In a seminar all day at the Washington Duke Inn and Golf Club. Then my co-worker and I came back to the hotel, and I checked work email and needed to work.

I leave tomorrow at 2 pm. What a short trip. We didn't even get a chance to see anything. The Washington Duke gift shop was so disappointing! Maybe I'll shop at the airport for souveneirs.

We made a trip to Eckard's in Durham, and there wasn't anything special there. Chain stores are the same all over. I watched the Durham news WRAL news on TV tonight. There are gangs in Durham North Carolina. Who knew? Maybe all towns have the same problems.

In Durham North Carolina at a different hotel off the Duke Campus. The seminar expensive hotel was sold out. Too bad. We drove by the place and it looked great. This alternate hotel is just your typical boring ugly chain hotel. Oh well. I wish we were on the Duke Campus.

I'm exhausted. My flight left at 6 in the morning, and the shuttle came to get me at 4 am. I didn't even sleep. I lay down for a bit, but couldn't fall asleep. I managed to sleep on the plane to Denver, and on the noisy crop duster plane to Raleigh Durham, but I feel tired. I hope I sleep well tonight. I'll be sleeping through the seminar if I don't.

We're going to a welcome reception tonight. I'm starving. I hope they feed us. It's not like I haven't been eating all day, but I'm tired so I'm hungry. I'm becoming a cranky traveller.

I wonder if this is true. Just heard on the radio that John Kerry is going to offer the VP spot to Richard Gephardt. Hmmmm.....

There's something about my aunties.

My aunties are sport nuts! On Saturday, my aunties insisted on getting back to the hotel so they could watch ESPN's Sports Center.

My oldest aunty was talking about how she was a huge Boston Redsox fan in highschool, and supposedly had an awesome baseball card collection. She said she even had Ted Williams' baseball card. She was lamenting the fact that my grandmother had thrown her collection while she was in college, and if she had held on to the colleciton it would be worth a fortune right now. My aunt still follows baseball, but she's not an intense Redsox fan anymore.

My other two aunties told me they watch more sports on TV than their husbands. They bragged about how they drag their husbands to sporting events. My aunties were all over the NBA basketball final, and wanted to watch ESPN Sports Center so they could hear more analysis about the series. They're betting money on the championship. One of my aunties is rooting for the Laker, the other aunty is rooting for the Pistons and can rattle off the stats for every player on the Pistons team. The other aunty can rattle off the stats for all the Laker players as well, so they're evenly matched that way.

On Sunday morning, my aunties were oohing and ahhing over the sports history shows on West Coast ESPN. They said that their local ESPN channels didn't show the same shows. My aunties were jealous that I lived in an ESPN market with better sports show programming.

So I'm like listening to them and wondering if liking sports is inherited in the family for girls. I know I've been been in relationships where I was more interested in sports than my boyfriend. How funny!

But if sports interest is inherited in the family among the girls, so is shopping. All my aunties are shopping freaks! They insisted on going to Nordstrom Center so they could go to shoe department. They were practically orgasming over the number and variety of shoes at Nordstroms.

One of my aunties, the Pistons fan, bought three pairs of shoes. The former Boston Redsox fan aunty had a pair of shoes shipped to her. The Laker fan aunty doesn't make that much money, so she's not much a shopping freak because of her finances but even she ended up buying a pair of shoes at the DSW Shoe Warehouse. And of course they had to buy clothes and jewelry for themselves, as well as souveniers for the families back home.

And I have their eating habits as well. My aunties all have sweet tooths. We kept having to stop for cookies, pastries and candies. How weird!

I mean, I never grew up with my aunties. My mother was their sister, but I wasn't around most of them growing up. And yet somehow I share their liking for sports, shopping, and sweets.

My aunties were very impressed that I won the office March Madness pool that one year. They've been playing for years, and have never won.

And my aunties are surprised themselves about their similar sports interests because only my oldest aunty was into sports in highschool. They other two only became interested in sports after they were married. The Pistons fan aunty says she doesn't know any other women who follow sports the way she does, and now she's excited to have someone, her own sister in fact, to analyze ESPN Sports Center with.