I'm tapping the great Hive Mind of the Buffistas for the annual Stevens Point Trivia Contest. Part of the contest is identifying a list of obscure photos and my team is casting a wide net to find the answers.

If any buffista wants to test their knowledge of the vague and obscure, please drop me an email at my profile addy and I will send you the photos. Contest rules prohibit me from posting them on public websites but I can email them to as many people as I want.

Last year, we skewed Google Stats with the contest--it starts this Friday night and runs for 54 straight hours until late Sunday. My team is The Men Who Stare at Beerpigs. Last year we came in 8th and we'd like to place better this year.

My monthly parenting column in the Stevens Point Journal.

I'm summarizing what I've inferred from our conversations in thread.

We need to vote on a F2F city as soon as possible.

The things many of us seem concerned about are making sure that there is a point person once the vote happens (especially for Philly since we've had a number of people helping, but I'm not sure who ultimately will take over hotel reservations and such) and making sure the bids are viable (Providence bid is a month old) before we vote.

Please head on over to F2F so we can resolve this. We are two months away from the weekend picked (June 26-27), and if we don't book soon we may need to cancel.

Drollerie Press is organizing a digital author conference for the month of May. Each weekend (May 1 and 2, 7-9, 14-16, 21-23, 28-30) authors, editors, and other interested parties are talking about a number of topics, alone or in panels, in a text chat environment. We’re also sponsoring a writing challenge, and we’ll be holding Word Wars in the chat room throughout the week. The con website is at [link] and registration starts next week.

If you're interested in being one of our guests and talking about genre fiction or all the stuff that goes with it, please drop me a line.

F2F 2010

If you are willing to be the official point person for Philly, please head over to F2F and make your presence known. It seems we do not currently have someone due to localistas' personal conflicts, so we need a volunteer (does not have to be local, but does have to be willing to take over hotel wrangling now and at the event itself) in order to keep Philly in the running.

I'm doing some decluttering and wanted to offer up the following, most likely to be interesting to Buffistas with young or tween daughters:

- Two plastic multi-compartment organizers of random beads, mostly seed.

Yours for the price of postage. Ping me at profile addy if interested.

edit - all provisionally claimed. I love me some Buffistas!

U.S. residents can participate in the World People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth without having to fly to Bolivia.  A two way internet connection to the conference will be established: The week long alternative climate conference includes Bolivian President Evo Morales, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, Dr. James Hansen (the world's leading climate scientist), Naomi Klein, Noam Chomsky, Robert Redford, Amy Goodman and scientists and activists from all over the world. You can learn more about the conference at [link] ,

In order to give people who can't attend in person a chance to take part, the conference is facilitating electronic participation this Tuesday   April 20, 2010 at 7:00 P.M. Cochabamba, Bolivia time. That will be the same time in NY and Boston, 6:00 P.M. In Chicago, and 4:00 P.M. in Olympia, WA. The connection will be to one of many simultaneous workshops and probably won't include Robert Redford or any other celebrities. . U.S. Locations:

New York City
The Brecht Forum
451 West Street (between Bank and Bethune Streets)
April 20, 2010
7:00 pm
Moderator: Alfredo Lopez

Boston
encuentro 5
33 Harrison Ave, 5th floor
Boston, MA 02111 7:00 pm
Moderator: Suren Moodliar

Chicago
Casa Michoacan
1638 S. Blue Island
Chicago IL 60608
6:00 pm
Moderator: Jesus Rodriguez Espinoza

Olympia (WA)
The Evergreen State College
Lecture Hall 5
4:00 PM
700 Evergreen Parkway NW
Olympia, Washington 98505
Moderator: Gar Lipow (Actually Zoltan Grossman will do most moderation in Olympia)

Hear ye, hear ye:

Since F2F planning time is getting short and our Philly peeps seem to have been caught up in stuff like having lives, there is a suggestion on the table to default to Providence and get things underway again. Info on the hotel bid is here sj "F2F5: I forget that everyone isn't us" Apr 19, 2010 7:00:27 am PDT and here sj "F2F5: I forget that everyone isn't us" Mar 11, 2010 5:38:00 pm PST

And general city pimpage here: sj "F2F5: I forget that everyone isn't us" Mar 20, 2010 11:17:25 am PDT

Come on over and weigh in!

And as a follow-up...

The wise and beautiful smonster said the following:

::sigh:: I hate to say this, but since a lot of people's plans seem to have changed and it is suspiciously quiet in here, even if it's definitely Providence should we do a yes/no/maybe poll on being able to go? I have in mind the NOLA f2f and don't want anyone left on the hook.

We have narrowed F2F 2010 down to June 26-27 in Providence, RI, but we need to make sure we have enough people likely to attend to make it financially viable. Will you come?

Please respond to the survey here.

We need a minimum of 30 people (?) likely to attend to go forward, I think, but we can talk more about that in F2F.

In about an hour, I'm off to try again to donate blood.

I was full of confidence until just now.

Any calm, in control, no nausea, free (and quickly) flowing ~ma available would be greatly appreciated.