IMsL

For IMsL this year, I was asked to be the assistant talley master for the IMsBB competition. In case you don't know what that is, it stands for International Ms Bootblack competition. I agreed, knowing that this would be a two year commitment. Next year, I will be the head talley master. I got my schedule of events, and discover that I needed to be at the hotel no later than 11:00 am on Friday. (this was a week earlier that I found this out). After scrambling a little bit, we decided to leave San Diego Thursday night, and driven until we found a hotel that we could stay at along the way. Then drive the rest of the way Friday morning. we found a hotel in Livermore approximately 60 miles from San Francisco. Daddy insisted that we get up early because we might have needed more than 3 hours to drive the 60 miles. When it was all said and done, we arrived in San Francisco, at the hotel with more than an hour to spare, I headed for my judges meeting at 11:00, while PuP and Daddy went back to the room to nap. After my meeting, we headed down to the boot blacking area for "First Shine", the official opening of the Bootblack competition. Each of the people competing were amazing in their own way. I learned something from each of them. I also learned something from each of the amazing judging panel, Pony, IMsBB 2009, Tim Starkey IMrBB 2010 and Red Warrior, ICBB 2010. This was a great panel of judges. At 5:30, I had my first major talley task. We had to count ballots for the boot blacks. That was an interesting bit of work :) I was off for the rest of the evening, but we had the first part of the contest starting soon, so I rushed up to the room ate something, changed and we zipped down to the contest. We had a lot of fun that evening, and after the first part of the contest, we went to the San Francisco Eagle -- which may wind up closing. Huge bummer that. We hung out with Ms International Olympus Leather who is a very fun person! We headed back to the hotel around 1:00 am, and sacked out for the night. I had to be at the opening for the Bootblack competition Saturday morning, so I was up and moving at 8:30 am. I spent some time answering work emails after the opening, but spent most of my day around the boot black area. It was a lot of fun to watch and learn. My talley work continued at 3:30 pm when I had to count the second day of ballots, and then we took the judges binders to tabulate their scores and identify a winner. It was kind of odd to go to the contest that evening knowing who the winner of the bootblack competition was. The contest was fun, and all in all not that different from others I have been to. After the contest, we zipped up stairs, got our toy bag and then went to the play space to play with PuP. That was a lot of fun. From there, we wandered to one of the hospitality parties, and then to the room as the day caught up with us. Sunday was a fun lazy day. I bought a new Cat -- actually Daddy found it for me because he was tired of me borrowing his! PuP got a new toy that we would use later at e bar on him. At 3:00, ABW hosted a hospitality party that was a blast! Dakota and Kim were flying out at 10:00 pm or so, so we all headed to the eagle to hang out and have fun. It was great! We headed back to the room around 10:30, ordered some food delivery, and crashed put for the night. Monday morning, we checked out and headed for home. Along the way we stopped at Harris Ranch for lunch and had excellent steaks! I look forward to returning to IMsL next year!