The Metro cards are bought.

The Meet & Greet, as I'd been calling it, was scheduled for 3-6 PM. At 8:30 PM we had dinner reservations at Old Ebbitt.

As it pushed to 3 PM we waited by the doors to our meeting room - which was labeled with someone else's name. At 3 we asked about it, they had to find a maintenance guy, and while it was never labeled properly we got it going.

I put out the food - they didn't have anywhere good to put it, but we figured it out. I'd hoped to have some tunes going during it by hooking my iPod Shuffle to a pair of MadKatz speakers that I'd gotten at E3 in 2005. Unfortunately, I didn't test those speakers, and the batteries I'd left in them had corroded the contacts. Oh well - we didn't need it.

People started filtering in, drinks starting flowing, many a ham biscuit and empanada were eaten.

At 6 PM we cleaned up and moved up to the room I'd gotten for the weekend. More people continually showed up, and a group of us headed out a bit early to make sure we got to Old Ebbitt in time. Unfortunately, most of the group hadn't gotten their Metro cards yet, and the train was just arriving when we got there - so two of us went ahead.

Old Ebbitt was waiting and eager for us when we showed up, and even ready to do individual checks for each person. Again, I cannot emphasize how great they were.

The only bad part was that we were separated into two tables - but with 20 people, it's hard to have one big table. Still, we could move around, enjoy the scenery, and best off, have some darn good food (I love the oysters there) and have a few more drinks.

From there, a number of people headed out for night tourism of the monuments here in DC. (A potentially dangerous activity, honestly, given some of the muggings that have happened around here.) As it was midnight, others headed back to the hotel for more drinks - I got off a couple of stops early and hit the sack.

After all, I had a lot to do on day two.