In the morning we met up for breakfast before going out
to find this fabled Holiday Inn shuttle. The continental was
part of my diamondness kowtow, and we were pleased at the
price (0), the quality, and the selection, which was a lot
more generous than most continentals, including as it did
breafast meats and I recall some egg preparation as well
as the usual dreary round of pastries and unripe fruit.

Too the shuttle bus with a bunch of other FTers to the
Holiday Inn Elk Grove, where we found registration and
socializing in full swing. The manager invited us to
breakfast, even though it was really past time, so we had
another breakfast, this time steam table scrambled eggs
(okay), sausage (spongy and weird), and home fries (bad).
Danish on the side; two kinds of orange juice, one okay,
one bad. The easier-to-use dispenser had the worse-tasting.
Later we discovered that we might have saved the DO
organizers a couple bucks if had refused the meal, which
we probably should have done.

As we are both IC Nothing and arrived late to boot, we
got the slimmest of pickings - smoking rooms, mine
overlooking the highway, hers the parking lot.

Though I have known him for a decade or more, I'd never
attended VJ's presentation, which was nicely done, though
the scaling up by an order of magnitude made it less
interactive than he was accustomed to - and when the
interactions took place, they had more the nature of
highjackings than anything else. Happens when the population
is largely made up of know-it-alls.

Pizza for lunch - I can't eat much cheese, and what I
tasted of the pizza was below average.

In the afternoon we had an energetic and worthwhile
advanced seminar by wannaflyforless, which I thought the
meatiest part of the weekend. Certainly the pizza wasn't.

At 6 there was a bus to Pappadeaux for a dinner organized
by UpgradedFirst; lili was feeling crummy, and it's just as
well she didn't go, as most of the food was of the fishy
persuasion, the alternative being a slightly higher order
of rubber chicken. satori sat at our end of the table and
spilled the beans on his hotel points presentation for the
next day. Food: I ordered the seafood platter, which was
altogether too much food and a little too little sea:
stuffed crab, stuffed shrimp, crabcake, fried catfish,
fried shrimp, in order of my preference. I wasn't thrilled
by the stuffed things: there was a lot of breading in all
three of the preparations. But the seafood itself was pretty
nice. After the initial welcome adult beverage, every boozal
thing was a la carte, and a couple beers did not come cheap.

After this massive pig-out, bed was extra welcome.