$500 an hour

thursday night clint and i attended a dinner in salt lake hosted by the society of petroleum engineers of utah.
why, oh why would we ever do such a thing?
because clint was their guest of honor as the chosen 2009-2010 recipient of a juicy scholarship. su-weeeet.
so, first let me brag about clint. with 3 times as many applicants for the scholarship as previous years, he still came out on top. he has worked so hard to get great grades and he totally deserves the recognition and the reward. besides that, i think they took pity on us for being back in school a little late in the game and with kids to boot. hey, i'll take pity if it comes in the form of a cash scholarship!
the night was pretty funny actually. we left the kids with my aunt (thanks cox family!) and headed off to ute territory. as we made our way into the banquet room at the marriott, we had no idea what to expect. the first hour of the dinner was a "social hour" - which if you know any engineers, is a joke in itself. (sorry, but true!) adding to that the fact that we didn't know anyone made for an interesting night. dinner was yummy and then things took a turn for the worse. a keynote speaker. uggh..
i now know more than i ever, ever, ever wanted to know about the history of gas and oil in utah. seriously. the guy talked for an hour and 45 minutes - complete with black and white slides. (see example above.) i was mostly concerned with getting home to the kids super late (i thought we would be back by 9, and he was still rambling by then.) we just had to keep reminding ourselves that we could sit through a few hours of pretty much anything for a scholarship.
so, although we weren't prepared to spend 4 hours for this dinner, when you think about it, $500 an hour isn't too shabby!