Its Good To Be Home

I am passionate about cigars. So passionate, in fact, that I spend a fair bit of my time contributing to a popular cigar review site, Stogie Review. Over the past three years, my partners and I, have been traveling to the annual IPCPR trade show as members of the press.

Press coverage is something that we take very seriously. In addition to networking with as many manufacturers as possible, we do our best to bring our viewers video footage of the event. This year we had a lot more on our plates than previous years. This caused us to divide our time up between the Twitter Brothers of the Leaf Cocktail Hour and press coverage. In all, I think we managed our time well and walked away with plenty of footage.

Unlike previous years, I was only able to dedicate four nights of my time to the trade show. With a new baby in the house, I was reluctant to even go this year. To my surprise, my wife suggested that I go simply because several manufacturers would be expecting to see me and that it would be beneficial to Stogie Review.

I settled on flying in on Sunday afternoon and leaving Thursday afternoon. This put me at the show the day before things got underway and allowed me two full days on the trade show floor. An incredible stress factor cropped up in Tuesday when there were reports of a Tropical Storm heading directly for New Orleans. While I wasn’t concerned about another Hurricane Katrina, I was concerned about having my flight cancelled and spending another day away from my wife and daughter. Don’t get me wrong, I had a great time with the guys, but I wanted to be home on time.

When the Tropical Storm began to dissipate and head east, I felt as though a weight was lifted from my shoulders and I was able to get back to concentrating and having a good time.

Wednesday night was the Stogie Review and Hava Cigar hosted Twitter Brothers of the Leaf Cocktail Hour. The turnout was excellent and we had in excess of 120 people attend. Several manufacturers came out and we all had a great time smoking cigars and enjoying adult beverages.

In my downtime, which was mostly at the airport, I intended to write up a story for Fiction Friday and #FridayFlash, but I couldn’t concentrate. Now that I’m home and back to my usual routine, I hope to have an addition to my Memoirs of an Assassin Serial sometime this week, as well as something separate for a Friday fiction piece.