I’d planned to post and tell you about the initial gathering of the Dummies Unconference, the first and therefore the biggest (and also the strongest, fastest and most intelligent) ever get together for authors of For Dummies books.
At check-in, each author gets a name tag with the books they’ve written. Susie’s says: “Buzzmarketing With Blogs Dreamweaver Bittorrent” which sounds like a pretty kickass book (and gives my spellchecker a fit!). Many of the other authors have just one or two books on their tag.
Anyway, I was going to talk about that, but actually, as we were wandering back between the Borders book store and the hotel, we crossed a little park known as Union Square, and what should be going on, but a HUGE rally for the USC football team!
Yes, it turns out that our alma mater, USC, is holding their annual Cal Weekender in town this weekend, and we stumbled into the rally, with the 100+ member brass band in full regalia, song girls prancing, people shouting “Fight On!” with the V gesture everywhere, etc. etc.
It was surprisingly emotional for us. Susie and I first dated in college, and took our honeymoon here in San Francisco. In fact, we visited the lobby of our wedding night hotel, the Hotel Triton, today. It’s been a wonderful little nostalgia trip so far, with the added bonus of being tax deductible.
I would share many more pictures with you, but I forgot my camera card reader. sigh. I have a big card, but the photos will remain on it until we get back to Vancouver. For now, enjoy these camera phone shots.
“Almost every American I know does trade large portions of his life for entertainment, hour by weeknight hour, binge by Saturday binge, Facebook check by Facebook check. I’m one of them. In the course of writing this I’ve watched all 13 episodes of House of Cards and who knows how many more West Wing episodes, and I’ve spent any number of blurred hours falling down internet rabbit holes. All instead of reading, or writing, or working, or spending real time with people I love.”
“Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.”
You can scroll right easily by holding down the SHIFT key and using your scroll wheel. (Firefox users trying this will end up jumping to old Web pages until a) Firefox releases a fix, b) they change their settings like so.)