Friday afternoon. Anna, at the hotel check-in counter, is very pretty and has a delightful Scandinavian accent of some sort. I would not normally notice this, but I am a little zoned out after driving in from Cleveland, whither I drove yesterday from New Hampshire. Get checked in. Get stuff hauled up to the room. Get Barbara going with the laptop so she can deal with the email that follows us everywhere. Grab a pad and a loupe and head down to the ballroom. Bump into a few good friends. Joel. Lou Kaplan. Len. Howard Kaplan. Roger. Bob Leeds. Paul Conterato, who has brought me three nearly-full quart bottles of vintage Skrip Washable Blue. Take the ink back upstairs. AnnMarie. Lee Chait, I ask if he'll put together a user-grade 75 I can use as a nib grinding fixture. Lisa Hanes, my dear mother away from home: "Have you eaten today, Richard?" Find a client I've arranged to meet, find a place to sit with him, get immersed in his nib needs. Joel stops and asks if I'm interested in some aero "51" guts, I start a tab. I feel kinda bad about all the interruptions my client is kind enough to put up with as people come up or pass by. Dick Johnson, oh good, he's got Big Red sections and feeds with the Lucky Curve still there. Buy them. Paul Erano. Jonathan Steinberg. There are more people, I'm sure there are, but it's a blur. Steve Zucker. Chris Thompson. Omigosh, I let him get away without buying a rod of hard rubber from him. David Isaacson. Dinner in the hotel, with David and Lisa and AnnMarie and... Mike Dvoretz and... Gone, it's all gone...

Saturday. Drag the coffin down to the ballroom, find a table. Find my assigned tomorrow's table, actually, but Kensington Pens are already set up on it, so find a different table across from Tim Pierson and next to Dick Krane of Aurora. Start unpackign the coffin and stick my banner to the wall over my head. People there before I even get set up. Run across the room and get the Pentrace presentation running on Len's laptop. Run back. Grind grind grind, tune tune tune. Somewhere in there Barbara unwraps a power bar for me, ick, it's one of those caramelly sawdust ones. Jaime Valencia. Steady stream of clients, great fun introducing them to specialty nibs and watching them write. Bernadette Landolf. Posters are selling well. At four, they punt us all out for three hours while the auction runs, perfect time to do dinner. Drive around a few blocks, reject the Olympic as looking too seedy, reject an Italian joint because it's Italian, finally stumble on the Ram, a small chain brewpub steakhouse that has good meat and, better yet, a nice hoppy ale that kicks me back into gear. Back to the ballroom, mill around with the crowd, the tough shaven-headed Rosemont cop there is adamant about not letting anyone in until the clock on his cellphone says it's seven exactly. Back in, grind grind grind.

Yesterday I got to look at a gorgeous Victorian dip pen, lovely flex nib the size of Kamchatka, with marvelous engraving on it. The last quarter inch or so was bent at right angles. Twice. Ugly Z shape, down and then up so the tips were almost pointing in the right direction. I offered to straighten it then, the owner wasn't sure he was going to keep it. Now he brings it to me, and I get to drag out the nib block and do the most entertaining bit of pen work I'll do here at the show. Too late I wish I'd taken a picture of the nib before I started on it. Well, actually, I didn't bring my camera anyway. Len happens by, and Len had the good sense to bring a camera. Pic will be in his show report, but I'm already planning to steal a copy of it for my own ogling pleasure. I finally wind down, finishing up the last regrind for the day at about ten minutes to midnight. Roger and Victor are still doing what looks like a land-office business in the corner, and Len is walking around the room putting up those gorgeous Sailor maki-e posters. Kensington Pens packed up a long time ago, and Len helps me to shuttle my stuff down to my official table. I set up, drag a cover over the table and throw chairs on top to hold it down, and get the bloody hell out whil I'm still ambulatory.

Sunday. It's eight o'clock, and they won't let us in. It's a different Rosemont cop this morning, but we still wait until quarter past. Flood the room. We're across from Tim Pierson again, and next to Warren Granek. I promise Warren I won't shake ink on him. Get going to do the stuff I didn't have time to finish last night. Barbara is doing a tremendous job talking with clients, they're two and three deep almost before I get my apron on. Lelan McLemore. Donald Lindgren. Doug Cole. Long visit with Sandy Andina while I do some work for her. Rhonda Foster -- no, she was at my table yesterday, the fog is closing in already and it's not even noon. Dick Egolf brings me a small supply of parts and collects the pens he left with me. Friday, that was Friday, wasn't it, yeah, he handed me one of those gorgeous lapis Monblancs and said he wanted it to do something it wasn't intended to do, i.e., write well. Kram was here yesterday, he's here again. They're passing out Sailor maki-e mugs to tableholders. We get two of them, and I can picture them on the mug rack next to the Portmeirion botanical Bristol tankards. Charlie Harles. Bob Risser, talk about pen plating -- with a plating pen, and how to get a reasonably durable plating job that way. A future pen collector, ecstatic with his giveaway pen, his dad brings him up and he shows it to me. Smooth it and hand it back, and watch his face light up all over again, he's having so much fun his dad has to remind him to say thanks. Grind a paper-carving crisp italic on a Pelikan. Lee Chait brings over the 75 I asked for and hurries back to his own table, Barbara follows him with a check. Stub on Kim Sosin's new Conklin. More. I think there's a power bar for lunch, yes, I'm sure there is, it's one of the nice chewy fruity ones. Ritesh stops for a while. The young future collector comes back, pose for a picture with him, he and his dad are really happy, and that's an official Good Thing.

David Isaacson rushes up and hands me a very nice star-band Vac desk pen, he just bought it, couldn't *not* buy it, but he already has one just as good and do I want this one? Money changes hands, my only collection purchase of the show. Rob Cole passes by. Maryann, bringing NYC show registration forms. Doug Cole returns. Are the Coles related? At four, it's time to tear down, as we have a dinner date with my cousin Don, who lives in Palatine. He owes me dinner, actually, because I resacked and reground a Touchdown Imperial for him a while back. Run around the room to say hi and bye, get a hug and a kiss from Sherrell and handshakes, hugs, or both from several others. Good dinner, too, shrimp and scallops Diablo, and they actually get it hot enough without making it so evil that it removes the roof of my mouth. As being "on" begins to ooze out of my system in response to a Tanqueray Martini made 12:1 and shaken with ice before being strained off, I think I may have survived.

I'm sure I've forgotten to mention more people than I've remembered, and I apologize for that. It just all goes by so fast at a show, and I don't get time to see everyone I'd like to spend time with. Next show, Washington. I'm already making arrangements to meet clients there. Man, I love this hobby!