Too Much to Do, Too Little Time

 So, I leave on Sunday for my conference.  I'll be gone for a week, attending classes, watching demonstrations, listening to lectures, and meeting socially with friends and future friends (because I am a perennial optimist).  However, I haven't even taken my suitcase out of the closet yet. 

( Pics and text follow the cut... )

"Walking the Dog" was what I came up with for the 2009

Mystery Bag Contest.  I won some faceted sunstones for

my award.  The Japanese judges found it highly amusing :-)

I'm rushing through this morning though.  I wanted to mail a package to my neice for her new baby, but it turns out that the address I have is questionable, so I'll have to wait for her to repond to my FB message with the correct addy, then I can do the shipping label and it will go out on Saturday morning or it may have to wait until I return.  I really hope that won't be the case, I would love for her to get the package and it would be one more thing off my agenda. 

For those of you who aren't quite sure about fanfic, there is an excellent article in TIME by Lev Grossman that I recommend you read.  This is a community that I am heavily involved with, and it can be mysterious or laughable for people who are not really understanding of it.  The article expresses, concisely, what those of us involved with fanfic find appealing with it.  Lev says that they cut 1000 words from the original writing he submitted, but it is still a good read.