Walking in Memphis

I keep trying to write this post, but I have had all kinds of technical difficulty. Word has stopped working for me, and I am trying to resist taking it in to be looked at, but I do have some pretty important papers due in the next couple of weeks, so I should probably just bite the bullet and get it fixed.

Two weeks ago, I went to Memphis for the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy's annual conference. That's right: we had a professional conference that centers around families on Halloween weekend, which took hundreds of professional people from their homes and families during a holiday, presumably because the association got a good deal on the conference hall and the hotel for that weekend.

Anyway, the conference is a good time to learn new things, network, see old friends, and visit the sites of the conference city. Two years ago, we were in Austin. Last year, it was in Long Beach. Both places were cool, but neither of them had this:

I would like to say that I actually took the tour of the ugly furniture and shag carpets. I did not. I had to get back to the conference for dinner with my friends from BYU. However, I did snap a few more pictures, and I picked up a few souvenirs as well.

Yes, that is the Heartbreak Hotel, which you can actually stay in. I think the best part of it is this:

Heartbreak Hotel is literally at the end of Lonely Street. I include a link to the Wikipedia entry on Elvis, which I skimmed briefly. It contains references both to the LDS Church and Lubbock, Texas.

Other than Graceland, Memphis is also home to the National Civil Rights Museum, and the hotel where Martin Luther King Jr. was shot. I didn't get to see any of that. What did I do?

I presented a poster from my thesis, which was on LDS senior missionary couples. Next it was a poster my friend Austin presented on atheist drug addicts. We laughed about that a lot.

I also saw Kit, who drove down with a group of her friends from Purdue Calumet.

We had dinner at a rib place in Germantown, which is a suburb of Memphis. It was great to see her again.

I also spent a lot of time with the AAMFT Minority Fellows. We had lunch together, and then there was a banquet that we all had to attend. We did not receive plaques because they decided we'd probably rather have the money they would have spent. Do they know us well, or what?

Here's a shot of all of us after the banquet was over. I kicked off my shoes to keep from blocking anyone's face in the shot (I don't know that it would have made a difference). You can see it next to my foot, if you look closely.

A little-known secret about this banquet is that, after dinner is over, they have a dance. Why? Because that's exactly the way to close out a professional conference-by getting drunk and dancing the Hustle awkwardly with potential employers, your superiors, and your graduate students. Here's the best shot I could get of the people dancing:

I left Lubbock thinking that I would avoid awkward dancing that weekend. Guess not. It was almost worth missing watching the Tech/Texas game with all of my friends from the program. At least I had Stephanie periodically texting me with updates on the score. However, I did persuade Triston and Jeff (friends from BYU) to go with me while I caught the last five minutes of the game (the best five minutes) in my hotel room.

I missed my early-morning flight the next morning, so I didn't get home until almost 6 p.m. Luckily, when I got home, Lubbock was still standing, and my Longhorn-fan friends were still alive.