Cabana Conference

On Thursday, I trekked down to Dana Point, Calif., to cover a conference. It was one of those jobs where the venue was much more enticing than the subjects covered at the two-day affair. This was the view from my five-star hotel room.
This is this the closest that I'll get to being "corporate" with my laptop and recently acquired rose-colored cropped jacket with gold-trim buttons and a Peter Pan collar from Denmark's Baum und Pferdgarten, which is quickly becoming my new favorite label.
I like fancy hotels because they never miss the tiny details, such as the way they present the bathroom toiletries. In this case, good hygiene was encouraged with a bath gel and lavender-infused body lotion from Laboratoire Remede (that's French for laboratory remedy). Even the shower cap was packaged in a cute cube. Ooh la la.
The bathtub.
The bathroom was a third of the size of my apartment in Los Feliz.
I was going to count the number of threads on my sheets but I fell asleep.
I love sipping Earl Grey tea in the afternoon. Here's another self-portrait of me as reflected on the teapot.
I bailed on a talk by a four-star general to grab a late lunch in one of the hotel's restaurants. The crabcakes wore a funny hat of mache and a bright skirt of aioli.
My right hand cramped after taking notes for hours. I was also exhausted from schmoozing with sources who were twice my age. So I retired early from the mixer in the ballroom and ordered room service.
The pan-seared black sea bass was quite tasty. I liked the artichokes and potatoes in the lemon sauce. But together the fish and vegetables didn't work. The vegetables were too tangy and mushy. Steamed asparagus might have added a nice crunch to the entree.

After the panels ended, most of the conferencegoers went to play golf or board a ship for a whale-watching expedition. I drove myself to Fashion Island Mall in Newport Beach, Calif., and did a little shopping. The great thing about my job is that shopping is considered research and often encouraged. The bad thing about my job is that I can never entirely relieve stress through "retail therapy" because I'm always talking to salesclerks about what's selling and how's business at the store. Friday's retail therapy was cut short because Neiman Marcus didn't have the patent leather Mary Janes by Manolo Blahnik in my size. You know those shoes. They are the ones that Carrie Bradshaw, as played by Sarah Jessica Parker, stole from Vogue's fashion closet in an episode of "Sex and the City." I don't know if I'd ever wear those shoes outside of formal events that I have to cover for work. Maybe I could just wear them around the house in my underwear. I debated the practicality of that over lunch at Cafe Midi in the American Rag store. This was an eggs benedict florentine that substituted a crabcake for the Canadian bacon.

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