Decompression

[bjarvis]

The past 24 hours have been very stressful, but so far nearly everything has resolved itself nicely.

The last minute challenges to getting our square dance weekend fully operational before it today raised my blood pressure dramatically, but-

• All of the audio & amp systems survived transport, worked beautifully and we didn't come up short of parts or cables;
  
• the new stage placement and echo abatement measures in one particularly acoustically ugly room worked better than we dared hope;
  
• the registration table was well supplied and the volunteers were all on time and very capable;
  
• the prize baskets as beautiful and sure to raise some extra funds;
  
• all callers arrived on time and have been an utter delight with which to work;
  
• our hotel room at the Yorktowne Hotel is very comfortable and spacious; in fact, this was the fastest check-in I've ever experienced in years with this hotel, and the staff have been markedly more helpful & responsive than I've ever witnessed;
  
• I don't appear to have forgotten anything at home --well, except for my camera and my name badge, both of which I can easily live without.

The only downside to today is that I'm still on-call for the office until next Tuesday, and we had a series of server crashes, some wonkiness in our monitoring system generating false alerts and at least one stretch of panic where some clown updated some software without first disabling the monitoring system and thus generating a rash of urgent extra alerts. Thank god for wireless technology: I was able to tackle a great number of things while sitting in the back seat of a minivan.

Fortunately, the work issues are resolved and my pager has been quiet for at least three hours. I'm hopeful the rest of the weekend will be similarly peaceful.

And I got to call an Advanced square dance tip this evening in a guest caller spot. My newly reworked dance cards --fewer embedded images, more careful alignment of calls on a single line for smoother delivery, etc.-- is working very well. And I got to dance some fantastic C1 and C2 hours this evening as well, which has done wonders for my stress level.

Tomorrow morning, kent4str, our event chair and I are checking out two nearby halls which will likely be used in next year's event. I need to make a restaurant reservation for dinner too. And I'm looking forward to a number of workshops in the morning and some great dancing through the afternoon and evening.