As many of you know, I’ve been working for months on the first ever semi-official Pennsylvania Dine-Around Party. While the state officially sponsors an Operator breakfast every year, we thought it would be fun to put together a special event for Dine-Around evening. The Super Bowl falling on Sunday evening gave the perfect opportunity.

We were able to pull together quite a gang of sponsors, and had invited a lot of Operators. It took months of planning and organization to put together. At one point, during the process, my daughter Bethany came up to me, watched me work on spreadsheets, booklets, and such, and asked “Why?”.

She saw all the phone calls, emails, design and redesign work on the collateral materials, and the moments of frustration when something doesn’t go the way I want it to. She asked what I was paid to do this, and was shocked when I told her I wasn’t getting paid for the effort.Even with the moments of frustration, it’s not all that much work when you love what you’re doing! Putting something like this together was a blast for me…I get to meet people from all across Pennsylvania, I get to plan something fun to do at my favorite convention, and I know that the reward of putting on a great event is so very worth the work that it takes. I guess it goes back to that Anne Beiler quote I used before (read further through the Blog postings to find it, if you don’t know it already). It does help that I’m doing this with (and for) my second family, and that helps spur on some extra creativity. After all, there were plenty of Super Bowl parties during ABA this year. Ours was simply the best one!

Bethany was even more amazed that I’ve already started working on events and ideas for the 2009 convention in Charlotte, and 2010 in Alexandria. Again, I’m doing it because it’s something I love doing (although some of my second family attribute it to utter madness)! We talked about it further, and she understood a little better. But really, it’s not something you understand until you’re involved in it. But I wouldn’t trade it for anything else!

Thanks to everyone who joined us in a very casual atmosphere (which is what everyone said they liked best), and please consider joining us next year, in Charlotte, NC. We won’t have the Super Bowl, but we’re going to have a new event that many people WILL want to join in on. More details to follow…

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