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Monday, August 01, 2005

Conference Recap: Pre-Conference

I think I already hit the high points here, so I'll be brief.

I arrived on Monday, July 25th. The flight actually went well--even though I was in coach!--but walking across the entire Reno airport (small as it was) caused me more than a little bit of discomfort. Then we had to stand and wait for the Hilton shuttle van. I had heard that they ran every 15 minutes, but when one of the women called, she was told every half an hour. Gah!

Finally, it arrived, and fortunately, was bigger than a van. More like one of those little mini-bus things. Since we filled it up with women and luggage, that was a good thing and no one was left waiting at the airport. Our little flurry left a line at check in since they were lightly staffed at the front desk. Of course, the whole casino was light on people (it was right inside the front door), so they probably weren't expecting the first hoarde of romance writers to descend upon them en masse.

Had dinner with a couple of friends that night and went to bed early. Not that it helped.

Tuesday.

I managed to get off the hotel TV internet in time to meet a friend and register for the RWA conference at 1pm. :-) That ended up being harder than expected when the lady couldn't find me in the packets. I kept spelling O'Shea and finally, I said: O apostrophe. That made all the difference and she found me immediately. Problem number two, my PAN ribbon wasn't in my folder. Finally got that squared away, then we had to traipse over to one of the hotel rooms to get tote bags. They were JAMMED with books! Hurrah! And two of them were titles I'd wanted, but hadn't gotten around to buying yet because they were trade paperbacks. I felt like I'd hit the jackpot.

Afterward, we did lunch and I had a chance to fill my friend in on all the latest interesting stuff. While we were sitting at the Java Coast, a fellow chapter member who'd been so nice to me at the airport walked by, so she was pulled into the conversation and part of our dinner group when we went to Johnny Rockets, a 1950's style hamburger place. It wasn't a particularly eventful day.

Wednesday Morning/Afternoon.

Made plans to have lunch with one friend--yes, I'm hopeless about getting up in the morning--and ran into a second, so the three of us went to Asiana. They had sushi, but I'm not quite that adventurous and went with the sunshine noodles. I put my bookmarks in the goody room and made a quick pass through myself. I didn't see a whole lot in there that was worth grabbing, but then I've become really picky about what I'm dragging home.

I can't remember what else I did before the literacy signing. Maybe nothing since I was taking every opportunity I could to prop my foot up. I also headed off for the signing about a half an hour before it started because it was a long way down the hall and I'm walking pretty damn slowly right now.

More conference posts to follow.