Let's start at the beginning

I arrived Monday after some serious travel delays. I was overjoyed by the Daytona airport. It was quiet, clean, and the people there were wonderfully helpful. A very nice experience after spending the day in Newark.

I took a taxi to the hotel and settled in. I'm the type of person who needs to unpack everything and hang it up before I can relax. I even ironed all the things that needed ironing so that I wouldn't have to do it later when things got nuts. (This was very key because I would have had to use napping time to iron. Obviously, I would have appeared very wrinkled.)

Soon it was time to meet my friend Lori Armstrong at the airport. The wonderful Mary Stella and I went to pick her up, and low and behold my friend Lisa (half of Ashleigh Raine as well as Rina Slater) was on the same flight. We crammed their copious luggage into Mary's car and drove home. On the way we stopped at Walgreens and made something of a spectical of ourselves while picking up snacks. We hit a package store too, and were none too serious there either.

Well lubricated with soda, snacks and booze we headed back to the hotel for some serious partying and ended up at a neat little diner for dinner. It didn't take long for us to end up walking on the beach, laughing the whole way.

It's so great to meet up with people who "get" you. Conferences are insane, but they are one of the few places besides family gatherings where I laugh so hard my stomach hurts. No one, and I mean no one, gets me like my writing friends. I'm already going through the blues because I miss everyone so much.

April seems very far away. . .