This past week I went to a conference in Birmingham. It was the annual SEDA (Staff and Educational Developer's Conference). I submitted a workshop for it and was accepted, so I did that during the first session on Tuesday morning. The session was pretty well attended (18) compared to some I went to (one had 4) later. The workshop was all about trying to think outside of the box and come up with new ways to reach staff with new educational development opportunities. The problem was that several of the groups I dividied them into had real trouble coming up with any new ideas, and kept getting distracted by other things. That's educational developers for you.

I went to the conference last year but came home between days (it's a two day conference). This year I stayed over at the conference hotel. It was a nice hotel, 3 stars. However, it cost an insane amount (155 pounds for a single/300 dollars!). It is in the center of Birmingham, so that helps explain it, and hotels are generally overpriced in England from what I can tell. The room was nice though, and there were speakers in the bathroom, which was nice for taking a bath and watching TV.

The food was really good last year at the conference, and it didn't disappoint this year. The lunches were amazing in the variety of foods you could choose from. However, the conference dinner was pretty bad for some reason. Everyone commented on it.

I got some good stuff out of the conference, but two of the 5 sessions I went to were advertised as one thing, but turned out to be something different. One of them was about e-learning and was the sort of thing Sheffield Hallam was doing 3 years ago. It didn't have any interactive elements to it, which is one of the things SEDA sessions are supposed to have. By contrast, mine was entirely interactive.

I went to a Tesco supermarket on Tuesday night because I needed a pumpkin for Thanksgiving. The pumpkin I had bought awhile ago had started going bad, so I was only able to use half of it. Luckily there was a Tesco down the road from the hotel in Birmingham, so I got the pumpkin there. They don't sell canned pumpkin, so you have to make the pie from fresh pumpkin, which isn't that hard actually.

The other food related item of my trip was a visit to Krispy Kreme donuts. There are only Krispy Kreme stores in Birmingham and London, so it was my only chance to get some before Christmas. I took my co-worker Sally there after the conference and we split a dozen. They are much more expensive in the UK too, at around 14 dollars a dozen.

I returned from the conference Wednesday night and spent most of the night making dinner and then pumpkin pie. I wanted to bring one pie into work on Thanksgiving, and have another for the dinner Thursday night. That night we had four of Victoria's friends from the teacher training course over for dinner. I made sweet potato casserole, green beans, rolls, yorkshire puddings, pie, and we had cranberry sauce and one of those turkey breasts with stuffing in it. I haven't gotten up the courage to bake a real turkey yet. It takes too long probably, since I don't have the day off work.

The one hitch was that there was a vegetarian (we had some veggie burgers handy) and one girl was allergic to gluten. So I ended up making mini-crustless pies in muffin wrappers for her. It all worked out in the end, but just took some extra work. Everyone had a good time. The only trouble that arose was when they arrived. Victoria has asked everyone to bring wine, but it seems they all brought flowers instead. I had to sneak outside and run to the 24-hour supermarket to get some more wine. I did suggest making wine out of the flowers, but Victoria thought that might not go down well. I got to webcam with my family after dinner, which was nice. There were a lot of new people at my parents' house for Thanksgiving, including Howard and Pam, an uncle and aunt from California. All and all I had a very good Thanksgiving.