From D.C. to Houston to the Holiday Inn in Tallahassee

Sugar lady, be my saviour,
‘Cause I’m tired, I’ve been eight days on the road.
That’s right, eight days on the road,
Travelin’ through the night,
There ain’t no town, ain’t no town, ain’t no rest tonight.

I am zooming through this post since the work-bell clangs in 24 minutes, but here’s my latest adventures:

Whisked off to Computers in Libraries, had what may have been the first-ever Evergreen User Group meeting, followed by a harrowing experience where I almost missed a panel presentation I was on because I was in the wrong room (there were many programs labeled Open Source in the CiL schedule… and I had shown up bright and early for the wrong one), though Kathryn Greenhill, Cindi Trainor, and Ryan Deschamps figured out I had not in fact missed my session and got my hide into the right place.

(I had never realized that I could perspire from every pore in my body.)

It was a great session, though I wish I’d had time afterwards to celebrate it with Ruth Dukelow and Andrea Neiman and Karen Collier, who were magnificent. But on to Reagan I went, then bump-bump to Houston for the Texas Library Association, arriving near midnight (it was also a week for hotel rooms with stunning aerial views), then bright and early the next day into the company booth.

That itself was a lot of fun; it’s pleasant to be at a conference where I am not running from meeting to meeting. I squeezed such work as I could for the Evergreen conference, now about six weeks away.

Then hist! On back to Tallahassee Friday night. (My bedtime medicine was my first glass of my fourth brew, E.J. Phair’s Phat Quail Ale — bravo me! Ruddy, tasty, and hop-a-licious.)

Next morning I plunged into the Tallahassee Writers Association conference, which itself was magnificent. I have many notes that I will blog tomorrow.Â Probably my favorite moment was Robert Olen Butler’s reading yesterday, when he pulled out his Kindle 2 and read “Jealous husband returns in form of parrot,” from Tabloid Dreams, an out-of-print story collection.

(Audience question: How is it you are so expert at the female voice? Butler: I’ve been married four times.)

I had really wanted to attend the Tallahassee Book Festival on Saturday night, but I was exhausted and hadn’t written my pitch for the agent I was seeing. (“The pitch is a bitch,” saith my writing friends.) That’s ok, because the agent I spoke with waved it away and we talked. She thinks I should write a book. I have this book idea. I have to figure out if I can write this books in the nooks and crannies of my life, and now it is 8:29 and time to press the Publish button.