You call that Progress?

Just a few days after my wife gave birth, I had to go to an industry conference. It's the one event of the year that I really can't miss. Well, in theory, I could have missed it, but it's the conference that corresponds to my specific, unique job function, and by missing this event, I might have risked weakening my position at work, at a very, very bad time to be weakening one's position at work. So, with my mother-in-law in town (thank goodness) to keep the household upright, I went.

As you know from past posts, when I wander for work, my heart and hormones tend to wander as well. Two possibly-significant things happened this time:

1) It's the first business trip of the last few years that I remember, during which the sight of attractive women didn't lead my mind down the path of, "My last meeting is at 6, I have a dinner with attorneys from 7 until 9. If my colleague decides to call it a night, I could feign the same and then hit all the cocktail parties to see if she's there..." Didn't happen, much of which I can attribute to the ever-present thought of my wife's having just passed through the valley of the shadow of death in order to bring my/our child into the world. (In fact, the most major of my infractions was probably forcing myself to stay awake through a worthless romantic comedy that wasn't short on sexual content, just not the kind that gets me into trouble. Although I'm not sure I would have switched it off with lightning-quick reflex had there been a "Whoa-that-sure-
jumped-on-the-screen-quickly-I-never-would-have-imagined-
THAT-would-happen-in-this-show-I'd-better-reach-all-the-way-
over-to-the-nightstand-for-the-remote-here-I-go-reaching-over-
there-all-the-way-over-there-for-that-remote-almost-got-it-
almost-almost" scene that involved Mila Kunis.)

2) That said, there were lots of killer kalves poking out of lots of business skirts. Maybe I'm the only Neanderthal for whom successful hunter/gatherer women and heels are a toxic mix, maybe not. (Someday I'll ask one of them what it's like to be an attractive woman at an event with a 143:1 Male:Female ratio.) So at a risk of anything ranging from significant professional embarrassment to eternal hellfire, I got some shots--and for every one shown here, there were several exquisite sightings that were logistically impossible to record--in the middle of which it struck me that this blog may more of a driver of behavior than a forum for recording it. Meaning, that I've become habituated not just to noticing things (as I always have), but to seek them out in an active effort to memorialize them as Exhibit A, which tends to lessen the therapeutic effect intended by the exercise.

So we'll see if those thoughts stick. In the meantime, I can plainly assert that no man I know and respect would ever do something like this. I'm sure that plenty of men I know and and respect have plenty of other problems. But none of them would walk around a conference (business or Church, for that matter, while we're on the subject) taking clandestine photos of womens' legs. No man. For example, I've admired one of my brothers in law for many, many years. He's fairly high up with a Fortune 500 company and is on the road more than he is at home, and runs in circles where power, wealth and beauty abound. Would never, ever do something like this. Never.

P.S. Special thanks to Delta for the flight delay that yielded several shots of a lovely and leggy fellow passenger.