Well, not really a day, but I got here yesterday. I set off at about 5:30 and went the full route of car, train, subway, bus, airplane (with a surprisngly smooth check-in and TSA for me, but that's because the guy in front of me was stupid enough to argue with them...rolling eyes), and another car. I reached the hotel at about 2:20 local time or 3:20 home time, had a surprisingly difficult check-in with them, got settled in the room, and went straight into a meeting and tour of the facilities with our hotel liason.
To the woman's credit, she was horrified that I'd had any problems at check-in, so Carol, Debi, and I decided to horrify her some more by telling her why such little hiccups were nothing to us. Now, she has a whole slew of new things to worry about. Grinning... Yeah, we're fun, when we get together in planning mode.
To Jolie's amazement, I managed to get free, shower, and head into social time with the group instead of being stuck in meetings all afternoon...with a little business discussion mixed in, of course...there are always fires to put out at a convention.
It's so wonderful to be back at EPICon, where Dan teases me that the package I'm picking up that was sent to my pen name isn't my real name, everyone gives me hugs, and discussions range from industry to childbirth and psychotic pets to precocious children. And that was just our pre-social hang-out time and the lovely social they set up for us from 7-10 local time.
I got to meet Holly Jacobs last night, and she is my kind of person. Within minutes of meeting her, she'd figured out that I was a mother of multiple kids, like her. Within a few more minutes, I'd heard the story of how she "nearly killed Nora Roberts." It's a great story...well worth hearing. She kept me laughing for hours, and several others joined the group, including Janet Lane Walters, who has more than a few stories of her own.
I met new friends and old. I finally got to meet Judith Rochelle, Jim and Zetta, and Rick Reed. The first EPIC face I saw on site was Kathy Sullivan.
The hotel is gorgeous, and the staff are amazing and have gone out of their way to correct every little hitch promptly.
I wanted to head out to check out the local restaurants. Did I mention I forgot to take my planned dinner with me yesterday morning, and my husband has it for lunch today? Probably not. But, the best laid plans of mice and men... Lisa and Sean showed up right around the end of the mixer, and we ended up heading back to the room for real EPIC business instead. For the next hour and a half, we looked at the bid for next year until I couldn't see straight. Then I went and checked e-mail for the stuff I knew was coming in from Betty K. All told, I got to bed at almost 1 am home time (midnight local time) for my usual first day at EPICon time of about 19.5 hours on my feet.
Notice that I was awake again and posting this at a little after 6 am home time (5 local). Yep. That's EPICon. Who sleeps?
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