I'm Baaaack!

Long time, no blog. I am sorry, but it wasn't all my fault. Convention was great! I had a wonderful time seeing old friends and making new ones. I participated in some fun swaps, got all kinds of awesome ideas, and Stampin' Up! made some MAJOR announcements. I will begin sharing all of that tomorrow. I have a "Day of Sharing" for my customers today, so I want those in attendance to be the first to see my swaps and such. They're also going to be seeing the new catalog today!

Anyway, about being away so long.... Convention began on Wednesday, July 30. The first day is a time of registering, collecting your convention materials, shopping at the Memento Mall, swapping, taking pictures of the TONS of displays, looking at the new catalog, admiring your new stamp sets, and socializing. Then the next three days are PACKED with general sessions, break out classes, make-n-takes, awards recognition, more swapping, and fun. But they kept us busy! If it wasn't on the Stampin' Up! agenda, it was "extra curricular" swaps that my friends and I had joined or the optional tour of Stampin' Up!'s headquarters in Riverton, UT. For the first time since I have attended a convention, the closing general session was in the afternoon, and we were finished by around 5pm. My friend, Pam, and I decided with the early end that we would go ahead and fly home that night.

Pam is a flight attendant for Delta, and was gracious enough to let me fly on one of her buddy passes. [For those of you who are unfamiliar with buddy passes, this means you fly standby, and if you start out flying standby and are bumped from a flight, you don't move to the top of the list for the next flight...the regular paying customers that have been bumped go to the top of the list, and in some cases, you end up lower than you started. It's all based on the employment date or years of service of the particular employee from whom you got the buddy pass.] Okay, so now that you understand a little about the buddy pass system, you may not be so shocked when I tell you that I spent 40 hours trying to get back home to Atlanta. We arrived at the SLC airport on Saturday evening between 7:15 and 7:30. The flight we were trying to get on left at 11:45pm. Pam is the employee, and therefore has higher priority than I do, so she got on that flight (which was a VERY good thing because she had her 6 1/2-month-old baby with her). I was bumped from that flight, but fortunately found some nice ladies to spend the night in the airport with. The next morning I met Gloria. Gloria gives a new meaning to the term "buddy pass." Without this crazy ordeal, I wouldn't have met Gloria. She had also been bumped from the 11:45pm flight the night before. Together we spent the day walking back and forth between C & D terminals, meeting other demonstrators throughout the day, and being bumped from 7 more flights. Sunday night we spent our second night in the airport, (the ladies from the night before had made it on the 4:45pm flight on Sunday), and were again bumped from the first Monday morning flight before finally making it on the 7:05am flight. We arrived in Atlanta around 1pm local time after a just-under-4-hour-flight. And Gloria and her husband, Harry, were kind enough to take me to where Michael could pick me up, since he had given up hope of me making it to Atlanta before later that evening and was not at the airport when we arrived. Our luggage had made it on that first 11:45pm flight Saturday night, so we were grateful to find it safe in a locked room, and eventually make our way out of the airport, into Harry's car, and onto I-285 on our journey home. Yep, I've never been so happy to be driving/riding on that Atlanta perimeter!

After a nice long shower at Granny's and a few other stops at my mom's and Michael's parents' houses, we got on the road back to east Tennessee, and pulled in the driveway around 10:15 Monday night.

But, I'm home; I feel somewhat recuperated, and I'll be back to my regularly scheduled blogging soon (I hope). Until then, remember that TOMORROW IS THE LAST DAY TO ORDER FROM THE SPRING-SUMMER 2008 COLLECTION. ALL RETIRING STAMP SETS AND ACCESSORIES WILL BE GONE FOREVER COME 11:59PM, SUNDAY, AUGUST 10. And see my following post (the one above this one) for a little last minute inspiration.

Sweet wishes!