Sorry for the delays between posts; real life has been kicking my butt.

When we last left our intrepid guild-fest organizer, he was busy waiting.

The room block was reserved in the November-December time frame; people had until early March to sign up for a late March event.

Listen to the crickets...

That leads to another lesson. People will only sign up basically at the last possible moment.

Until then there's nothing you can do but wait and stress and remind.

And plan - what are people going to do the whole time that they're in the area?

Well, you don't want to over-organize. I set up a "meet & greet" (in the meeting room) for the first day, then dinner at an iconic local restaurant, the Old Ebbitt Grill. We could Metro there; I got 10 $5 Metro cards to help out for people showing up on Friday for it.

(A note on Old Ebbitt, one of my favorite restaurants in the DC area - they were a delight to work with. Completely the opposite of Marriott. From now on if I have to do any kind of large dinner I'll not hesitate to call up Old Ebbitt. And if you haven't eaten there, it's good stuff - I highly recommend it.)

Since I still wasn't certain how many people were coming until the very last minute, I did most of my preparations under "how much per person". "How much food?" "How many drinks?" Etc.

I asked people if there were any food allergies, vegetarians, etc.

For the Saturday we planned out that people would want to play tourist. I thought I'd have time to hang out a bit (I was wrong) but we did plan on a party that night complete with food.

Sunday nothing was planned.

As the day approached the final numbers finally coalesced; it took quite a bit of following up to make sure of it. A week or so ahead of time I went and bought the non-perishable items, such as paper napkins, plastic cups, etc., that I'd need and scouted out what I'd get in terms of food.

The Wednesday before I'd already coordinate picking up some growlers for beer which ended up not being necessary - thanks to the fact that Old Dominion Brewpub hadn't opened. I also put in an order for some empanadas from Julia's in DC.

Thursday I picked up one visitor from the airport, went to Old Dominion (no dice!), checked into the hotel, and went to dinner with the visitor plus a friend who was attending from my old hometown, plus with the planner that the second guy was friends with and had introduced me to who was helping us out (whew, that's an awkward sentence). Then I raced home to finish planning what I needed and make sure I had the coolers I needed (which meant buying one of them).

Friday dawned early and I did a big run to the grocery store for the "meet & greet" supplies (couple of hundred dollars there, including stuff that'd be used the next day), had to get everything over to the hotel, pick up the empanadas, got the Metro cards (or, rather, delegated someone to get the cards), and then had to find a maintenance man to actually let us into the meeting room.

The 'Fest was about to begin.