As a young'un with dreams of becoming a fabulous career woman, I thought business travel was a mark of becoming successful.

However, Ugly Lesson of Adulthood, No. 297 has taught me that business trips are not the glamorous junkets I fantasized about. Tomorrow I will travel to Dallas to attend a conference that I do not care about and would not care about even if I weren’t leaving this job next week.

I’ve traveled for my job only four times in the past three years. During those trips, I have felt socially inept at least 50 percent of the time. Unlike the camps I attended in high school and college, business conferences are not run by counselors who lead icebreakers and force people to socialize. While I do not miss doing the dreaded “untie the human knot” trick with sweaty, stinky people, I admit those activities fostered a sense of comraderie among us -- even if the only bond we shared was a mutual dislike of the leaders who had OD’ed on Mountain Dew and cheerleading camp.

You can’t predict the crowd at a business conference. Some are rowdy and want to drink ‘till dawn, some prefer to hang out in their hotel rooms and order room service, and some are more cliquey than students at any high school. Although I’m hardly a party girl, I really prefer going to conferences with borderline alcoholics because those folks are much friendlier than the hermits and the cast of Mean Girls 2: Life After Age 30.

Aside from a third-grade slumber party that I’ve mostly blocked from memory, I have never been more homesick than when I attended a conference in Denver two years ago. Only 30 people came, and most already belonged to a clique from an earlier conference that I didn’t attend. The nice people I met either had friends in the area or were traveling with a spouse, which meant I had nobody to socialize with in the evenings. Not that it mattered, because the hotel was 25 minutes from downtown, and the only nearby attractions were Big Lots, Staples, and McDonalds. I cherish my alone-time, but I was so lonely and miserable that I tried to book an early flight home on the last day of the conference. Since all my extra money had been going toward wedding expenses, I couldn’t afford the $100 change fee, so I sucked it up and stayed.

Since I’m giving up a three-day weekend to attend this #%$& thing (and many of the attendees are repeats from the horrible Denver trip), I have a small wish list:
1) I want time to sightsee and go shopping.
2) The drinkers should show up in droves and offer to buy a round for everyone.
3) I hate asking strangers to hang out with me, so I hope someone notices my coolness (ha!) and invites me out to dinner so I won’t feel like a loser.
4) I want my bed to have a fluffy white down comforter and tons of pillows. (It happened once, and it was glorious.)
5) I don’t want a skeezy guy at least a decade older than me to attempt to lure me into a bar or his hotel room. Especially when I remind him (repeatedly) that I am married, and so is he.

That’s all.