conventions

After LTUE 2013 is Complete

By / February 17, 2013 / 2 Comments

The extent of my post-convention fatigue became apparent when I crouched down with a scoop of kibble to pour into the cat’s bowl. She was standing nearby, very intent on being there the moment the food hit the bowl, except I began to lose my balance. It was a slight bobble, the sort I usually correct without even noticing, but I couldn’t. I teetered and the cat startled, spinning to face me with wide eyes as her feet tried to bolt in three directions at once. I think it was the skitter noise of her claws on the hardwood floor that really undid me. I began to laugh. The laughing absorbed all of my remaining energy and balance abandoned me completely. A slow crumple landed me on the floor, head leaning on a nearby stool, my knees surrounded by all the food that had fallen when my limp fingers released the scoop. It was not that funny. I knew it wasn’t and that was part of the reason I could not stop laughing. I laughed because I was too tired to stand up again, because the cat sported a tail like a bottle brush, because kibble was everywhere, because it was so ridiculous for me to be laughing this much, because my children had accumulated in a hovering crowd wondering what on earth was wrong with their mother.

“Mom? Are you laughing or crying? Are you okay?” They asked.
Yes. I was both laughing and crying. Everything was fine, but I really needed to curl up into a ball until the twitching tension in my body calmed. I’d spent three really good days, filled to over flowing with good things. I’d just reached complete overload and required a complete system shutdown so that I could reboot and function again.

One of the greatest gifts given to me during this LTUE was parceled out in tiny pieces over all three days: I have a professional identity separate from Howard’s. It used to be that I was the business arm of Schlock Mercenary, Howard’s handler and support. It is an accurate description, because I do those things. I like being an integral part of Schlock. Yet I also wanted to be myself with my own things. It sometimes got frustrating to only ever be relevant as an appendage. “And this is Sandra who makes things run for Howard.” In the past three days I was only introduced that way once. All of the other times people mentioned my blog, my picture book, or my presentations. They might also mention my work for Schlock, but it became part of the picture rather than the whole of it. I saw it when people came to the table. They would talk to Howard and then they would come have a separate conversation with me because they had things to say about what I’ve created. For the past several years Howard and I have been working together to help me establish a separate professional identity. LTUE let me see that we’ve begun to succeed.

Another joy was setting up Kiki’s artwork on part of one table and having dozens of conversations with people who admired it. Kiki herself was able to have those conversations on Saturday when she sat next to her art and created something new. I love seeing her glow. It was not just the praise, but also the realization that the career she wants is actually possible, that there really are people out there who will buy her work because they love it. She sold three pieces, but the hope she brought home is far more valuable than the money.

I had a presentation and two panels, each of which went really well. I left feeling like there was lots more to discuss, but that we’d covered the truly essential pieces. Enough people came to tell me they enjoyed the presentations for me to know that I was part of something that was valuable to someone else. I also came away with new panel and presentation ideas. I’ll have to update my presentation list.

Then there were the conversations. I spoke with long-time friends who are in hard places right now. I rejoiced with friends who had good news. I joked with the pair of friends who traveled from Hawaii to stay in my house and help us with running our dealer room tables. I met people I’d only known online. I talked with fans who come back year after year to see what is new and who become friends. There were new people just discovering Schlock and my writing. Some came up simply because they’d been in a panel and wanted to talk further about the topic. We talked with long time business partners and new friends who needed advice. Often the conversations were short, like small gifts dropped off to be fully appreciated later. A few of the conversations ran across hours filled with topics both silly and important. Each was a gift of time and connection. I’m still turning them over in my head.

I frequently end up jellyfishing after conventions. I drift through my house like a jellyfish in a current. With the cat food incident I realized I’d pushed beyond drifting fatigue and into a realm of complete blitzed-out incapability. I lay in bed so exhausted and so wound up that I didn’t think sleep would ever come, but unable to muster the usual frustration I feel for insomnia. And it wasn’t insomnia really. Sleep arrived quite quickly, it was just that my body was informing me in no uncertain terms that we really should have rested long ago.

I woke Sunday morning with things still to do. Four children needed to eat breakfast and be herded into church clothes and off to the meetings. Our friends needed to be farewelled because they had a long drive ahead of them. I needed to figure out how to make myself suitably presentable for church while minimizing effort and maximizing comfort. My feet were not at all interested in wearing pretty shoes. Church was followed by a meeting during which I needed to be coherent and organized. I sat in corners at church, not asleep, but definitely conserving energy. After my meeting I came home and slept. This is all part of the convention recovery process. Tomorrow will be a day of re-establishing normal and clearing away the last of the convention thoughts and mess. I have follow up tasks for next week including writing up my presentation notes.

LTUE this year was an exceptionally good experience. I loved the Marriott venue and I hope they’ll make that into a permanent home.

Friday at LTUE

By / February 17, 2013

I can tell I’m conference tired when I open my laptop and discover that I did not actually post the words I wrote on Friday evening. So here they are now, and I’m off to write today’s thought:

On the second day of LTUE I came home instead of going out to dinner. I chose that for the sake of my son, who had spent the day with us discovering that there is nothing about working a booth or walking a convention that makes him happy. I wish it did. I wish we could share this with him, but we’ll have to seek out something else to share. He’d been good and patient, trying new things during the day, so I brought him home.

My house is full of reminders of things to be done and tasks which have gone ignored for two days. I switch the loads in the laundry machines. I pick up valentine candy detritus. The kids seem content to have me home, but they do not have the desperation which they used to show after I’d been gone all day. As I breathe the home air I realize that it is good for me to be here. I need to wind down. I need to make sure there are clean clothes to wear tomorrow. I need to spool out the thoughts in my brain and ponder the patterns that I’m seeing in LTUE and the people who attend. I remember when we were the strange newcomers to this long running symposium, Howard in his t-shirts and me shadowing him. In a hundred ways our experience here is smooth and happy because we know most of the organizers and they know us. LTUE really is a beautiful creation and I’m so glad to have a place in it.

Tomorrow I’ll be bringing Kiki to the show. She will fill a space at the table and love being there. She too is beginning to be a separate part of LTUE. More than one person comes to our table specifically to admire Kiki’s artwork. Having Kiki at the table more means that I will be at the table less. This is fine. My best convention moments are because of conversations and those happen almost anywhere.

Seven Paragraphs About LTUE

By / February 14, 2013 / 5 Comments

I came home to an explosion of valentines wrappers and cards strewn all over the kitchen table. All four kids were downstairs watching Avatar: The Last Airbender episodes, only Link felt the need to welcome me home with a hug. They were all fine and had been fine all afternoon while I was gone. I have reached the point where I do not need to obsessively plan contingencies and give detailed instructions when I’m going to be gone. The holiday also meant that the kids did not have a homework panic because none had been assigned. All was well at Chez Tayler.

People came up to me at the table, not to ask me questions about Howard, but to say hello and ask me about my writing and projects. This time I had answers for them, which is a huge improvement over last year when I stood behind a table of Howard’s things and only had one four-year-old book to show. The difference is in me, I have shifted inside, made space for my creative things, and bit by bit they accumulated over the course of a year. This year I can point to two books on the table. In a few months I hope to be able to point at four. I talk about those hopes and people are glad for me. Then they tell me about their hopes and I am glad for them.

Often it is the small conversations which stay with me, the seem inconsequential: talking about projects and events. But then one person will share some small piece of information which shifts the possibilities for someone else. I see it over and over as the people come to our table to talk to us and to each other. I love seeing that moment when a new future becomes visible or a solution is handed over. Sometimes I get to be part of that exchange, sometimes I am the recipient. At home I think of the faces I saw today, the conversations I had. I turn them over and examine them like a jeweler examines stones. Small moments shine, the people shine and I’m not even sure they realize it.

Publishing a book is often compared to giving birth with analogies drawn between pregnancy and writing. There is another similarity, authors share their publishing stories just as women will spontaneously tell labor horror stories to a pregnant woman. I hear stories that sound to me like glowing shining tales about the wonder and beauty of this process. Other tales clarify how badly this can all go wrong. I listen and I wish somehow the whole thing could be easier and less messy. The thing is that there are happy and horrible stories about every single available publishing path. Listening to some of these stories is educational so that pitfalls are identified: theoretically to be avoided. However listening to too many stories can leave me discouraged and wondering why I want to publish in the first place. Then I remember the people who come up to the table and tell me that my words made their lives better. I just need to keep on going and pray that I’ll muddle my way through some hybrid path that takes me to places where my words can continue to help.

The room was full when I walked in, I’d not really expected that. On other occasions when I’ve taught solo presentations I had between five and twelve people for an audience. The room was full and I walked to the front to lay out my presentation props: books that I might want to hold up as examples. In the end I forgot to hold them up. I forgot to mention several other things as well. This did not matter because somehow as I followed the bread crumbs of my presentation notes I was able to say the right things. I did not say all of the right things, but sometimes the whole room laughed, which is a pretty good sign of a presentation going well. I was also able to see moments when an audience member nodded or a head dipped to scribble a note. These are also good signs. Probably the most important thing I said was that some of what I said is the wrong advice for some of the audience because everyone has to find their own ways to build creativity into their lives. Sitting here and thinking about it, I keep thinking about additional things to say. Some of those will end up in the presentation notes I type up here for the blog next week. Others will wait until I give the presentation again at LDS Storymakers. Mostly I don’t know exactly what I said or how I said it, but people came to thank me afterward which means that for some of my audience I said exactly the right thing. There was a recording device in front of me I wonder if I will continue to think I did well when I listen to the recording. Yes it will be available on the internet. I’ll link it when it is.

Howard and I had solo presentations at the exact same hour. We made jokes about how our friends would have to pick which Tayler they liked best. I pictured myself with a mostly empty room next door to Howard’s full room while he made the audience laugh. Both of us had full audiences, which felt very happy to me. Howard’s presentation/workshop also went really well. I hope he gets a chance to give it again.

I was not sure if I should go out to dinner or rush home to the kids. I sort of split the difference, staying to eat for awhile then ducking out to go home. Partly I needed to make sure that all was well. (It was, even with valentines detritus strewn everywhere.) The other part was my need for the quiet of my house after the sociability of the convention. I needed to hug my children and be here for bedtime. The routine comforts us all and grounds me. I have to sit in my house with my fingers on the keyboard to unspool my thoughts, tucking them away for the night too. Tomorrow will be another full day. It begins early as I have a panel starting at 9 am.

Life the Universe and Everything Symposium

By / February 7, 2013 / 2 Comments

One week from today the Life the Universe and Everything Symposium begins. If you love to read science fiction and fantasy, then this is an excellent event for you to attend and learn more about the things you love. If you are a teacher who wants to include these things in your classroom, then you may be interested in the Saturday educational track which tries to help with exactly that. If you want to write science fiction or fantasy, then LTUE is an event you can’t afford to miss. If you register in advance you can attend all three days for $30. That is $10 per day for a full day of presentations, panel discussions, and a chance to meet working writers and artists. Prices are more expensive at the door. If you are a student, you can attend for free. Did you catch that? Any student from any school who has a student ID can attend the entire symposium for free. This is because the whole point of LTUE is for people to share their knowledge and love of science fiction and fantasy.

Both Howard and I will be there all three days. You’re most likely to find us in the dealer’s room sitting under the big Schlock Mercenary banner. I do have one scheduled panel each day and I’m really excited about all of them.

Thurs 4pm
Structuring Life to Make Room for Creativity
This is a solo presentation where I get to teach how to organize your life so that you have time and energy to write, draw, paint, sew, or what ever else calls to you.

Fri 9am
Overcoming Adversity
Or How to Keep Writing when Life Gets in the Way
Sandra Tayler, Loralee Leavitt, Al Carlisle, Danyelle Leafty, Julie Wright
I love panels like this. Stories are told and I always learn something that helps me later.

Sat 9am
Social Media Q&A
Heather Ostler, Robison Wells, Mette Ivie Harrison, Sandra Tayler (M), Peter Orullian
I’m particularly excited about this in light of the social media experiments I’ve been doing lately.

So don’t miss LTUE February 14-16 at the Marriott in downtown Provo.

The Schedule of Upcoming Events

By / January 29, 2013

This is a week full of events and appointments that disrupt my schedule. They are good things, but I’m having to pay attention to the time rather than relying on my habits. This means the hour before I have to be somewhere often ends up as wasted time. I don’t want to start into anything new because if I get deep into a project I’ll lose track and miss the appointment. I should probably spend that hour on simple tasks, like laundry, but somehow that doesn’t feel exciting. All the appointments are also chewing into my compositional brain space, which is where writing percolates.
Today Howard and I had a podcast interview which will air sometime in February.
Tomorrow is the Orem Writes event where I’ll be talking about blogging with C. Jane Kendrick. (7 pm, Orem Public Library.)
Friday I have a concert in the evening.
Saturday family comes to town.

Next week has a similar array of appointments including parent teacher conferences and an orthodontic consultation.

The week after that is Life The Universe and Everything symposium. If you’re a writer or reader of Science Fiction or Fantasy, then LTUE is worth your time. It is packed full of panel discussions about writing and about books, shows, and art in the genre. There is even an educator’s conference on Saturday with panels to help teachers use genre fiction in their classrooms. This year it is taking place at the Provo Marriott hotel. I’ve seen a preliminary schedule. I have three panels and Howard has many panels. You could spend all three days listening to Taylers if you wish. However I recommend you listen to lots of the other amazing authors and artists they have lined up to teach.

After that my calendar is much more empty. The emptiness is probably a mirage, but I’ll believe in it for now.

Inventory Day at the Schlock Warehouse

By / October 3, 2012 / 1 Comment

When my front room looks like this:

Then I know it is time to have an inventory day. These packages are the returned merchandise from Chicon with a couple of boxes of books from the UVU Book Academy thrown in for good measure. The Chicon boxes only just arrived because the truck they were in had some cross country adventures on the way back to us. Fortunately the merchandise inside was all fine, just the boxes were battered by being shipped across the country and back again.

An inventory day is when I sort through boxes and put all the merchandise back on the shelves in my shipping room so that I can find it again when I need it. Sometimes an inventory day also requires me to re-arrange my storage arrangements as merchandise sells out and other merchandise is added. Today I’ll definitely be needing to rearrange because one of the things which arrived from Chicago were these:

We have 14 of them and I’ll be putting them into the store as soon as I get some proper product photos taken. That will happen after I’ve figured out where to store them that is not in my front room. The Schlock Mercenary shipping and warehousing department takes up an entire unfinished room in our basement.


There are also two storage units off site where we store large pallets full of boxes of books.
My shipping station is set up more or less in the middle of the room where I’ve got easy access to most of the merchandise.

You can see that I keep the most shipped inventory close along with various sizes of boxes and packing paper. I print invoices and postage in my office, but then I stand at the shipping station to pack the boxes. We usually average between five and ten orders per week during most of the year. November and December tend to average ten to twenty orders per week. During pre-orders we’ll get anywhere from a hundred to a thousand orders depending on what shiny thing we’ve put up for sale. The massive pre-orders are handled differently from the daily shipping.

One of the fun things about an inventory day is discovering that of the ten copies of Hold on to Your Horses that I sent to Chicon, only one came back. One is the perfect number of books to have after a convention, because I know that I sold as many as possible and there is only one left to ship home. Cobble Stones also only had a single copy return.

In addition to all of the Chicon packages, we had a single package from GenCon. The T-shirt collection we had in storage there had become somewhat random. We decided to ship them all home and re-stock completely next year. The box contained some shirt designs which we’ve discontinued.

I put them all into our store so that we can clear out the old inventory and make way for new things. Selling the old inventory makes physical space and provides the funds necessary to make new things.

Sorting through all the boxes showed me that it was time to upgrade one of our stacked pallets into a shelf. So that is my next task for today: assembling shelving. At the end of it all, I will have gone up and down the stairs countless numbers of times. I suppose I can call it exercise. Putting the storage and work space in the basement means that we end up carrying things up and down stairs regularly. Until we’re able to budget for an actual warehouse/office this is the best solution we’ve got.

The People at the Retreat

By / September 27, 2012 / 1 Comment

It occurs to me that I’ve spent three posts talking about the forest and I probably ought to talk about the retreat itself and the other writers here. I knew Mary Robinette before coming, of course. I’d also previously met Alethea Kontis. Everyone else was new to me. I figured they had to be good people since they were all invited by Mary. The group here is fairly small, ten people. Getting acquainted has been a leisurely process because most everyone is spending hours each day staring at their computers deep in story. When I began taking pictures of the folks here and asking permission to post them to the internet, staring at screens was most of what I photographed.

Mary Robinette Kowal, Michael Livingston, Monte Cook, and Shanna Germain writing on the porch in the evening.

David Levine deep in story.

Kate Yule at work.

It is not always work. Ellen Klages takes a break from writing by reading Glamour in Glass.

Alethea Kontis communing with the forest.

We tend to gather and talk at meal times. It helps that Mary cooks the most fantastic dinners.

Sometimes we talk about story or the projects we’re working on, but meal time conversations tend to be about anything and everything. Over lunch today we actually had a conversation about conversations, which was rather meta, but fascinating. I like being around other writers because they pay attention to random things and then think about them. I usually learn a lot. We talk and then we scatter and ignore each other for a couple of hours.

It is an odd mix of socializing and solitude. Yet it is exactly what it needs to be.

League of Utah Writers Annual Round Up

By / September 10, 2012 / 1 Comment

This Saturday Howard and I will be attending the League of Utah Writers annual Round Up. I’m very excited. I get to be part of a panel discussion along with Howard, Brandon Sanderson, and Emily Sanderson. We’ll be talking about the crazy transition when suddenly the creative career becomes the only career and how that affects the family. Since Brandon, Emily, and Howard are among my favorite people it is going to be fun. I’m also eyeing some of the other sessions. They’ve got people talking about creative non-fiction, poetry, etc. It looks like there is a lot I can learn. If you’re interested in writing and have the time, the Round Up is a good place for you to be on Saturday.

Cost Benefit Analysis on a Convention

By / September 5, 2012

The first day after a convention is for sleeping off the exhaustion, but the next day is for cost benefit analysis. A successful convention gives more than it costs in emotional, career, and financial rewards. We’ve had lots of successful conventions. Sometimes the sales aren’t great, but a business contact is made which opens up a world of new possibilities. Other times there are no particularly shiny business opportunities and the sales are mediocre, but we get to share laughter and conversations with lots of good people. There are always good things and bad in every show. Howard comes home and unpacks his brain, complaining of the unpleasant things, joyfully telling about the fun stuff. As he talks, we try to figure out how the next show could be made better.

Sadly Chicon (WorldCon 70) lands in the red for us. Howard had lots of fun. He’s spent hours telling me about conversations with fans, writers, personal heroes, and friends. He had our dream team of booth help, a crew that stuck with him not just for retail, but also who bolstered him up during the emotional ride of the Hugos. We have fun pictures, and business cards of people to contact after the show. Unfortunately we planned poorly and spent too much. Taken over all, the show simply did not pay all that back. Howard began the show with a slight emotional deficit because of the low buffer and GenCon fatigue. We figured that sales in Chicago would be higher than they were in Reno since the convention itself would be larger. We budgeted accordingly, arranging to have extra booth help and ship the necessary product to support that. Our expenses where higher than they had ever been before. This was not helped by the fact that Chicago kept surprising us with extra fees for things like parking. We did not lose money. The booth sales covered our expenses, but not enough to pay for the week of lost work, or the stress involved in preparing and running the booth. We sold less in Chicago than we did in Reno.

Our analysis of why is ongoing. It was certainly not our help which was fantastic. The booth was always hopping with conversation and transactions. The truth is that retail sales are always capricious. The dedicated fans will always find us and brighten Howard’s day by standing there to talk to him while he draws. They are our bread and butter, the reason we are able to continue to do this crazy work, which doesn’t seem like it should be able to support a family of six and a colorist. We love the people who seek out Howard. But if the dealers’ room is hidden off in a corner (as it was in Chicago) it reduces foot traffic. Fewer people wander by the booth to be exposed to Schlock. Sometimes there is just a mis-match between the general convention populace and Schlock Mercenary. The comic can’t appeal to everyone. It appealed to a smaller proportion of people in Chicago than it did in other areas of the country. That happens too. Either that, or a larger portion had already bought stuff online. We misjudged and let the cost of coming nearly wipe out profits.

If it were only insufficient profits, the conversations with people would be more than enough to balance out the emotional ledger, however Chicon also had the Hugo awards. Being nominated is a huge honor, and a tremendous benefit to Howard personally and to Schlock Mercenary as a business. All weekend Howard had people coming up and telling him that they had discovered Schlock because of the Hugo nominee packet. But once Howard arrives at WorldCon, he starts to feel the strain of hope. He begins to realize that he’d really love to bring home a Hugo trophy and he’s probably not going to. Then in self defense, he tries to negate that hope, which leads to him denigrating his own work to himself inside his head. It becomes a weekend-long effort to try to not think about it too much, while all the time people are coming up to wish him luck. (Some of them do so while confessing that they voted for someone else. Yes. People do that. Lots. Hint: if you didn’t vote for someone, the appropriate thing to say is either nothing at all or “Good luck. I’m rooting for you.” Not “I didn’t vote for you because _______, but I’ll vote for you next year.” Pretty much anything other than “good luck” is pouring gasoline on the flame of creative neuroses. You do not have to fell guilty or apologize for your votes. Howard is strong and can laugh this type of thing off. Not everyone can.) Win or lose, the Hugos require a huge emotional expenditure. Howard works hard to find his fellow nominated friends and help them deal with the stress. He struggles to find helpful words. He tries to make sure that he is always gracious no matter how people approach him, even if what they say manages to gut-punch him right in his insecurities. It is exhausting and exciting and thrilling. But ultimately even excitement is exhausting. High emotions always take a toll, even if they’re positive emotions.

Presumably winning a trophy pays for all of that effort, someday maybe we’ll be able to report how that works. However, I’ve spoken to people who’ve won and they tell me that having the statue can make the next project harder to tackle, the fear of not being able to live up to prior success is real and can be crippling. There is also the emotional ride of having won when your friends didn’t. Whether or not Howard came home with a Hugo, I knew this week would require some emotional rebalancing.

Special note to anyone who may, in the future, be arranging the pre-Hugo ceremony photography. It can be a mad scramble to get this done in the time allotted. I know it is a hard job, like herding cats. People don’t hear announcements or disregard them. However, if you run out of time before the ceremony, do not ask the losers to come back after the awards are handed out and be photographed with the winners. Just don’t. Those who lose do not have the emotional resources to put on happy faces for the camera. The winners are in shock and may feel guilty for winning over the others in their category. Don’t make them stand together while they are still in the first hour of processing this emotional shift. Before the ceremony it is “all in this boat together” after it is different. If you don’t get the picture before the ceremony, let it go.

Also rolled up in the weekend was my absence and the reasons for it. I was pretty miserable because I was sad to miss out on friends and even more because I was actively working to disconnect the anxiety triggers which I’ve had connected to WorldCon since last year. “Disconnecting anxiety triggers” is a lot like defusing bombs, very tense and no fun at all. I tried not to let any of that leak into Howard’s experience of the event, but I was only partially successful because he is perceptive and I am honest. All of which is enough for it’s own story sometime, so I’ll leave it at that.

Among the good gifts that Chicon gave to us, are some valuable lessons. As we pick apart what worked and what didn’t, we’re better able to plan for future conventions. The glaringly obvious thing is that we have to figure out how to make WorldCon in San Antonio cost less. If we can lower the financial and emotional costs of the event, then the rewards will be sufficient to have Howard coming home excited for the next event. Obviously we need to spend less money setting up the booth, but we also need to have more comics in the buffer so that the week off of work does not feel so expensive. We need to make time for Howard to play. There were friends that Howard did not get to spend time with because he was tied down at the booth. We need to figure out how to get Howard to allow himself to play, to recognize that the emotional rewards of a convention are far more important than the financial ones. If he gives up most of the emotional rewards in pursuit of financial ones, his convention experience suffers. I think I’ve managed to locate my personal emotional landmines surrounding WorldCon, which will make next year easier. There’s more detail and quite a lot of talking in circles as we sort it out. In the end we don’t regret Chicon, we just have a list of what to do differently.

If you are one of the people who came to tell Howard you love Schlock. Thank you. If you bought something, or just said hello, or asked Howard for advice, or chatted with him at a party, then you are the reason that Chicon was not a disaster for us. You are the reason that Howard came home determined to pour his effort into the comic, instead of collapsing into a fugue of despair. To paraphrase from a Doctor Who episode: Chicon for Howard was divided into piles of good things and piles of hard things. The fact that, at the end, the pile of hard things was a little bit bigger is our fault and does not at all subtract from the goodness of the good things. If you did anything at all to add to Howard’s pile of good things. Thank you. He’s been telling me about what you did and I am grateful.

We live, we learn, we move onward.

On the Eve of Howard’s ChiCon Departure

By / August 27, 2012

Today was Chicon prep day. Everything proceeded according to schedule, including both Howard and I feeling stressed about random preparatory things. The bags are packed. We have confirmation that the packages all arrived. The pieces are in place and the adventure begins tomorrow. For tonight, Howard and I are trying not to think about it too much. Instead I’m over on Amazon re-reading all the product reviews on the new line of bic pens “For Her.” After that I’ll find a happy TV show to watch.