Woke up at Seriously-way-too-early o’clock, showered, and had breakfast in the executive lounge. It was a foggy morning, but it’s still a beautiful view to wake up to in the morning:
On-site registration wasn’t nearly as crazy as pre-registration, just as we’d expected. Of course, there were plenty of tough moments and a few crazy ones as well. No matter how much we plan, something always goes wrong. But I think it turned out all right in the end.
After work, I walked down Michigan Ave for a few minutes to get a few snarfs I missed near the hotel during my last trip to Chicago. Here’s a statue with the hotel in the background:
Then I had room service (grilled cheese and chips; I like the simple things) before heading over to the Keynote address at the Auditorium Theatre (a historic building I’d snarfed on my last trip). The theatre is amazing. And because I’m AWP staff, it means I get to sit in the VIP section (in this case, third row back). Margaret Atwood was an amazing speaker. “If you want to be a writer, spelling is the least of your worries.” LOL! And “To have a craft is to have a strength & know-how…. Your craft knowledge is your toolkit.” I like being called crafty now *G*
Allison Joseph got the George Garrett Award for Outstanding Community Service in Literature and gave an excellent speech as well. “Every writer needs someone who believes in your potential before your potential even exists.” That really hit home for me. I feel like I have a few someones like that, but that is definitely the very definition of Doc, my high school creative writing teacher (and former poet laureate of Virginia).
When I got back, I got to see the president’s suite (there was a TELEVISION INSIDE THE BATHROOM MIRROR! IT IS THE FUTURE IN THERE!!!!!). Then I wrote some postcards to friends and for a swap-bot swap. I dropped them into the historic mail slot that runs through the hotel. My room is on floor 23, so I dropped them into the slot on floor 23 and watched them fall. In theory, they fell all the way down to floor 1, where they landed in the mail container there. I guess we’ll see if they made it, but it was damn fun dropping them and watching them zoom downward through the floor!
