Ok, to start with, I really did get a crowbar to the face this morning.
We had a week in Baltimore, came home and Judy B and I have been scrambling and shifting and rearranging trying to get the panels for Bouchercon finalized. We’re close to done and a lot of folks have been notified, and some more will still be getting notified as we fine tune the machine. My first day back to work at the day job was a bit of a disappointment, but more on that later.
It’s an interesting experience doing the whole thing. It’s easy to come up with SOME panels. It’s another story trying to do all of them. We came up with a pretty cool list, and then we started inserting names and playing with the time slots. Changes have been made and will be made some more. Our main goal is trying to get interesting combinations of people together. Things like having an author moderate a panel that may not normally be something they would do. What we are really trying to do is show off the authors.
We are also naming all the panels after songs. So the titles all have the artist listed in parentheses after them. They each also have the topic of discussion. Some song titles are more appropriate than others, some just sound really cool.
When all is said and done I think the programming in Baltimore will be entertaining and enjoyable. I think that people will find a lot of things they want to see.
And hopefully I can get a dentist to fix my damaged mouth before October or I’ll be smiling with my mouth shut. I was working on a bearing housing for a water intake valve for the city’s water treatment plant. As part of this, was using a 50 ton hydraulic cylinder to press off a housing from the shaft the bearing is on. To press the cylinder back down to reset it, I need to press against the center with a crowbar. The crowbar slipped and walloped me right in the kisser. After spitting blood for a few minutes from my newly extra large lower lip, I noticed a sandy feeling in my mouth. After a nice rinse I looked in a mirror and noticed my front top teeth are now rather broken, in pieces. Strangely there is little pain, but I look like a street fighter.
While I know we can’t make everyone happy with the panel assignments, we really have tried. And hopefully no one will be disappointed enough to do to me what I did to myself today. I think when it’s all said and done, and we are in Baltimore everyone will have a great time.