Wednesday, October 1, 2008

My Recent Visit to Orlando, Florida...

...was spent entirely within the walls of the mega resort hotel known as the Gaylord Palms, where the staff has been bred by crossing a phalanx of Stepford Wives with a particularly vigorous Mitt Romney clone. Chewing gum is forbidden within the confines of the resort. I am not kidding. The round-faced young man who delivered my breakfast one morning looked very much like a smiley face come to life. I wanted to take a photo of him, but he SCARED me.   It was eerie, I tell you. Nevertheless, it was a very pleasant two days with the FAMEous Florida librarians (FAME = Florida Association for Media in Education), a group of super-dedicated school librarians who were all working Really Hard to make the most of their annual conference while I frittered away most of my time hanging out with (name dropping, I know, I'm pathetic) David Lubar and Marc Aronson and Rick Riordan and Alane Ferguson and Chris Crutcher and Priscilla Cummings and several other YA fabulists. It was a good time. Here's the view from my balcony, showing a small part of the ginormegaplexicon: Next week I'm off to the OASL/WMLA conference in Portland, Oregon. I'm hoping to score some mushrooms while I'm there! Oh, as far as writing goes, I'm working hard on the biggest and most challenging project I have ever undertaken. More later.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

You make me laugh at every turn. Thank you.

Now that I have complimented you, I have a complaint:
We have waited 2 MONTHS for you to blog. You are a writer... What's up?
@

Pete Hautman said...

Yeah, I know I haven't been posting much. I'm trying to make it a regular part of my weekly routine, but so far I have not succeeded. I'm way deep into a new novel that has several dozen characters, multiple points-of-view, a non-linear story structure, and other mind-bending components. It's tough to pull out of it and, well, blog.

That said, I'm off to the north woods to hunt up some Boletus edulis (porcini) this afternoon. If I am successful, I may crow about it here.