I’m just going to start by saying I’m not tagging folks because I KNOW I will forget a bunch of folks that deserve mention… sigh… Old man, suffering from CRS over here!

Brandy, Rich, Tish, and the rest of the crew did the usual outstanding job of putting on a great program! Many thanks to those who work behind the scenes every year to make all this happen!

Flew out Thursday since I had an ‘early’ panel on Friday and I don’t like connecting flights, especially through ATL or CLT…

Lots of folks were already there/showing up by Thursday evening, and most were saying they were leaving Monday, turning a 2 1/2 day con into 4 1/2 days… LOL

Thursday night was basically catch up with folks and catch as catch can for food, etc. City Cafe was closing on Monday morning, so many folks made the pilgrimage to get a meal there! I’m still not sure if they’re renovating or what, as we had the grumpy waiter who wasn’t talking a lot since they were packed as usual.

Friday morning was the memorial shoot, and I had to miss it due to my panel… sigh

This is, as far as I know, the only picture of me on a panel (thankfully an early one), thanks to Kelly for the pic!

Luckily, my panels were spread out over the 2 1/2 days, so I had some breaks. And I did a reading with Kal Spriggs that was fun. Sold a few books, thanks to help from the NTT contingent (Becky) for doing the sales while I tried to talk to folks and sign books!!!

I ended up moderating a couple of panels, (always a challenge), but I don’t think I screwed them up too bad. And I’d like to thank those who expressed appreciation for our attempts to inform/educate/give ideas to those in the audiences!!!

And as usual, panels ‘I’ wanted to see were almost always against the ones I was on…sigh

Just a word of warning for those who go to cons where we are, if we know you’re knowledgeable in a subject that we’re talking about, we WILL jerk you up on the panel (Thanks JY, Greg, and the others)! We’d rather get you the correct info that try to BS our way through it or give you bad gouge.

The parties got started in earnest on Friday night, and the 5 (more or less),3,1 rule went into effect. It seems that 5 hours of sleep was the most some folks got…LOL

It was BUSY, the additional 250 people seemed to make less time to talk to individuals, with more waves and nods as we passed in the various hallways. The Gaming room got a lot of use, and there were a number of younger kids there (always a pleasure to see). A lot of money was raised for charity, from what I heard, and Larry’s Gritty Cop Show raised a good bit for his game!

The only real negative, at least from my prospective, was the flat network at the hotel and 1100+ nerds, it was D…O…G…slow, so I never bothered after trying to connect Thursday night. The weather that moved in Sunday afternoon/evening wasn’t a lot of fun either, the rain that had held off showed up in spades along with a lot of wind, screwing up a bunch of supper plans!!!

Hopefully, everyone made it home okay, and has good memories of the time we shared!