One day you’re watching fire dancers in a hotel ballroom transformed into a Polynesian paradise. Three days later you’re on back-to-back video calls while ice encases everything outside your window. Convention weeks do that to you.

Saturday was the last full day of Inuhele, and it delivered. Panels all day, then a spectacular evening show where MeduSirena and her husband once again demonstrated why they’re worth traveling to see: wit, creativity, and genuine mastery over their art form. After that, the room parties. If you’ve never been to a tiki convention, you might expect grass skirts and plastic leis. You’d be wrong. One room transported us to Victorian-era Coney Island. The attention to detail in these transformations is staggering.

“Let Them Drink Rum.” Tiki Marie Antoinette watches carnival jugglers in the atrium. Just another Saturday night.

The reverie continued well into the early morning hours.

Sunday is usually a half day, but the incoming ice storm had other plans. Most attendees fled before noon, which meant those of us on crew got an early start on breakdown. Returning an immersive tropical paradise back into boring hotel conference space is its own kind of work: slower than setup, and a little melancholy. A dedicated crew stayed until after dark, loading everything onto trucks and depositing it safely back in the warehouse. A few of us closed out the weekend with dinner at the hotel bar, tired and satisfied.

Monday morning, from the hotel coffee shop. We slept in and waited for things to warm up before making our escape.

The ice arrived overnight, though not as badly as feared. Northern Alabama got crippled; large swaths north and west of Atlanta were hit hard. We got a late checkout and made our careful escape back to Athens in the afternoon. The roads were fine even as the ice on the trees grew thicker the closer we got to home. Good thing we didn’t wait much longer. Everything froze over again at sunset and stayed that way for two days.

One downside to being in charge of so many things: when I take time away, the work just waits. Tuesday was a full day of meetings, catching up on everything that had queued while I was hauling tiki bars and dodging ice. The town was still frozen over, but our power held, and I powered through.

Wednesday and Thursday I wrapped up a project I’d been sprinting on for five weeks: a community engagement portal for a university client. The final push involved rebuilding several major components after discovering, three days before deadline, that we’d been working from outdated brand guidelines. We still shipped on time. I wrote up the story for the Infinity blog. The short version is good infrastructure, centralized design tokens, and a tireless AI collaborator named Ray turned what could have been a crisis into just a hard few days.

But the technical save wasn’t the satisfying part. It was the client’s reaction when she saw her years-long vision finally realized. That kind of joy is why I do this work.

Friday was the final swim meet of the season: a local championship at the UGA pool with several area high schools competing. Juniper set more personal bests, continuing her trend of steady improvement all year. Swim season is brutal for everyone involved: near-daily evening practices stacked on top of a heavy class load. It was certainly a challenge this year. Good to have it behind us and settle into a more relaxed spring schedule.

Shipped: The university portal, after a four-week solo sprint and a three-day scramble at the end. One of the more satisfying deliveries I’ve had in a while.

Read: Honestly? Nothing. Convention weeks don’t leave much room for reading.

Played: Also nothing. See above.

Cooked: Survival mode. Whatever was in the fridge that hadn’t gone bad while we were gone.

Noticed: The strange beauty of ice-coated trees against gray skies. The whiplash of going from tropical escapism to frozen reality in 48 hours. And once the thaw finally came, Piglet and Wil’em reclaimed the sunny windowsill like nothing had ever happened.

They do not care about your deadlines or your ice storms. They found the sun.

They do not care about your deadlines or your ice storms. They found the sun.

Thinking about: How conventions create these intense temporary communities, then disperse. How the breakdown is part of the ritual—you can’t just leave the magic standing. Also thinking about what happens after you ship something hard: the scramble, then the relief, then the quiet satisfaction once it’s done.

What’s Next: CONpossible is at the end of next week. Am I ready? Not even a little bit.

Vibe Check: Coming down from the high, digging back into the work,