although she had evening plans that day, she was willing to make the drive to meet up with me. So nice to have some 1:1 time to catch up before the upcoming visit to her home for J's memorial service.

As is typical with conferences, there were a number of vendors and exhibitors scattered around, and I spotted the one with the bottle of Blanton's available as a potential raffle prize. Since that is Mr. E's favorite, I of course had to do my best to procure it, but no luck. Drat.

I had a late morning departure on Monday, giving me plenty of time to work out in the morning before grabbing a Lyft for the quick trip to the Louisville airport. I didn't plan well enough for my reading material and needed to buy a book for the return journey (love the Paradies Largardere stores "Read & Return" program!), which I read for a bit at the Starbucks while enjoying my coffee from the nearby Illy kiosk since the Starbucks line was unreasonably long, with no mobile order option available.

Since I finished the book during the trip, I was able to return it for the half-price refund at the Sac airport before getting a Lyft home to the kitties. Mr. E arrived about 90 minutes later, so we were together to celebrate the 1-year anniversary of having Marlene join our family. Meow!