Small banquet, good. Small bookstore, well . . .

Due to some timing issues, this particular Sherlockian weekend, I had plan to miss the formal Saturday night banquet part of the agenda, with its usual toasts and dinner conversation with a program to follow. Instead I had to content myself with less-planned Friday night banquet with one other participant.

Being forced to "settle" for a less populated affair the night before might be something one could imagine as a hardship, but now, as I reflect upon this evening and so many others like it, it seems like the best dinners I've had with other Sherlockians haven't been at the typical round tables-for-eight, but at smaller, squarer tables.

At a big banquet, you often get to focus on one speaker with prepared words. At a small banquet, you sometimes get to focus on one speaker with unprepared words. Which one would I prefer?

Well, it might tell you something in that I'm writing in generalities rather than relaying the specifics of an evening at the brewpub featuring a meeting of the minds between fellow bloggers and chronologists Sherlock Peoria and Historical Sherlock. There was a lot of talk of what we've both got in the "things I want to do" queue, as well as comparing approaches to the fine art of Sherlockian chronology. Ideas for where things might go in the future, who else might even be interested in the field and what its place is amidst the Sherlockian whole. It was a very inspiring evening, and one whose parts and pieces you'll be seeing in the future, which is why I'm not going to spill either sets of beans here.

Our pre-dinner warm-up activity had been to do a little booking, and the first stop on that outing was a real test of one's will to shop. A local bookstore was having its going-out-of-business sale, and the small shop was mostly filled with a line of people waiting to check-out. After ten minutes of snaking over and around people, the air seemed to be holding less and less oxygen, and I started wondering just what I could find that I wanted bad enough to stand in that purgatory of a line. Vincent gave the signal for "Let's get out of here!" and I readily followed. Since the next bookstore was, unfortunately, closed, we started our chronology banquet early, and that was just fine.

Today we head to Dayton to hear a day-long series of speakers, the first time in a while I've gotten back to that format of Sherlocking, so another report will follow.