The Good, the Bad, and the OMG: a Weekend in Review

I’m back from my whirlwind tour of specific parts of Chicago and the wilds of Ohio, we’ve been reunited with Older Daughter, our Internet connection was fixed,* and Baby slept through last night.

So, it’s good to be home, even if the cat celebrated our return by yakking up in front of my closet.**

But the trip was absolutely worth it, even if the trains were full each way.  Out itinerary is here, but as O.C. figured out (Hi, O.C.!), the conference that Grace and I went up to was for the American Library Association.***

Here are the highs, the lows, a couple of tips, and a genuine Squee Moment:

 ◊  The Chicago South Loop Hotel is very nice, even if its location baffled at least two taxi drivers.  The concierges were all friendly, knowledgeable, and helpful.  The woman who recommended delivery from Connie’s when we dragged back in from five hours of tramping through the Museum of Science and Industry should get a raise.   The only complaint I almost had was that the edge of the tub was almost too high to climb over—until I realized that a tub that deep could hold enough water to cover my entire body from the neck down.  That alone should bump them up from three to four stars in my opinion.

◊  If you’re going to spend five hours on your feet gaping like a rube at the Museum of Science and Industry, wear your athletic shoes even if they don’t really work with your outfit.  Do NOT assume that your most comfortable sandals will do. ’cause they won’t.  Especially (and this is key) if you know you’re going to spend seven hours on those same feet at the ALA vendor exhibits the following day.  Also, ibuprofen is your friend.

◊  While every exhibit in the Museum is actually worth the crippling pain if you forget to wear your athletic shoes (particularly the Fairy Tale Castle and the Genetics Section, though the cows were fun, too), you Absolutely Cannot Miss the  Harry Potter or the Smart House exhibits at the Museum.  Seriously.  Go get your tickets right now.  I’ll wait.

 ◊ When visiting vendor exhibitions at an ALA conference (or any conference, I suppose), put your large empty suitcase^ in the baggage check and take your empty totebags with you.  After all your bags are full of freebies—Advanced Reader Copies, pens, candy, yo-yos, stuffed animals, DVDs, and enough brochures to make you rage against old growth deforestation—and you’ve also filled up all the free totebags you were given along the way, go back to the baggage check, unload your bags into the empty suitcase, and repeat until you are too tired to lift your arms and\or care that that one label printer company on the far side of the Hall is giving out Godiva bars.

◊  Visit the ALA Store early if you want to snag a shirt larger than an XL or smaller than a medium.  Because, as someone said as we were looking at the empty shirt racks, librarians tend to come in two sizes:  Slender as the Willow or Bodacious Diva.  ALA, if you’re listening, order more at both ends of the size spectrum, please.  ‘Cause you started losing sales by the morning of the second day.

◊ Plus, the chairs in the food court of the McCormick Center?  Cute, but not made with the Divas in mind.  I’m just sayin’. 

◊  And the OMG Moment:  I MET ELOISA JAMES!!!!  The lady whose books I recommended a week ago.  I was actually trying to get a look at Neil Gaimon^^, and stopped next to the opposite podium.  A lady walked up, I glanced at her tag,^^^glanced at the books on the podium, did what was probably a quadruple take, and said, “You’re Eloisa James!”  “Yes, I am.  Pleased to meet you,” she said, offering her hand, which I shook in a state of shock (don’t think I held on too long, but who knows?).  “Oh, my God!” I said, “You were standing right here and I didn’t notice and I’m so sorry and I love your books and I read the entire Duchess series last week and I’m so glad Villiers is getting his turn because I’ve been waiting for so long  and I’ll shut up now and get in line.”  So I geeked all over her, but she was very gracious about it, saying that she’d seen Neil’s± line and was wondering whether it was worth it to show up.  So I geeked a little more, in chorus with the other fans who were now in line with me, and I got a signed copy of the last book in the series!  Early!  And she signed it! 

◊Many more people like to take the red-eye from Chicago to Ohio (and on to Kentucky, Virginia, and eventually New York) than you might think.  And many of those people are groups of  teenagers who don’t sleep. Ever.  So assume that you will be sharing your space (with a friend, one hopes, and not an irrepressible teenager) and that you will need earplugs or an MP3 player.

◊ Stupidly, I let my leg pain, irritation at the crowded conditions, and subsequent headache (probably from hunger) keep me from going to the dining car—so the only thing I ate between lunch on Saturday and about nine a.m. the next day was one of the  packages of peanut butter crackers that Grace, bless her, had bought at the station in case we wanted a late snack.  I felt nauseus until well into the next afternoon.

◊ We got to my parent’s home a little after 4:30 a.m.  Grace took the couch and I climbed upstairs and into the spare double bed with my husband, who woke up enough to tell me to sleep in, and Baby, who didn’t notice.   Sometime after dawn, she rolled over, saw me, and cried, “Mommy!! Nurse!“  with an expression that clearly said, “Hello, and where the hell have you been?”  We both went back to sleep until Older Daughter climbed in for a hug and a kiss—and when they started to squabble, I sent them downstairs to watch cartoons while I crawled back into bed.  The Disney Channel: Keeping Parents Sane Since 1982.

◊ So, I saw my sister and her family for the first time in four years, and it was . . . interesting.  So interesting that I think it deserves a separate entry.  Suffice it to say here that it was far less painful and weirder than I had anticipated.  Suffice it also to say that my new nephew is a cutie patootie and no mistake.

◊Don’t think you’re going to be able to concentrate enough to work on your manuscript on the seven-hour car ride home—not with Schoolhouse Rocks! videos blaring from the backseat and both kids singing along with varying degrees of success.  Instead, it’s best to have purchased the entire Unshelved collection (autographed, of course) at, say, an ALA conference and read them to the driver so he stays awake.

◊ It is essential to take an extra day off to catch up on laundry, e-mail, grocery shopping, weight lifting (ouch, ouch, gah) and mowing the lawn.  Or at least to write up the blogging equivalent of vacation slides.

 So, all in all, a good time and a learning experience (or a couple).  At the very least, I now know I need to pace myself and not pack so much into a couple of days . . .

 . . . Except the next ALA conference is in D.C.   My sister-in-law lives there, and the kids would love to see her.  And you really can’t visit the area without taking the monument tour and hitting the Smithsonian . . .

___

*Turns out our cable splitter had gone splat, which was both an easy and a free fix.

**Possibly because we brought the kids home.  How could we?

***Oh, yeah, if I haven’t mentioned it before, I’m a librarian.   When I started this blog, I was absolutely rabid about privacy.  Now, not so much.  My “Spoonfork Who?” page still says I ‘have a full time job in the public service industry,’ but as I’m a reference librarian, you can go ahead and insert, ‘insanely busy and at times absolutely surreal’ between time and job.  That should do it.

^You did remember to bring an empty suitcase, right?   If not, try some strategic re-packing—stuff your undies in your pockets and get going!

^^As awesome as he is, I didn’t have four hours to stand in his line.

^^^Which, in my defense, said publisher,which just  meant that she belonged in the HarperCollins pavilion but confused me for a second or two.

± She called Neil Gaiman by his first name!

Tags: ALA, Chicago, Chicago South Loop Hotel, Connie's, Eloisa James, family, Museum of Science and Industry, pain, Road Trip, Squee