I just wanted to say

I’m on holiday!

I have been hanging out for this break for so long!

Of course, it’s not exactly going to be a restful time, what with the convention and all, but who cares, it’s going to be fun 🙂 (and they say a change is as good as a rest…)

My holiday actually started mid-afternoon yesterday. It was graduation day yesterday, so I’d been helping out at the town hall (and actually released a book! I’ve been slack about releasing lately – I think because my mind has been so full of the convention that I keep forgetting the whole point of bookcrossing is to bookcross. But as I was leaving the house yesterday I remembered a book I’d put aside ages ago as a graduation themed release (Farewell Speech by Rachel McAlpine), but due to one thing and another have missed the last few graduations. So I quickly grabbed it and released it at the town hall during the ceremony.) It’s a tradition that if you volunteer to work at graduation then once your bit is done you get the rest of the afternoon off, and I only had to be there for the first part of the ceremony, so by 2.30 I was free.

I rang lytteltonwitch (and didn’t quite manage to make her crash the car), and discovered she was on the way to the school to measure up the chapel, so I walked over there to meet her. There was good news when we got there – the electrician is now coming a day earlier than expected, so might be finished in the hall by Friday after all. We’ll find out when we turn up on Friday morning, I suppose. Either venue will be totally suitable (and they’re right next to each other, so it’s not like a change will confuse anyone), so we’re not too worried where we end up.

The rest of the afternoon and into the evening we spent doing all those little errands we’ve been meaning to get round to doing. Talking to the Thai place about the menu for Saturday night; buying hats for the quiz, balloons and streamers to decorate the hall, and card for the signs; drawing dots on the dice; cutting out hundreds of little cards for the Where in the World is Skyring game; writing a shopping list for Friday; and checking through our budget (amazingly, we’re pretty much on track, and might even break even).

This weekend is looking like an oasis of calm before the chaos of next week. So far, all I’ve got planned is that lytteltonwitch is coming over today with all the prizes and goody bag stuff so we can work out exactly what we’ve got and how to make the best use of it (we’re starting to lean heavily towards the BC-UK’s tombola idea); then tomorrow we’ll go and do some shopping for the non-perishable stuff. Sunday and Monday are free – well, apart from needing to finish off the embroidery project I was working on for Niece#1 (who is already a couple of weeks old, but I still haven’t had time to finish her present), and getting some books registered and labelled so I’ve actually got something to release at the convention, and getting the convention booklet ready for the printer, and maybe making a few more crafty things to go in the prize pool, and cleaning up a bit ready for libertine101 and Wombles arriving…

On Tuesday everything starts in earnest: in between trips to the airport to start picking up arrivals we have to go to the printers to get the booklets and stuff done and go back to the school to talk to their AV guy, and in the evening is a meetup followed by Irish music night at the Bog. Then on Wednesday we’re filling goody bags and picking up more people from the airport, followed by dinner with a “select” few. Thursday is the train trip, followed again by dinner. Then on Friday we’ll be setting up the hall, picking up even more people from the airport, buying the rest of the food, and generally running round like demented chickens until 5, when we’ll retire for an early dinner before the convention proper starts at 7. And then the madness begins…

This is going to be fun! 🙂