...Ok, so I travel all the way across the country and we've just finished dinner. I follow the herd out the door so Suz, Kari and I can get our stitching bags and swap meet materials out of the car. When we get back we find that instead of two stitching lounges, there are three. Someone tried one of the classroom doors and found it unlocked so we just took over that room. We start dumping stash and the swarm starts. Eileen's box got mauled before it was even unpacked.

So I'm sitting with Eileen telling her the Ballad of NutFlakes (because she wasn't up on the story) and I spy someone with a Noon Basking in progress. Beautiful piece of work and someone suggests showing it to me because I model stitch for Dracolair. So I answer a couple of questions and I notice her nametag. She's Helen. From Oakland. California. About an hour up the road from where I live. I had to travel all the way across the country to find someone else from my neck of the woods. Hopefully she'll join the boards and send me an email to get her on the evite.

Anyway, we stitch and stitch (well, I crochet) and Jenni shows off the circulars I mentioned earlier. Eventually we head out because Kari's getting tired and we still have a drive to make. The next day we decide to hit Chocolate World before heading for the lounge and wandered through that tour. I had no idea about they Hershey school and I feel quite a lot better about buying Hershey chocolate now (even though it isn't my favorite). We bought souvenirs and laughed at the cows on the tour and then headed back to sit and stitch the afternoon away.

I think that's the only measurable amount of time that I worked on the Dracolair model was that day in the stitching lounge. Suz and I wanted to make one more round around the market and so we were Carol and June courtesy of a couple of folks who loaned us their badges. And we stitched and laughed and ate Kari's popcorn and June's peanut butter kisses. And threatened the guy who said he was taking down the stitching room because there were 20 of us and only 1 of him. I wish I could have spent more time socializing, but frankly I was trying to not lose my voice too. But it was funny realizing that I have more minions. And they're volunteering too! Kidding...

We're sorry for not meeting up with a few of you to hit the margarita place - our chauffeur was fading fast with a headache and decided that a bar was not a good idea. So instead we decided to try and kill Suz instead. SHE VOLUNTEERED. And we headed somewhere else a little quieter with Eileen and June. Since Kari's car only holds 4 people, Suz volunteered to sit sideways in the back without any restraints. So we tried to kill her and she was game for it.

We drove home on Sunday - another fun and uneventful drive. Oh, remember the desk clerk I mentioned in part 1? He was always there. We think he lives there. Every time we opened the door we saw him either leaving the employee room just a few feet away, or he was in the lobby. He went from being funny to creepy very quickly for us. Oh, and Suz saved Kari from a baby cricket that found it's way into our room. And every trip has to have something educational about it, right? Well, I learned that Mexico has $5 blow jobs. That's another priceless random comment from Suz.

Most of all I learned that there are some folks that I could never ever do without and a great many of them I finally got to meet face to face at CATS.

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So that's it. I want to thank Cindy again for putting together a great dinner at a great location. And I want to thank Carol and Dana for giving me a heads up about the GTG in development on the Wagon BB. And to everyone else that I shared a smile with even if I didn't get to speak to you for very long if at all - y'all made the show special for me.

And here's to the next time we can manage to get together and stitch!