After the YALSA Annual Meeting and President’s Program on Monday, I celebrated happy hour with librarians from NY and NJ. We decided to have a quick dinner, but upmteen blocks and an hour later, the next thing I knew, David Sedaris was going on stage and I was downtown eating wontons and orange peel shrimp. I hope someone posts some details, I really wanted to hear what he had to say. But, we had a good time, and it was actually helpful and informative – I’ve learned that sometimes the connections you make at ALA are as valuable as the content of the programs you attend.
One librarian left to go to the Printz awards, two stayed to have dessert, and remaining three of us caught a cab to the University of Illinois at Chicago Student Center near the UIC/Halsted stop. A local young man who I contacted through the Chicago Dance Dance Revolution Meetup Group on was kind enough to join us and demonstrate his fancy footwork (I can hear my mother screeching now – you met with a strange man you found on the Internet?!). He was a sweet and harmless 22-year-old security risk consultant who works with computers and loves to dance, and he brought along his new friend of three days that he met through LiveJournal. I promised him swag from the graphic novel pavilion for taking a chance and hanging out with crazy librarians. The arcade/bowling alley got busier as the night grew later and we didn’t get to play as much as we wanted to, but it was a lot of fun. Getting home was a bit of a challenge, since I am directionally challenged.
One nice thing about having a roommate (besides saving some money and not having to eat dinner alone if you don’t want to) is that if they go to different programs, you get to hear about them and swap information. So I filled her in on the two programs I attended, and she told me about the Art Institute of Chicago Museum, the Ray Bradbury videoconference, and the Printz awards (and the birthday party thrown for a friend by a publisher).
She told me that Bradbury was very adamant about space exploration, and he talked about the things that he wrote about in his novels that had come to pass, and they things he was surprised about (, going to the moon) and the things he wasn’t (the Internet). The man who hosted (his biographer) was excellent. And the Printz award speeches were really good.
We stayed up way too late talking, especially since her flight left at 7 and she was planning to check out at 4:30! I slept in, packed, and made one last round of the exhibit halls on Tuesday morning before attending a YALSA board meeting to follow up on my request for an annual selected list of video games for teenagers. I found out that the technology committee is investigating this possibility. Yay!
I had taken the subway from Midway to Harrison on Thursday, and hadn’t anticipated so many stairs with my three bags in 90-degree heat. And, even though I mailed a box home, I knew I have about 60 pounds of baggage. I decided to take a cab to the airport to catch my return flight. I was lucky enough to meet up in the 8th Street lobby with three publisher reps who had a Portsmouth NH office and were not only sharing a cab to Midway, but were on the same flight to Manchester. They very generously not only paid for the cab (which the three of us in the back seat dozed off in), but bought a round of adult beverages at the airport, and I have three new friends I can call on for review copies of outstanding history titles.
Our flight was delayed due to thunderstorms on the east coast, but one bumpy flight, one hour-long drive, and one load of laundry later, I was sleeping in my own bed again, treasuring the sound of ocean waves. Chicago is nice, but the Atlantic beats out the sound of the El hands down any day.
