day two

day two down the drain. and it was another interesting day. we left the room about 10am ish and headed to the GMA registration area. It never fails that every year I am really never sure where our badges, bags and booth info will be located. Is it in the MAPS line? The industry line? The customer service desk? I never pick the right one. This year I started in the MAPS line, got forwarded to customer service, they took me back to MAPS, then gave up and made us new badges.

When I saw the badges with the barcode on I became immediately worried, and have been fretting this situation all day. The GMA, who i like, somehow decided to put a Gospel for Asia in print over top of the right had bottom of our bar code. GMA also chopped our barcode in half from the one that i approved. I am not sure how this is going to go and I am pretty worried about it. The last thing I want to do is give a bad impression with the scanners. So we shall see what happens. (there is always some drama)

After getting our badges we headed down to look at our booth, Holy Smokes the bags that we ordered took up two skids and were blocking our booth off. What are we gonna do with all those bags??? Anyway So I walked back to the dock and talked to the freeman guys and they said we could store them in the hallway to the dock and get them as we need them. good news. They also mentioned that we could load in at 1pm. The schedule said 5pm, but i took the man at his word and got the van and had it to the convention garage door at 1pm. They let us in. Once we were parked on the laoding dock the guy started directing us to our booth. He thought we were with another company and had given us the wrong time. We were only supposed to be allowed in at 5pm, Anyway since we were they he let us unload. Danny and I laughed about that for the rest of the day.

Since the van was out of the parking garage we decided to run some errands, I needed bunch of batteries for a special light up sign and I wanted to buy some water bottles cause water bottles are not cheap at the hotel. So we ran to walmart. It was now 2:30 and we still had not eaten anything all day. So we stopped at this place next to walmart called nick & jim's bar-b-q. Hands down a great place to eat. They gave us tons of food for the money and I couldn't even finish.

We then returned tot he hotel and finished setting up the booth. I made danny put stickers on hundred of our bags and I set up the tethered scanner for tomorrow with the secret winning codes.
We then took a stroll down to the Hilton to look for our itickets sign. it wasn't up anywhere. hrm. not impressed, i will have to ask them when that is gonna happen.

After our stroll to the Hilton, we decided to check out the town. I have to inform Karen & Robin that Nashville is the place for engagement parties and bridal & bachelor parties. I can't even tell you how many parties we saw going on with the bride or groom wearing a wedding veil or sign or imprinted shirt and being marched around town by their friends.

Stacey, If i might suggest that you get karen a nice bridal head piece and decorate it and make her wear it for the whole night. :)

So we then walked around for what seemed like about 10-15 city blocks and check everything out. And when we were done I said, Hey lets go walk down to Rocket Town and see if anything is happening there. So we walked another 4-5 blocks to rocket town and they were having some local bands play. So we went in and watched. There were about 100 teenagers there moshing and having a great time. 2 out of the 4 bands that played were pretty good. I must say sitting in rocket town make me want to help build one in our area. Very cool, very, very cool.

It was now 10:30 and I needed to eat again, since i only ate once today. So we went to the Hard Rock Cafe for burgers. Then we walked back to the hotel. Tomorrow will start a very hectic 4 day schedule.
so who knows when i will write again. my link to live pix is below.

live pix