I can be there. i'll be on the east coast during that time frame, and jumping north a half dozen states is no problem. heck, if anyone is crazy enough to drive it from DC/NoVa i'll pay for gas (all of it, no halfsies for this beggar passenger). And i'll be staying at the hotel as i have no other housing options in RI. Just got round to clicking on the survey.

(edited because i just can't seem to capitalize my first person pronoun the first time round)

erin, I'm strongly considering driving it, just because I like being in control of my time. I'm coming from western VA and thus will be going through DC, and I'd love to have some company!

Awesome! Unless you drive a HUMV gas promises to be less than a train fare :) (and i kinda hate flying.)

Excellent! No HUMV; I'll probably be renting a car. Gas almost certainly less than train fare.

I will have to strip-search you, though. For the safety of all Americans. You understand.

For no apparent reason, I was picturing Kevin Spacey instead of Russell Crowe for this whole conversation, until we got to the garage band thing!

Wrong thread, Sophia, unless you have some information about surprise guests at the F2F.

I heard back from the hotel rep. We can still have the room rate without the prom, but without the prom, we would have to move the hospitality suite for Saturday night and then move it back on Sunday. We are responsible for 85% of however many rooms we decide to block off.

If Russell Crowe is coming, I will SO BE at the F2F.

Oh dear! Why do I do this?!?!

(Actually there is this weird thing where when I hit the back button on b.org it takes me back two pages instead of one, and I am pretty sure this is how it happens!)

Ok, I just spoke to the rep that clarified that the prom space and the hospitality space would be one in the same for the weekend. They don't have a suite that could accomodate 60 comfortably. So, what she is offering is a meeting space. In a meeting space we could not bring in our own food and drink of any kind. If we were to have say 40 people she could get us a suite, but that would be somewhere in the $400 range per night. I'm sorry that these types of details were not made clear to me earlier. I'm really feeling like I failed at this.

The rep also said that it may be easier to accomodate us on a different weekend, our weekend and the weekend of July 8th being the busiest weekends at her hotel this summer. I really think we should seriously consider taking a vote on changing the date to take into account people whose plans have changed since they originally voted and to give people some breathing space from now until the F2F to book flights, etc.

Again, I'm sorry if I completely suck at this.