Gray carpet and lots of escalator rides

One last deep breath before SXSW lands on the city with both feet and it becomes unsafe to go within 8 blocks of the Convention Center unless you want your eye poked out by a forest of cell-phone antennas.  Last year at this time I had all those volunteer crew prep meetings and the monstrous Thursday Night Bag Assembly and was quite excited about being part of the circus for once, and right now I have to confess I’m feeling some tiny regret that I elected to sit it out for 2007.  But it’s SXSW, which means there’s always next year.

Dude, don't eat that last bowl of Cap'n Crunch - we're saving it for Randy Waterhouse

A friend from my Bay Area burner days is coming for the Interactive portion along with his wife and their kid who must be 14 months now because when I saw them last SXSWi she wasn’t anything more than a wet little ball in a sling, too young to even make real conference-disrupting noise.  I’m pretty sure she was the only baby I saw during my shifts, which really surprised.  There was a large lego-pen set up on the lobby floor which was well-used by toddlers, but they were mostly of the 20-something variety.

Anyway, it’ll be nice to see Evan and Maj and Bundle again.  No telling how long we’ll connect for but it’s almost certain to be better than the three minutes we got last year between the end of Bruce Sterling’s speech and the baby’s next demand for food.

Those damn escalators