So last we left off, I was in Memphis.

I was mainly there for a work trip attending a conference, where I got to give a little speech on Wednesday and accept an award.



My former colleague nominated me for the government communicator of the year award, and I somehow won. Don't ask me how. It's a really big honor, and I still don't really believe it happened, even though I have a nice piece of hardware to show for it.



Normally, I'm not a huge fan of work conferences, but I have to say, I really, really enjoyed this one. I met some really great people, learned some new things and hope to go back next year.


Chilling with some of my conference friends...and Elvis

Plus when I wasn't busy with the work stuff, I did a lot of exploring around the city, mainly on foot. I ran along the Mississippi River both Wednesday and Thursday mornings, and I took Tuesday as a vacation day with my only goal being to see as much as I could.





I walked all over downtown. I wish I had worn my Garmin because I imagine I covered at least five miles on Tuesday.





The only thing I didn't walk to was Graceland because it's not walkable from downtown.





But it was worth the Uber fare to see Elvis' home.


Walking down the steps to basement. Everything was lined with mirrors


For some reason this is my favorite picture that I took there

And then Thursday night I flew home. Our plane had some mechanical difficulties so we were delayed in Memphis for a while.


The toy plane that was taking me from Memphis to DC

Flying in general stresses me out, and hearing that the pilot was going to "control, alt, delete" the plane was not very reassuring. (Seriously that was what the gate agent told us was happening).

My friends had some suggestions on how I could destress:



A few hours later when things were fixed, the airline did give us free booze on board because of the delay, which was nice. I drank some crappy white wine and read my book and about two hours later we were wheels down in DC.

My trip to Memphis was super short, but I managed to cram a lot of stuff into the few days I had there.