In the Midst of the Convention

Weather: Back to what it should be. Cold and super windy. I guess it's nice, as long as I only have to deal with it for a week.
Sports Thought: I don't want to talk about it.
Accomplishment: Finally met my first people who go to the University of Maryland. They just sort of stared at me when I told them how awesome they are and how cool the Terp is, but eventually they gave us donuts.
Currently: There's a poker night going on up stairs. We'll see if I can fight through the fatigue to play some hold 'em and, unfortunately, socialize with some of the strangest people I've ever been around.

So the past two days have been a healthy mix of APO conventioning, Boston sightseeing, and fatigue.
As far as the Boston portion of the trip, we're doing a pretty good job of covering as many tourist spots that are stops on the T. Sunday was somewhat of an anomaly. The weather running about sixty degrees, we were practically dying after a couple of hours of wandering around. We took the T to Newbury Street, which is a swanky and scenic shopping center. We saw a number of ornate and imposing churches, each of which I can only assume was "America's First [denomination] Church," seeing as everyone has some sort of dubious achievement like that here. We stumbled upon the Boston Public Library, which was absolutely stunning. It was more like an empty art museum or church, with huge stair cases and painted ceilings and the like. Wikipedia tells me it was "the first publicly supported municipal library in the United States, the first large library open to the public in the United States, and the first public library to allow people to borrow books and other materials and take them home to read and use." Naturally.
From there we semi-navigated our way to Boston Common, which of course advertises itself as America's first park. Probably the coolest thing was that the big lake throughout the park was semi frozen (especially impressive given the fact that we were sweating at this point).
From there, we took the T to the Museum of Fine Arts, mostly because it was free starting after 4 pm (but closing at 4:45...). Although 45 minutes is more than enough time for two guys to crank through an art museum, and we hit Egypt, Greece and Rome, Impressionist France, and Contemporary American quite expediently.
Last night at around eleven, our fellow Southern Californians (Rho Gamma at Cal State Long Beach and Chi at UCLA) invited us on an expedition with them to find the river. So most of this consisted of weaving through lots of picturesque streets (complete with apartments with stoops!) and fighting the cold weather. Something we've noticed (esp. from the view in the room) is that Boston is a city much better suited for nighttime. All the buildings do a great job of illuminating (although maybe some of this is just Christmas leftovers) and it's definitely a cool place to wander around after dark (which happens around five pm......).
Today the convention paid for us to take the T to Quincy Market and Faneuil Hall, which I can only assume was America's first food court and shopping center. The whole area was really nice--more classic looking buildings and brick streets. Although I got a pretty disappointing seafood roll (80% mayonnaise, 20% crab and shrimp), still another cool place to knock off of our to-do.
As far as in the Sheraton, most of what's slated for the four days of the convention are various workshops, each trying to focus on areas to improve each individual chapter. Yesterday, I went to Retention, while Eman went to Pledging and one on successful chapters in general. Pretty informative on the whole, but nothing spectacular. We've also got daily meetings with all of the California schools, where they talk about the state of our region. Perhaps the highlight of today's was a discussion involving changing the date of regionals (a biennial convention for the California schools) from in late December to November. They region director ran down the list of various reasons as to why the change was needed, one being "Alpha Kappa (our chapter) has a history of playing the Rose Bowl." Again, USC football has repercussions felt everywhere.
Today from eight am to four pm (with our two hour lunch break) was the legislation session. Essentially, there are ten or so committees, and each propose amendments to the bylaws and national legislations for the chapters to follow, and then two members from each chapter votes on it. Sounds pretty simple. Unfortunately, the combination of a strict following of Robert's Rules of Order and a pretty verbose nerd population results in rambling discussion on endless topics. Some of the 'highlights' from today were whether or not we should formally celebrate the Boy Scouts of America's 100th anniversary (since they discriminate against homosexuals), whether chapters should be encouraged to celebrate Veteran's Day (which may offend some Muslim students who feel that veterans are directly in conflict with their home country and beliefs) (this debate really impressed me; I was unaware that people were capable of being against veterans), whether or not outside auditors should "review" or "inspect" financial reports, and various motions to end debate on motions to end debate.
But luckily, we could find ways to fight through the tedium. Apart from my standard fare (crossword puzzles), there's an elaborate 'messaging' system set up. Since we're not allowed cell phones and talking is to be kept to a minimum, we can write notes, which are then picked up by floor messengers, and then delivered to their target. While we started off using this semi-practically (asking our Section representative to grab us some breakfast) the system corrupts pretty easily. So we ended up having the messengers deliver notes to Chi (sitting directly in front of us), swap donuts for sudoku books with Epsilon Mu (University of Maryland), Rose Bowl smack talk Alpha Beta (Penn State), and carry on a conversation with Gamma Zeta (Georgia Tech), probably the biggest USC football fans I've met outside of the greater LA area. In between, we also got a really cryptic message from Sigma Zeta (RPI) asking us to reveal our identities, and I sent probably an equally odd one to Xi Delta (Texas A&M) telling them how awesome they were. Hopefully we can keep up the mass messaging tomorrow, which'll get us through whatever else voting we have to do.