This week has brought me to Augusta, GA for the quarterly SC-213 meeting. The inevitable first question/comment I’ve gotten from friends when I say Augusta is “did you take your golf clubs along?” So as a preemptive strike: no, I don’t play golf. I’ve never hit a ball in my life. Yes, I know they have some fancy course here where they play some tournament every spring. I even know that a guy from Cedar Rapids happened to win that tournament last year. But it doesn’t mean I’m gonna be playing it in my spare time. :-) I will probably drive by it at some point just to have done so.

You don’t want to read the litany of my travel travails; suffice it to say that Monday I was scheduled to get into Augusta (including drive from the Columbia, SC airport and everything) by about 6 pm - I ended up getting in about 10:30 pm. Not so much fun.

Yesterday was the first day of meetings, and it was fairly useful. Last night I was looking for something to do and noticed in the paper that the local ECHL hockey team (the Augusta Lynx) was playing at home. The arena was only six blocks away, so I headed over, bought a ticket, and watched my first hockey game in some time. The game was poorly-attended (maybe 300 present) and the local team gave it a good effort against the first place Texas Wildcatters, but took too many penalties and couldn’t seem to pull the trigger and shoot the puck on the few power plays they had. Final score: Texas 3, Augusta 1. (As a side note: I went to look up the Wildcatters to find out where they are located in Texas; their team website actually didn’t say, any place that I could find. Poor website content. The ECHL site tells me they are in Beaumont, TX.)

So now I’m eating breakfast and getting prepared for another day of meetings reviewing this document my committee is creating. Good times.