Forge, the Other Valley

I woke up this morning in Houston. 8:ooam. I had pretty much packed everything that I needed for the week last night. Good thing I have a guest bed now; it's the perfect spot to lay out all the stuff then pack it up! For those of you being super observant you'll notice that I added a green six foot circular deep shag rug to the room, which has nothing to do with packing for the trip, but thought I would point it out nonetheless. After having eggs and salmon for breakfast (gotta get those Omega-3's!) I headed to the airport at 8am.

Not a pretty sight this early, eh? Granted I had just taken off half my clothes going through security. Wow, those people are thorough....


After arriving, checking in (which could be an entire blog entry, but I won't bore you with the details now) I warshed my face, brushed the fangs, and headed over to the agreed upon meeting point where I waited to meet my CGOA Professional Mentor. Have I told you that it's Melissa Freakin' Leapman? I'm tragically early so I got to sit in the lobby of the hotel for a few minutes where I saw a man at one end of the counter saying "I was given a smoking room and I wanted a non-smoking!" and a lady at the other end of the counter saying "I was given a non-smoking and I want a smoking room!" and watched them both be given the same answer "I'm sorry, we're sold out". If they had only been standing ten feet closer to each other they may have figured out a solution.

Anywho, dinner with Ms. Leapman was so. much. fun. We laughed, we cried, we shared, we ate, we may or may not have had some wine, okay we didn't cry, but we did laugh a lot. I brought her a bag of my designs, some purses, the twinset, etc. She looked over each one carefully and gave me very valuable feedback. Have you ever had the one person you admire the most in your industry actually literally physically look at your work? It's an amazing experience. Here is photographic proof that I'm not imagining the whole thing...