Workshop Shuffle

Here is the email I sent out on Thursday:

Good lord. For those of you keeping track, I am still alive. And so far head cold free. Now are the times where the days start blending together.

Yesterday was the kick off for the conference, the literacy signing. This year there were over 520 authors signing. Today we found out that we earned over 54,000 for the CA literacy group. Go us. Of course since I was volunteering as a cashier (time to put all my years in retail to work) I am painfully aware how busy we were. After scaring the crap out of us with warnings of mean people demanding free things, the coordinators put us to work. I was sat next to a woman who was very cranky and then proceeded to explain all the horrible things going on in her life making her so cranky. yay. Anyway by the end of the night I was horse from shouting, "I can help someone down at this register!" (thank you Zeb's) and "Would you like to round up for literacy? Literacy. To help people who can't read? It's a good cause, just do it." I had one woman who told me she was told all the books were going to be half off the cover price. I was all like, nope, as a matter of fact, I'm going to ask you for even more money. Would you like to round up for literacy?

After the signing was the clean up and the party for my chapter. Now there are actually people who recognize me and say hello to me in the hallways. Today I met up with Megan Crane at Starbucks (don't worry about me, I am still able to get my daily fix here!) She is one of the authors I hung out with at the conference last year. Of course me being the terrible person I am, never kept in contact with any of them. She recognized me and came over to say hello!! And she realized I had grown my hair out.

The workshops started today and everyone is impressed by how freakishly prepared I am with my conference binder. The rooms are smaller in this hotel for the workshops, so I didn't get into the first round of workshops. Damn my need to pee! We have all quickly learned the workshop sprint. Here's how it goes: Once in a work shop, only unpack the bare essentials. Its best if you don't even take out any paper, write on your hand if you find it absolutely necessary to take notes. About half way through, put pen away, and close purse. As soon as the moderator asks for questions, jump from your seat and run for the stairs. Only amateurs wait to take the elevator. Once you reach the new room, the previous session will still be in progress-- burst in anyway, pick out the weakest attendee, and stare them down until they give up their seat.

I haven't made any new friends yet. I am stalking this one girl who is very friendly and we keep bumping into each other. She doesn't know it yet, but we are going to be friends. Best of friends. Or Else.

Alright I have to go. I need to strategize my day tomorrow. Figure out the exact floor plan, memorize where the stairwells are... Also, the free book signings start tomorrow. Requests? Otherwise I am going to to go with everything I can get my hands on.

Who am I kidding? I'll probably do that anyway.

Stephanie

Here are some pics:


This is from the Ferry building that I went to with Shoshi and Laurie. We got amazing sandwiches and ate it outside. This was one of the few sunny warm days.


This is the display at Bloomingdales. There is this huge fancy mall right by the hotel. Laurie and I were killing time while Shoshi got her hair done. We picked up these fruit tarts (mine was lemon) and it was incredible. I bought it as SF version of a grocery store. They also have this really fancy food court. Yeah I ate there multiple times. But I will get into that in another post.