I’m going to post all the info I got later… but for right now I’m just going to post the how my day went part.

I got up at 2am, after not sleeping at all. Too full of butterflies… I was paranoid about missing my train in New Haven. It was an hour and a half drive in the middle of the night, little traffic, no problems. The train station is gorgeous… a huge old building. I’m still a little giddy that people still use the train stations out here on the east coast… and that they’re still in such great condition. There was only one train leaving that early in the morning, so I just followed the small crowd through the underground passages to the correct train track. Once I was on the train I relaxed immensely.

The train wasn’t all that comfortable – at least not for catching a nap. The bright flourescent lights overhead contrasted with the dark outside was really irritating… people were talking… and I couldn’t find a comfortable position. I think I finally fell asleep folded over with my head on my knees. Why I find that my “most comfortable position” I don’t know, but I did nap a tiny bit.

Grand Central Terminal is really really cool. I expected it to be huge, but I didn’t really expect this huge huge vaulted ceiling that goes on forever… and it all looks so old. I think that’s what’s weirdest to me about New York… I always pictured it so clean cut and business-like with skyscrapers, and what I saw was such old architecture. I really wanted to just stand in Grand Central and gawk, but I didn’t want to look like an idiotic tourist. Next time I’ll be bringing my camera.

Finding my way to the hotel was, umm, easy. I walked out the doors onto 42nd street. I started looking around and… oh, there’s the Hyatt. Next building over. I didn’t even have to cross the street. :lol: So much for seeing New York… that was the entire extent of it.

The Hyatt, too, is huge and opulent… but a much more modern opulence. It was also very confusing. Once I got to the Ballroom level I was fine though. I stayed there for the entire conference.

I registered, then awkwardly wandered into the exhibit room – which was still being set up – where a huge buffet of breakfast stuff was set up. I grabbed a couple of things and went off to eat. Unfortunately there weren’t very many tables or chairs to sit at… they need to improve on that one. I know they wanted people to check out the exhibitor tables, but we wanted to eat first! The was so good. Very very delicious. I had a croissant that had some kind of bavarian cream, chocolate and sliced almonds (drool). And then I had two bagels with a seriously divine salmon creamcheese. And it was all provided free of charge for us.

Most of the day was full of lectures, of which I have a ton of notes, but it’s going to take a while to get them typed up and organized. A lot of the lectures overlapped so I’ll have to somehow figure it out.

Lunch was interesting. It was in the same room as the breakfast and coffee break (complete with tons of cookies and dessert loafs) were – the exhibitor’s hall. We knew lunch would be a “concession” where you had to pay for food. But no one expected what we got: the same buffet table had some sandwiches, some salad, some drinks, and some cookies and brownies. I peeked at the price list they had prominently displayed. $10.95 for a sandwich. $3.00 for a cookie. $3.50 for a juice or soda. I called Den to shriek at him, he told me to eat a damn sandwich. So I got in line and got just that – a sandwich. Now other people I guess weren’t paying attention really, because for some reason they thought the salad came with the sandwich. And they didn’t take a peek at the prices beforehand, I saw many astonished, horrified looks at the cashier. Plus people thought a “sandwich” consisted of two halves…. it didn’t. So when they got charged $21.90 for that sandwich they tended to flip out. There ended up being a plate of sandwiches stacked by the cashier as people refused to buy it, lol! A lot of pissed off people saying, “Can you BELIEVE that?!”

Not that I wasn’t completely outraged by an $11 half-sandwich, even if it was New York that’s a crazy price, but I didn’t let it bother me too much because I’d just chowed down on a ton of food for breakfast that was free. So really if you think about $11 for a full day’s meals it wasn’t bad at all.

The most amusing part to me, though, was that an hour later after some more lectures we had another coffee break and there were the same brownies and cookies that had been sold at lunch for $3 each, sitting out beside coffee… for free. Oh such amusement.

Next time, remind me to go next door to Grand Central Terminal for lunch – they had a food court, and the prices were way cheaper than the hotel!

The end of the day was pretty amusing, there was a “debate” panel set up and one of the people on the panel was an old woman. I don’t know why she was on that panel – I know they introduced everyone, but I didn’t really pay attention to it… she had something to do with something. She wasn’t a doctor though, thank god. It was the most horrible “debate” ever. I was laughing hysterically it was so bad. The other two gave a lot of great input and thoughts. Then this older woman, she takes the microphone (and of course doesn’t speak into it, she used it to gesture)… and then proceeds to go on for 5 minutes about a TOTALLY DIFFERENT TOPIC. They kept trying to get her back on track but she insisted it was related. Yet she failed to EVER tie it back into her point. And not only was she talking about the wrong topic? She was saying things that were totally not true, referencing “studies” that no one knows where she came up with it (the doctor on the panel was shaking his head the whole time and was attempting to interject ACTUAL facts into it)…. plus the lady managed to insult the whole room of us, in a manner of speaking. It was truly flabbergasting. She should never, ever have been asked to speak about infertility. She obviously has NO CLUE!!!! (I’ll write more about the details later.) It was so bad it was funny.

I left that panel to catch my train back to New Haven. No problems at all. 2 hours went by pretty quickly too… okay, not “quickly”, but it wasn’t horrible. I was feeling so pleased with myself for doing all of it… for getting out on my own, for seeing New York, for going and DOING something instead of sitting at home wishing I was doing something.

I found my truck without a problem only to discover a very bad noise when I pulled out. I pulled into a no-parking zone and jumped out to check…. only to find that someone had hit our truck!! The plastic fender around the left back wheel had been half pulled off and was rubbing against the wheel. Gaaahhhh!! I pushed it back up to where it’s supposed to be, so I could drive home (and it was going to stay), but it’s going to need to be repaired… maybe even replaced.

It was a really fun day overall.. I’m glad I went. It was great seeing New York for the first time – even if I didn’t see much. I plan on going back to see more.