Sheep Guarding Llama

Dominica was up and in before me today.  She and Danielle ended up having to set up camp and work in the cafeteria much of the morning.  Danielle ended up working pretty much all day.  I was in pretty early, around eight.  Not bad for the last day here.

Today felt much more busy and pressured.  Probably because there was so much going on.  And by mid-afternoon Dominica and I learned that Luciana was not feeling well and we were under a threat of having to potentially pack up and run to Houston at any moment.  We spent at least two hours at the end of the conference dealing with that.  She ended up improving a little so we were able to stay but we are likely having to deal with that tomorrow and we are definitely missing the “morning after” breakfast tomorrow morning.  That sucks as that is always a fun time to wind down and just enjoy being in Austin as we attempt to leisurely work our way back to wherever we are going.

Tonight, for the first time ever since I have been to Spiceworld, because  of the location of the new venue, we did not go directly to Touche’s but instead hit the Luster Pearl where we spent the evening.  It was a very different atmosphere but it worked out pretty well.  We all hung out outside and it rained a bit, but it was fine.  The big advantage was that it was so ridiculously close to the convention center that everyone was able to walk there in just a few minutes.

I called it a night on the early side, as did most everyone.  There were only a few people left after me and I headed back probably around midnight.

We have to be up and on the road to Houston early tomorrow.  Luciana needs to see a doctor.

Got up nice and early, less than four hours of sleep, and it was off to SpiceWorld.  This is my fifth time here.  I started in 2009 and have not missed an event yet in Austin.  Today is my third time speaking at Spiceworld a main speaker and my fifth or sixth time speaking overall.  Plus I’m speaking twice today.  So my total might be as high as seven times.

I got in early and spoke to vendors this morning, I managed to spend quite a bit of the morning with Dominica which was a nice change from last year.  I didn’t attend anything, I don’t believe, before my first panel discussion.  That was pretty early in the day and I feel went pretty well.  I received good feedback on the talk, at least.  From what I can tell, my session this morning was not recorded.  It appears, like almost every session that I have ever done, to have not been recorded.  I’ve since looked for the recording and found none.

I attended some sessions and lunch, which was not up to par with previous years, and then had my big talk near the end of the day.  The Q&A with SAM in the ballroom.  Sadly, once again, the recording was botched and only nine minutes of my hour long session got recorded, so you only get the warm up and not the actual talk.  Nothing of substance or value was captured.  I am seriously depressed about that because I got just tons and tons of amazing feedback and really wanted to get to see the session to see how I did and I wanted to use it for training and career stuff.  I really needed that for some training things that have asked me to submit material.  It turned out that no video was captured and just a few, mostly worthless, minutes of audio.  And my dad didn’t get to watch it live either and was waiting on the recorded session.  In the future I will definitely not speak without doing my own recording, it just isn’t worth it.  They’ve lost something like six out of seven sessions that I’ve done!

The party after the sessions today was okay but way, way too loud and so there was no way to hang out or have fun.  The whole time was just an attempt to escape the volume.

After that party was over we were thankful for the quiet walk to the moderately quiet Touche’s on sixth and the evening began.  Dominica made it out tonight and stayed out to walk home with me around two thirty.

Today is the kick off of SpiceWorld so Dominica and I are off to Austin this morning.  The girls have been in Houston since Saturday, we left them there when we came back up to Dallas yesterday, so that we would not have to drive them to Houston today.

The drive down to Austin went pretty well.  We had to get down there pretty early because Art and I had a meeting at three this afternoon and we all wanted to get settled into the hotel before that.  Art and Danielle were driving around the DFW picking people up for a car pool down there so they left before us.

We got to Austin pretty early.  So much earlier than I have ever been there for SpiceWorld.  This was really nice.  Time to get into the hotel, to relax and to do other things before jumping into the big event full force.

Once we got settled into our rooms, Dominica took a nap and Art and I set out, on foot, to walk downtown to our lunch meeting.  It was a long walk and the day was hot so we were sweating by the time that we got there.  We had to walk very briskly and for several miles.  But it was a good workout.  Lunch (or early dinner) was very good.  We were the only people at a quiet place near fourth.

Dominica and Danielle went to the convention center while we were at our meeting and got us checked in to the conference, got our bags of swag and took them back to the hotel for us.  That was incredibly handy because that is such a pain to deal with tomorrow – both the check in and the dealing with all of the “stuff” that you have to carry around.

We ended up meeting up at the conference center and then, from there, heading to the first event of the evening.  And SpiceWorld has officially begun!

We had two parties tonight.  Both very low key.  Then from there it was the trek to sixth to Touche’s and the real SpiceWorld party was on 🙂  Dominica was still feeling sick from the pink eye that she has had for a week or two so thought better of going out tonight and instead went back to the hotel and got some sleep early.  That was probably smart.

I ended up with the very last people straggling back.  It was close down sixth, then IHOP and on to the hotel at three thirty in the morning.  We are going to be hurting tomorrow for sure.

I woke up, on my own around four in the morning.  I was wide awake and was not going to go back to sleep (probably because there is just so much to do) so I decided to get up and get myself ready.  Dominica woke up from the noise and some point and agreed that we should just get in the car and get moving.  So we did.  We were packed and out the door in the dark of night long before anyone else was awake.  Francesca and the older girls were out camping all weekend so weren’t around anyway.

We made very good time being on the road so early.  We were back up in Dallas by ten in the morning!  The Ralstons were not expecting that.  They came over early and we spent the day “working” around the house but not getting the packing done that we had hoped to have been doing this weekend.  The extra trip to Houston made that mostly impossible.  Not sure how we are going to handle that but we will figure it out.

Late afternoon we all had to get ready to go to SpiceCorps DFW tonight out in Grapevine.  The Ralstons went back to their hotel and we got ready at the house.  Our last evening in the house!  This is it, we move out tomorrow morning, we are done.  I can’t believe it.

We ran over to the hotel and Art followed us to SpiceCorps.  Alt-N hosted for us tonight at their offices.  They put on a great dinner and had lots of drinks for everyone.  It was really great.  We had a nice turn out, mostly the regulars on a night like tonight – the “night before” SpiceWorld event.  I love this event because it is almost all the “old friends” that we see year after year and only the most dedicated, hard core veterans turn out for this Sunday night party.

We had a good time and got back long before we usually do.  Probably for the best.  Kim came over from SpiceCorps to take a trunk load of alcohol from our home bar that we needed to unload.  We are really sad to see it all go, we had amassed quite a bar of stuff but it is unreasonable to try to ship it all up to New York, especially as we have no bar there.  So probably sixty bottles, maybe eighty, went home with her in the trunk!

Yesterday was the flight from New York to Dallas for me.  This morning is the drive from Dallas to Houston and this begins my really, really long driving spree of 3,200 miles over the course of the next two weeks.  This is going to be some seriously busy times for me.  But at least I am with the kids.

I got to see Luciana this morning.  She was so excited when she came into our room and found me.

We got the car packed up and on the road early.  Lots of driving today and we need to be down to League City before Clara’s t-ball game because we are watching her at the game.  So we were under a tight time constraint and were hurrying.  We did okay, though, and were able to go to the Grices’ and unload the car and had a little bit to relax before heading out to the game.

More driving tomorrow, have to be back in Dallas!  Gotta get sleep tonight.