Day of Schmooze

Last Thursday, I drove up to Santa Barbara for the day, to attend an Adult Services Symposium for librarians hosted by the California Center for the Book and held at the Santa Barbara Public Library (main). It was an incredibly busy day: I left at 7:30 to make sure I got there in time for the first presentation, which was at 9:30, and arrived 10 whole minutes early, given weekday traffic. They had a nice breakfast spread to which we all helped ourselves, and began promptly at 9:30. There were four panels scheduled for the day, and I had anticipated some break time between each one, during which I could meet and greet people and hand out my new (temporary) Book Adept business card, to start generating some consultant work at libraries. But the panels were so tightly scheduled that we went from one to the next, took a scant 45 minutes for lunch (which included standing in line for our picnic box and hiking two blocks to the courthouse lawn where we were to meet and eat), and then attended the other two panels without a break.

I did manage to get my card into the hands of two library system directors and some other random people, so it wasn't a waste of time; and I learned a lot from three of the four panels. During the panel about how to prepare your library for an emergency, which no longer applies to me since I'm not working any longer as a public librarian, I was able to find some down time for myself to sketch the panel; the rest of the time, I was too busy taking notes! So here are the emergency preparedness people (all of whom went through fires and/or mudslides last year and lived to tell about it).

And here is today's breakfast interlude at UCLA before I taught my class, where the dining room was, for once, fairly full of people I could capture before they ran off! Even found a little kid to draw, although his mother kept giving me side-eye, obviously wondering why I was staring so fixedly at her child. I tried my best smile, but I think that made it worse. Well, I guess my new purpose in life is to make parents more protective of their children?