Me: coding fast, hard, and heavy for techops & security. Realizing that I now de facto answer to three dragon*con directors. Amused I got myself into this mess.Jeff: still in San Francisco. What was supposed to be a three-day trip morphed to a Sunday-Friday trip, culminating in today's flight home … and today's phone call telling me he must be back out there on Monday for next week, with about a 50-50 shot of having to be out there for a third week.

After fewer than four hours of sleep, I was on the road again. I'd been shaken awake with a jolt, and I was dressed and charging headlong into Brian and Suzan's kitchen before I'd really awakened. We headed out, Jake and Chris and I, in the middle of one of the worst thunderstorms I've ever driven through. Brian and Suzan's road more closely resembled a moat, and getting to I-20 represented a difficult tightrope balance of caution and insanity.

By the time it was over, all over, we had paid our fifty-seven dollars for parking and aimed the fully-loaded Jetta back to Brian and Suzan's, just the three of us. We had escaped the worst of Hurricane Frances thus far, but we knew it was just a matter of time before she came to pay her respects.

Time to go.

The bags are packed, the kitty-sitters have directions, the staff database has been nudged and massaged into its final form, and everything that can be done for DCTV has been done.

My preparation for dragon*con 2004 began in January of this year. It ends--at last!--tomorrow morning, when I stow my bags in the car and do one of the things I love best: drive.

Twenty-eight new adult-swim-style slide sets are ready to be animated. I thought I'd get them laid out as .png files tonight and animated, but I'm still sitting here typing and it's well past one in the morning. I'm thinking it's time to give up for the night. They'll get animated tomorrow.Winamp is going to cry if I play those songs again. I'm not sure how software plans to cry, but I think it will find a way.

Since you wondered (or, maybe, you didn't) about what life is like the month before 'con, here's a slightly-explained description of what's on my 'con-related to-do list right now: