Multiconstruct

My fourth day of road tripping in a row and I am holding up strong. This morning rode out to Chesterfield for a conference with a co-worker and really enjoyed the trip. You only get to know someone so well at work when things are busy and not a whole lot of time for life stories and the like. We left at 5:15 am to be in Chesterfield (St Louis suburb by 7:30) so I set an alarm. It had been years since I had and it probably allowed me to get better sleep then having to be more conscious of the time. It was business attire, don’t ask me why so i wore a shirt and tie. Getting talked  at for a day ain’t worth wearing a suit for.

The drive out was fun and MFH always puts out a nice spread. It was at some version of the Hilton and they had little breakfast burritos and surprisingly good coffee with fresh melon and pineapple. The morning presentation was on Health Literacy. A bit of yawner there for most of the presentation. Most people read poorly, a sizable chunk not at all. If you put out stuff so people can actually understand it things don’t suck as much. Captain Obvious made those points taught the “teach back method” which is pretty much what it sounds and then the last 10 minutes through out all this great practical stuff faster then you could write it down. Short sentences, no more then 2-3 syllables, simple fonts, helpful pictures and diagrams, lots of white space, good paragraphing, no italics or ALL CAPS and stick to the Need to Do not Nice to Know. Might be other good stuff in my notes.

Someone also taught how to optimize Word’s reading level assessment tool, you do chunks avoiding numbers & headers and the like that can throw it off and never write above a 6th grade level. It was cool stuff and raised it in my consciousness so I shouldn’t complain. Especially not after the lunch we had, rare roast beef with all the fixings and a sweet array of cakes.

The afternoon started with this activity that turned out kind of fun. We were given instructions to a card game similar to spades with no trump, ace high, two of clubs leads. The winner of the first game advances to play other winners. You’re not allowed to talk. We tied at my group but I was feeling pushy and like playing cards so I silently offered for our team to advance.

We lost the first trick and I threw a king on the next only to see my partner throw on the ace. I was still reeling from the fact my partner had no strategy whatsoever as there wasn’t even a rule about following suit when my partner led into my ace of clubs. The other team raked in the trick which led to a non verbal argument that got a little heated. Ultimately we were told to play cards by the facilitator after I had note pad taken away and was pantomiming why it was my trick. They kept the trick but I kept the lead and we took the rest of the tricks but i wasn’t so into it. The trick of course is we had different rules, his said ace low mine said ace high.

That was cool but then it was the return of Captain Obvious as we talked about it for over an hour with people making the same of course points. Then like a weird replay she broke out these cool tools you can use to evaluate a coalition and went over them hyperfast in the last 5 minutes.

Nonetheless not bad as these things go. We went to Trader Joes before heading home.  I cooked some dinner and am gearing up to watch Horde. this time i mean it.