More

Ok, I posted some pix from the conference yesterday. We were at the Hilton. I knew it was gonna be mediocre when I saw that the room number was written on the room plaque in the hallway in magic marker! Pure class. And as usual, the key card didn't work. The Master Carp and I were sharing a room, and he was already there to let me in anyway. We each had been given two key cards, but I thought that mine should work as well, so I stopped down at the desk on my next trip, got my cards re-encoded, and now Brad's didn't work! So I just gave him one of mine. He said, "well, we won't be giving our room cards to any women this trip, my girlfriend and your wife would disapprove of that." To which I replied, "Yeah, and the only hot women I'm going to be hooking up with are gay!"

We got the display set up that evening, and then waited for our two profs, who had been planning to fly down, with me driving the equipment down, were forced to drive anyway because of the weather (Houston airport was closed, as well as several interstates, because of the rain!). We also had the whole next day to finish set-up since the expo floor didn't open until the following day (which was good since the convention people screwed up our reservation and didnt' give us carpeting or table or chairs, only power.)

To cut it short, the expo floor was amazing.

All kinds of products and demonstrations all the time. Anything remotely Technical Theatre related was there and being showcased in technicolor hues.

There were a LOT of cool class sessions. Some of them were dull and elementary, but I tried to avoid those. Once I got the knack of reading between the lines as to what level they were being taught at, I could target my sessions accordingly.

Of course, I also met up with some old friends. N (remember her? She abandoned us way back when from Rockford to go on to better and brighter things.) was there scoping out some new teaching techniques and toys to incorporate into her repertoire. I met up with an ex-stage manager who I had the hots for when we worked together briefly a while back. And a long-time acquaintance from Michigan, then Illinois, who is now working at the college in Beloit that I worked at last summer. (wow, was that only last summer?)

Really good to see all of them again. I hope to be able to do it again, though Wife seems dead set against it. However, it coincides with our Spring Break again next year, in Cincinnati...