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jenettI have retreated to home to grow back a little after a fabulous convention. (For folks reading this who are still there, it's likely I'll be out at some point on Monday for final hotel-chair-like things, but I am not currently sure if it'll be tomorrow or when. Plans in flux, as one might say).
For those who don't remember my previous posts, 4th Street is a recently revived convention, and this year, I was hotel chair (in large part to support![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
elisem but also because hotel negotiations are the one piece of the 'putting on events' set of skills I haven't yet done besides vendors - and I get the theory of vendor stuff.)
4th Street is unusual because it's a single track of programming, and of necessity also has some limitations on con size. (This year, I believe the final number was around 148 memberships sold, and something like 130 warm bodies on site - we had a membership cap at 250).
There are many fantastic things about this - among them that you can wander off to lunch or dinner with a group of random people you barely know, and have tons to talk to them about, because you've been in all the same panels and conversations all day. (And can say "I really liked what you said about X..." or "You do Y? Can I pick your brain about it?" or all sorts of other cool things.) It also turns out to be pretty much my optimum con size: enough people to have lots of variety and possibility, but few enough that it's not ovewhelming.
The following is a con report: written each evening before I went to bed and things fell out of my brain. There will be more on some specific pieces later, I suspect.
Fourth Street
So far so good.
It is now Friday night.
Thursday: Went to work, dealt with many work like things. Came over to the 4th Street hotel around 5, dealt with several hotel issues (all now thankfully resolved - the hotel has thus far been *very* accomodating and wonderful to work with.)
There was playreading at 7pm:papersky came up with a brilliant and elegant solution for dividing the parts of Midsummer Night's Dream among anywhere from 16 to 53 people (and we were pretty close to the latter, in terms of readers...) We finished at close to 10, and I took myself off home.
Friday:
I had work-related stuff to do in the morning, ran one piece of paper over to the Title office, and then came to the hotel.
I realised this week that this weekend is the first night is the very first night I have spent by myself in a hotel room I booked myself ever as an adult. (I've stayed in rooms by myself a couple of times while travelling with my parents in places that had no double doubles or cots - most notably on Santorini, and in a British tiny little hotel designed after _Three Men and a Boat_.)
I got myself checked in, and dealt with more hotel bits and pieces and checked in to make sure that everyone else was doing fine. (Yes, with con suite, yes with dealers. Yay.) Eventually, Elise and I went off to find food in the hotel restaurant.
At 3pm we had opening ceremonies (brief), and at 3:30, the panel entitled "How to be smart on panels." (Panelists were Jon Singer, Elise, Steven Brust, Teresa Nielsen Hayden, and Debbie Notkin: we figured out earlier this evening that between them, they have - at conservative estimate - 160 years of combined experience of being on panels between them.) It was both informative (besides being sensibly placed first), and entertaining.
At 4:30, we had a panel on "How has fantasy changed in the last 20 years". This was, I should note, the first time I have ever been on a panel at a con. (My doing so this time is a result of Elise nudging me in the way Elise does, of something I know will be good for me in the end.)
The other panelists were Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Magenta Griffith, Sharyn November, and Tom Whitmore. I was somewhat intimidated by this. (Ok, not so much by Magenta, as she happens to also be my landlady, and I talk to her a fair bit.) But the others all have impressive experience in the field. (Tom Whitmore used to be co-owner of "Other Change of Hobbit", the former long-standing SF and fantasy bookstore in San Francisco: the other two, both of whom I've previously met and talked to at various times are both significant editors in the field.)
My introduction said "Hi, I'm Jenett, and 20 years ago, I was 13. My reading tastes have changed somewhat in the interim, and it's a little hard to tell what's me and what's the genre." as well as mentioning my now day job being a librarian.
We did, however, have a good conversation, no one appears to have fallen asleep, and we had some interesting bits about exactly why some particular trends have emerged. (I remember pieces of this, but I am desperately hoping someone took notes, because parts of it appear to have fallen out of my head in the interim.)
I know we talked about how books that cross genre lines affect things, touched on some of the impact of YA books on fantasy (though my panel *tomorrow* is focusing on that.) We talked a little bit about how various shifts in the publishing industry have changed some things, about author self-promotion and creative self-promotion (Cat Valente had some excellent comments from the audience on this. )
We also got some great comments from someone in the audience who's a teen librarian in one of the metro area library systems. I ended up introducing myself after the panel was over, and went out to dinner with her and two young adults (one just graduated high school, the other just finished her first year of college) who she'd hooked up with at last 4th Street. We continued conversation over dinner, and I got some new things to think about in conversations next school year (yay), and also about how to frame some of the conversations about both Harry Potter and Twilight (which will be useful in the morning.)
After that, we returned for the evening panel on "Reasons things go wrong" from Jo Walton, Mrissa Lingen, Sarah Monette, Cat Valente, and Pamela Dean, which ended up digressing somewhat mid-panel into writing process and how to engineer around it to work around your own tendencies to go astray, but was all very interesting. (And I got useful and meaningful insights for the Better Pagan Research book.)
I also remembered (because of a discussion of setting things up in advance) to finally tell Pamela one of my favorite moments of realisation in _Tam Lin_, which was noticing, finally, on about the 8th reread, a glorious piece of setting up in a comment about Hamlet. She agreed she was very proud of that one, and noted that Steven Brust and several of the other Scribblies hadn't noticed it for years either (which made me feel rather better).
At 9, some people dispersed to the Beer and Moral Philosophy panel in the smoking consuite space, and an alternate proposal for Tea and (Im?)moral Philosophy was originally going to meet in Elise's suite, but accumulated very many people, and I made an executive order to move the thing downstairs. I ended up not being able to go (which I regret, because Jon Singer and Jo Walton expounding on tea is so not anything to miss) but ended up having other good and needful conversation elsewhere.
We eventually migrated to the consuite, where there was further great conversation, including several people who are new to 4th Street, discussion of accessible spaces (we were paying very very careful attention when hotel selection to accessibility issues, as much as we possibly could. I reflect that knowing people with odd combinations accessibility issues, rather than ones people think they know how to handle has given me good skills in figuring out what questions to answers.
One example, which came up tonight, is one I learned from Elise. As she mentions herself, she's hearing impaired and lipreads. She does not, however, know ASL, because her hearing impairment came on as an adult, and ASL would not actually make much of her life directly easier in the places she would want that help. So saying "Here's an ASL interpreter" doesn't fix the issue - but handing her a transcript or a captioned video, or a number of other options does. It's taught me a lot about how not to make assumptions about accessibility.
(And oh, damn. I just realised what I totally blanked on today: some way to identify the ideal lipreading chairs for people as would prefer them. Ok. Fixable tomorrow.)
And then at about 11, I came upstairs and had a shower, and typed this up (and will post it when I get into wireless space downstairs in the morning) and will now go to bed so that I can get up and do useful morning consuite things at 9.
Saturday
I got up, wandered down to the consuite around 9, caught up a little online, and then betook myself to the first panel, which was "One night stand vs. round two" or, basically, questions of what makes series work or not work - panelists were Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Debbie Notkin, Pat Wrede, and Lois McMaster Bujold.
Lois and Pat - who are long-time close friends and writing/critique partners - tend to be fascinating on panels together. They know how to ask questions the other one has excellent stuff to add onto. The rest of it was also great - lots of discussion of different kinds of series (and about how some are about the protagonist growing and changing, and some are more about the protagonist being put in different but similar events - the latter is something common to many mystery series, of course.)
The next panel - "Children's and YA Fantasy" was me, Laura Krentz, Sharyn November, Kathryn Sullivan and Beth Friedman - a sometimes digressive discussion of various matters of YA fantasy. I felt this one got sometimes oddly digressive but there were good bits in various places (I hope!) and a chance to get some good comments from the audience about things we'd been talking about since the previous night. Always good.
I then went off to lunch with about 12 other people (and had many fabulous conversations therein), skipped the next panel in favor of conversation in the dealer's room and con suite.
The 3pm panel was on exposition - Jo Walton, Teresa Nielsen Hayden, Sarah Monettte, Cat Valente, Lois McMaster Bujold, and Pamela Dean. Again, got bits and pieces for my own writing work, but was starting to have a pounding headache, and brain falling to pieces, and not much of the panel seems to have stuck. (Though, looking at my notes on the stuff I wanted to actually use, they seem to make sense.)
After that, Elise and I dealt with two minor hotel issues with resounding success (yay, hotel!) and I went up to my room to apply hot water, a massaging shower head, and a lot of lounging around mindlessly for an hour and a half to my head. This worked sufficiently well, yay.
I then took myself out of the hotel to L's birthday party and other general celebratory stuff. (L is one of the *very* few people I'd do this for: as I said when I came back, the party was worth missing 4th Street for, which is a very high bar to meet.) I got a chance to talk to Dave and Marie, and also to M and D, which is excellent (and plan to find a date to spend more time with D, at the very least, because we seem to have accumulated several things we want to talk more about.)
I came back, let my deputy hotel person in case of emergencies know I was on site, and found Elise getting sensible advice, and doing interesting things with jewelry. (I also managed to acquire lovely blue earrings from her. We'll all shocked, I know. These are called "The Fifth Season")
She got summoned to the music circle, and I came along, and actually had my first night doing serious pick/pass/play. (I acquitted myself moderately: my concentration is *lousy* this evening, which does not help.) But there was much excellent music and a great variety, and lovely harmonies, so yay.
At about midnight I wandered to the con suite for a bit, and it is now 1:20, and I *really* should be in bed.
Sunday
Woke up after about 5 hours sleep, which is way too few for me. Puttered about in the morning, managing to get distracted from the 10am panel.
Brunch - part of the con membership, because one of the very useful bargaining chips with space rental costs is a substantial food function (I intend to write up a "What I learned by being hotel chair on the ground" sometime, but today is not that day) - was excellent. The hotel's chef has a - well-deserved - reputation of being sensible about catering to all kinds of restrictive diets, and what we ended up with was:
- a central buffet with quiche, cashew nut loaf, a veggie tray, and juices
- a yogurt bar with yogurt, and tons of fresh fruits, nuts, and granola to mix in whatever combinations made you happy
- a bagel bar with bagels, cream cheese, capers, lox, olives, etc. (The New Yorkers in the membership seemed to be eating them with approval, so yay).
- a roast beef station with makings for roast beef sandwiches (sliced tomato, spreads, etc. etc.)
- miscellaneous sweet pastries
The three stations also helped with line issues - we didn't make it into the food until about 11:10, and I think everyone was sitting down eating except for a few stragglers by 11:30 or so. It was all pretty efficient. Everyone seemed to be eating pretty contentedly, which is good.
I then determined lack-of-brain, avoided the 1pm panel (this was the "That's a different panel" panel, which is chosen by acclaim from amongst the topics which are not the subjects of previous panels - i.e. any time someone says "I'd talk more about X, but that's a different panel..." or "We're getting off onto Y, which is a different panel.") This time, it was determined to be pace and structure, with panelists I generally very much enjoy listening to, but my brain was just not there.
(I hung out in the con suite and had a good few chats, which is always good, instead. Also, read my email.)
I went down for the last panel, which was about material culture and stuff, and how to learn about it (and added the most books to my 'must read' lists of any panel yet, despite the fact I think I've already read and love a third of the titles that came up.) Most entertaining and informative.
Brief closing ceremonies, including an announcement of the triumverate who will be running *next* year's 4th Street (yay!) More from them soon, I expect.
I then eventually brought the Elise home briefly to deal with things for her houseguests, and then went home myself, because I am totally fried and completely peopled-out tonight. I have been petting the cat (who has stopped meowing in complaint every 5 minutes and is now lying at the end of the bed being contented).
I expect to be out at the hotel tomorrow at some point to help with the hotel wrap-up bits, but am trying to take it *very* easy because I need to make sure I have stamina to deal with work the rest of this week (where I need to accomplish a massive number of things in not a whole lot of available time, and it's all either detail-focused stuff or physically demanding stuff) before putting in some serious volunteer time at Pagan Pride's booth at Gay Pride next weekend.
Things noted
1) Staying in the hotel really does make things easier, but as I suspected, I did not actually sleep very well. (One of my personal weirdnesses is that I tend not to sleep very well in light-colored bedding. Weird but true, but it does make hotels less than ideal.)
2) Next time, must a) acquire hotel room again and b) plan not to share it with anyone unless I know them *extremely* well (because I was teetering on the edge of 'really not enough sleep' today and yesterday, and this is not a good state for Jens). And c) make the Jamaican Dogwood tincture so that I can more reliably *get* myself to sleep, plzkthnx.
3) There is never enough time to have all the conversations I would like to have. Bah. On the other hand, there are worse problems to have.
For those who don't remember my previous posts, 4th Street is a recently revived convention, and this year, I was hotel chair (in large part to support
elisem but also because hotel negotiations are the one piece of the 'putting on events' set of skills I haven't yet done besides vendors - and I get the theory of vendor stuff.) 4th Street is unusual because it's a single track of programming, and of necessity also has some limitations on con size. (This year, I believe the final number was around 148 memberships sold, and something like 130 warm bodies on site - we had a membership cap at 250).
There are many fantastic things about this - among them that you can wander off to lunch or dinner with a group of random people you barely know, and have tons to talk to them about, because you've been in all the same panels and conversations all day. (And can say "I really liked what you said about X..." or "You do Y? Can I pick your brain about it?" or all sorts of other cool things.) It also turns out to be pretty much my optimum con size: enough people to have lots of variety and possibility, but few enough that it's not ovewhelming.
The following is a con report: written each evening before I went to bed and things fell out of my brain. There will be more on some specific pieces later, I suspect.
Fourth Street
So far so good.
It is now Friday night.
Thursday: Went to work, dealt with many work like things. Came over to the 4th Street hotel around 5, dealt with several hotel issues (all now thankfully resolved - the hotel has thus far been *very* accomodating and wonderful to work with.)
There was playreading at 7pm:
papersky came up with a brilliant and elegant solution for dividing the parts of Midsummer Night's Dream among anywhere from 16 to 53 people (and we were pretty close to the latter, in terms of readers...) We finished at close to 10, and I took myself off home. Friday:
I had work-related stuff to do in the morning, ran one piece of paper over to the Title office, and then came to the hotel.
I realised this week that this weekend is the first night is the very first night I have spent by myself in a hotel room I booked myself ever as an adult. (I've stayed in rooms by myself a couple of times while travelling with my parents in places that had no double doubles or cots - most notably on Santorini, and in a British tiny little hotel designed after _Three Men and a Boat_.)
I got myself checked in, and dealt with more hotel bits and pieces and checked in to make sure that everyone else was doing fine. (Yes, with con suite, yes with dealers. Yay.) Eventually, Elise and I went off to find food in the hotel restaurant.
At 3pm we had opening ceremonies (brief), and at 3:30, the panel entitled "How to be smart on panels." (Panelists were Jon Singer, Elise, Steven Brust, Teresa Nielsen Hayden, and Debbie Notkin: we figured out earlier this evening that between them, they have - at conservative estimate - 160 years of combined experience of being on panels between them.) It was both informative (besides being sensibly placed first), and entertaining.
At 4:30, we had a panel on "How has fantasy changed in the last 20 years". This was, I should note, the first time I have ever been on a panel at a con. (My doing so this time is a result of Elise nudging me in the way Elise does, of something I know will be good for me in the end.)
The other panelists were Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Magenta Griffith, Sharyn November, and Tom Whitmore. I was somewhat intimidated by this. (Ok, not so much by Magenta, as she happens to also be my landlady, and I talk to her a fair bit.) But the others all have impressive experience in the field. (Tom Whitmore used to be co-owner of "Other Change of Hobbit", the former long-standing SF and fantasy bookstore in San Francisco: the other two, both of whom I've previously met and talked to at various times are both significant editors in the field.)
My introduction said "Hi, I'm Jenett, and 20 years ago, I was 13. My reading tastes have changed somewhat in the interim, and it's a little hard to tell what's me and what's the genre." as well as mentioning my now day job being a librarian.
We did, however, have a good conversation, no one appears to have fallen asleep, and we had some interesting bits about exactly why some particular trends have emerged. (I remember pieces of this, but I am desperately hoping someone took notes, because parts of it appear to have fallen out of my head in the interim.)
I know we talked about how books that cross genre lines affect things, touched on some of the impact of YA books on fantasy (though my panel *tomorrow* is focusing on that.) We talked a little bit about how various shifts in the publishing industry have changed some things, about author self-promotion and creative self-promotion (Cat Valente had some excellent comments from the audience on this. )
We also got some great comments from someone in the audience who's a teen librarian in one of the metro area library systems. I ended up introducing myself after the panel was over, and went out to dinner with her and two young adults (one just graduated high school, the other just finished her first year of college) who she'd hooked up with at last 4th Street. We continued conversation over dinner, and I got some new things to think about in conversations next school year (yay), and also about how to frame some of the conversations about both Harry Potter and Twilight (which will be useful in the morning.)
After that, we returned for the evening panel on "Reasons things go wrong" from Jo Walton, Mrissa Lingen, Sarah Monette, Cat Valente, and Pamela Dean, which ended up digressing somewhat mid-panel into writing process and how to engineer around it to work around your own tendencies to go astray, but was all very interesting. (And I got useful and meaningful insights for the Better Pagan Research book.)
I also remembered (because of a discussion of setting things up in advance) to finally tell Pamela one of my favorite moments of realisation in _Tam Lin_, which was noticing, finally, on about the 8th reread, a glorious piece of setting up in a comment about Hamlet. She agreed she was very proud of that one, and noted that Steven Brust and several of the other Scribblies hadn't noticed it for years either (which made me feel rather better).
At 9, some people dispersed to the Beer and Moral Philosophy panel in the smoking consuite space, and an alternate proposal for Tea and (Im?)moral Philosophy was originally going to meet in Elise's suite, but accumulated very many people, and I made an executive order to move the thing downstairs. I ended up not being able to go (which I regret, because Jon Singer and Jo Walton expounding on tea is so not anything to miss) but ended up having other good and needful conversation elsewhere.
We eventually migrated to the consuite, where there was further great conversation, including several people who are new to 4th Street, discussion of accessible spaces (we were paying very very careful attention when hotel selection to accessibility issues, as much as we possibly could. I reflect that knowing people with odd combinations accessibility issues, rather than ones people think they know how to handle has given me good skills in figuring out what questions to answers.
One example, which came up tonight, is one I learned from Elise. As she mentions herself, she's hearing impaired and lipreads. She does not, however, know ASL, because her hearing impairment came on as an adult, and ASL would not actually make much of her life directly easier in the places she would want that help. So saying "Here's an ASL interpreter" doesn't fix the issue - but handing her a transcript or a captioned video, or a number of other options does. It's taught me a lot about how not to make assumptions about accessibility.
(And oh, damn. I just realised what I totally blanked on today: some way to identify the ideal lipreading chairs for people as would prefer them. Ok. Fixable tomorrow.)
And then at about 11, I came upstairs and had a shower, and typed this up (and will post it when I get into wireless space downstairs in the morning) and will now go to bed so that I can get up and do useful morning consuite things at 9.
Saturday
I got up, wandered down to the consuite around 9, caught up a little online, and then betook myself to the first panel, which was "One night stand vs. round two" or, basically, questions of what makes series work or not work - panelists were Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Debbie Notkin, Pat Wrede, and Lois McMaster Bujold.
Lois and Pat - who are long-time close friends and writing/critique partners - tend to be fascinating on panels together. They know how to ask questions the other one has excellent stuff to add onto. The rest of it was also great - lots of discussion of different kinds of series (and about how some are about the protagonist growing and changing, and some are more about the protagonist being put in different but similar events - the latter is something common to many mystery series, of course.)
The next panel - "Children's and YA Fantasy" was me, Laura Krentz, Sharyn November, Kathryn Sullivan and Beth Friedman - a sometimes digressive discussion of various matters of YA fantasy. I felt this one got sometimes oddly digressive but there were good bits in various places (I hope!) and a chance to get some good comments from the audience about things we'd been talking about since the previous night. Always good.
I then went off to lunch with about 12 other people (and had many fabulous conversations therein), skipped the next panel in favor of conversation in the dealer's room and con suite.
The 3pm panel was on exposition - Jo Walton, Teresa Nielsen Hayden, Sarah Monettte, Cat Valente, Lois McMaster Bujold, and Pamela Dean. Again, got bits and pieces for my own writing work, but was starting to have a pounding headache, and brain falling to pieces, and not much of the panel seems to have stuck. (Though, looking at my notes on the stuff I wanted to actually use, they seem to make sense.)
After that, Elise and I dealt with two minor hotel issues with resounding success (yay, hotel!) and I went up to my room to apply hot water, a massaging shower head, and a lot of lounging around mindlessly for an hour and a half to my head. This worked sufficiently well, yay.
I then took myself out of the hotel to L's birthday party and other general celebratory stuff. (L is one of the *very* few people I'd do this for: as I said when I came back, the party was worth missing 4th Street for, which is a very high bar to meet.) I got a chance to talk to Dave and Marie, and also to M and D, which is excellent (and plan to find a date to spend more time with D, at the very least, because we seem to have accumulated several things we want to talk more about.)
I came back, let my deputy hotel person in case of emergencies know I was on site, and found Elise getting sensible advice, and doing interesting things with jewelry. (I also managed to acquire lovely blue earrings from her. We'll all shocked, I know. These are called "The Fifth Season")
She got summoned to the music circle, and I came along, and actually had my first night doing serious pick/pass/play. (I acquitted myself moderately: my concentration is *lousy* this evening, which does not help.) But there was much excellent music and a great variety, and lovely harmonies, so yay.
At about midnight I wandered to the con suite for a bit, and it is now 1:20, and I *really* should be in bed.
Sunday
Woke up after about 5 hours sleep, which is way too few for me. Puttered about in the morning, managing to get distracted from the 10am panel.
Brunch - part of the con membership, because one of the very useful bargaining chips with space rental costs is a substantial food function (I intend to write up a "What I learned by being hotel chair on the ground" sometime, but today is not that day) - was excellent. The hotel's chef has a - well-deserved - reputation of being sensible about catering to all kinds of restrictive diets, and what we ended up with was:
- a central buffet with quiche, cashew nut loaf, a veggie tray, and juices
- a yogurt bar with yogurt, and tons of fresh fruits, nuts, and granola to mix in whatever combinations made you happy
- a bagel bar with bagels, cream cheese, capers, lox, olives, etc. (The New Yorkers in the membership seemed to be eating them with approval, so yay).
- a roast beef station with makings for roast beef sandwiches (sliced tomato, spreads, etc. etc.)
- miscellaneous sweet pastries
The three stations also helped with line issues - we didn't make it into the food until about 11:10, and I think everyone was sitting down eating except for a few stragglers by 11:30 or so. It was all pretty efficient. Everyone seemed to be eating pretty contentedly, which is good.
I then determined lack-of-brain, avoided the 1pm panel (this was the "That's a different panel" panel, which is chosen by acclaim from amongst the topics which are not the subjects of previous panels - i.e. any time someone says "I'd talk more about X, but that's a different panel..." or "We're getting off onto Y, which is a different panel.") This time, it was determined to be pace and structure, with panelists I generally very much enjoy listening to, but my brain was just not there.
(I hung out in the con suite and had a good few chats, which is always good, instead. Also, read my email.)
I went down for the last panel, which was about material culture and stuff, and how to learn about it (and added the most books to my 'must read' lists of any panel yet, despite the fact I think I've already read and love a third of the titles that came up.) Most entertaining and informative.
Brief closing ceremonies, including an announcement of the triumverate who will be running *next* year's 4th Street (yay!) More from them soon, I expect.
I then eventually brought the Elise home briefly to deal with things for her houseguests, and then went home myself, because I am totally fried and completely peopled-out tonight. I have been petting the cat (who has stopped meowing in complaint every 5 minutes and is now lying at the end of the bed being contented).
I expect to be out at the hotel tomorrow at some point to help with the hotel wrap-up bits, but am trying to take it *very* easy because I need to make sure I have stamina to deal with work the rest of this week (where I need to accomplish a massive number of things in not a whole lot of available time, and it's all either detail-focused stuff or physically demanding stuff) before putting in some serious volunteer time at Pagan Pride's booth at Gay Pride next weekend.
Things noted
1) Staying in the hotel really does make things easier, but as I suspected, I did not actually sleep very well. (One of my personal weirdnesses is that I tend not to sleep very well in light-colored bedding. Weird but true, but it does make hotels less than ideal.)
2) Next time, must a) acquire hotel room again and b) plan not to share it with anyone unless I know them *extremely* well (because I was teetering on the edge of 'really not enough sleep' today and yesterday, and this is not a good state for Jens). And c) make the Jamaican Dogwood tincture so that I can more reliably *get* myself to sleep, plzkthnx.
3) There is never enough time to have all the conversations I would like to have. Bah. On the other hand, there are worse problems to have.
