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The Utah Optometric Association held their annual meeting in Park City at the Canyons Resort last week. The whole thing was a four day meeting, Thursday-Sunday, which is puzzling since the total CE hours offered was a mere twenty-three. The first two days only offered four hours and the last two days offered seven and then eight.

So why did the first two days only offer four hours? Well, of course you have to have the golf tournament which I overheard the same people win every year so they have to change the scoring rules to give others a chance. Then there’s all the luncheons, vendor fairs, dinners, parties, receptions, and association business meetings that take up more time.

Personally, I wish they would do all that other stuff on one day so that I could skip that day and still get all the CEs I need in just 2-3 days instead of four. I especially dislike having to go to CE on Sunday when I should be going to church instead. I mean, we live in Utah for Heaven’s sake! More than half the optometrists at the meeting are LDS church goers who normally wouldn’t work on Sundays, so you’d think someone could change the schedule to allow for more CE on Friday and Saturday and then I could skip out on the partying on Thursday and Sunday.

The Canyons is a nice resort. In the winter, it looks like you could ski out of your hotel onto the lift. But hey, all resorts in Park City are nice. The Canyons staff took good care of the conference room set-up, and there was plenty of pop, water, food, and hot chocolate.

Park City is great, but May is the off season. It’s neither winter nor summer, so you can’t ski and you can’t ride the alpine slide. Part of me would like to see the conference done in either the summer or winter when a lot more is available for the family to do; however, that would only serve to increase the rates of the convention and its hotel stay, so maybe it’s just fine in late May.

Really, it’s a great meeting, but the time lost in an extra day away from the office and the whole disrupting my Sunday routine has me thinking I might go to the NROC, SECO or AAO next time.

I’m sure I’ll still go to the UOA Park City conference occasionally in the future because it’s great to talk with other O.D.s in the state, but I’m never going to stay for a Sunday CE lecture again.