Book Bloggers Conference 2014

I overslept...by 45 minutes.  Could be because I couldn't sleep last night.  Everything I needed to have and do for the next few days ran through my mind.  I kept getting up to take care of things.  I slept, fitfully.  I probably didn't get to sleep until about 2am.

Consequently, I meant to get up at 6am, but could not get out of bed this morning. I finally got up at 6:45, but ended up not getting out of the house until close to 7:30. Stopping at Dunkin' Donuts on the way made my departure 7:30. The drive wasn't too bad until I hit Secaucus where I found an inordinate amount of traffic.

Still, I made fairly good time through the traffic and arrived at the ferry in Weehawkin. I wanted to park in the first lot, but it was closed. I drove past the terminal and the parking garage planning to park on the other side of the terminal, but found both those lots were full except for monthly. I tried to turn around, but found the way to the garage was one way and I was going the wrong way.

I had to go back out to the road and go around and back to the garage. Parking set, I headed for the elevator. I got half way there until to realize I forgot the parking ticket on the roof of my car. Backtracking, I was lucky the ticket didn't blow away.

No mishaps in the elevator thankfully, and I got to the terminal, got my tickets for the ferry and headed down the plank. I stopped mid-plank feeling something was amiss. Sure enough, I checked my hand and was holding only one ferry ticket as I watched my round trip ticket floating away in the current of the river.

At the ferry, I told the ticket takers my round trip ticket flew into the river. Luckily, they let me keep the one ticket I still had so I could get home without having to buy another ticket. Well, at least something went my way.

I finally got to Jacob Javits Center frizzy and slightly worse for wear. I went downstairs to register only to find that I needed to register upstairs and come back down for the breakfast. So, back up the escalator to register and get my badge. I asked this time about the lunch voucher, but once again, they were out of lunch vouchers and I have to go back up to get one once they print more or whatever they have to do to have more in stock.

Back downstairs for a quick breakfast while awaiting the keynote speaker to come on stage for her opening presentation. The keynote speaker was Maureen Johnson and she basically riffed most of the presentation while espousing the benefits of having good coffee. She was an absolute hoot and now I feel like I need to read at least one of her books.

I went back up to registration after the keynote speaker to check on the lunch voucher. They were still out, so I went to my first session which was Design 101: Creating a Picture Perfect blog. There was a whole lot of useful information. I am going to try to employ some of it. I would say more, but come on, I'm being realistic.

After the first session, I went back up to registration and I was told, the luncher vouchers were actually just taken away and I would have to go to event management. The woman behind the counter took pity on me. It was, after all, my third visit to registration. She went in search and came back with a voucher. She would not turn it over to me, though, until she received verbal confirmation that I am , in fact, a blogger and she asked to see my badge. Then she turned over the voucher. Now I can eat lunch. So, I guess I win.

The lunch was not much of a fiasco, at least not for me. I already had my lunch voucher and knew where to go from last year. As soon as the second session was over, I footed it over to the cafeteria. There was really no line at that point. Instead of selecting a refrigerator section sandwich like last year, I actually was able to order hot food, so I got a hero sub. I was on line for about a minute or two and headed back to the main room for the lunch time entertainment. Last year, for those of you who do not recall, the lunch line was wrapped about and took forever to get rung up. There was no time to actually order food, so everything was from the refrigerated section. This year it was much better.

More to come...