Tikkabik

I've decided to take Friday and Tuesday off, so I'll get a five-day weekend out of Christmas. I'm very much looking forward to it. Though you wouldn't notice it from the volume of articles we've posted to Macworld for the past few days, this time of year gets insanely busy as we prep for Macworld Expo, which happens the second week of January.

All the vendors are asking us for meetings and we're doing a fair amount of planning amongst ourselves too. For the most part, the folks at the magazine try to break up coverage of the vendors at the show by beat and divvy them up equitably, but for Jim and me it's a slightly different story, since we're the "news" guys that most of these vendors go to when they want to see their new products or updates mentioned on the Web site. So Jim and I try our hardest to meet with all of them, if nothing else just to shake hands and say hi. That doesn't always mean sitting down with them for a real meeting, but it's this time of year that we all try to blip on each other's radar to make sure we all know that we're going to be in San Francisco for the show.

The "business" end of the show doesn't thrill me that much -- in all likelihood, I could stay home, fly by remote control by reading press releases and such, and still be quite productive and busy. But what I love about the Expo is the opportunity to reaffirm social bonds with other people in the business who I only get to see once a year.

It's a bit like a big family reunion, and it's surprising that even among competitors, there's a lot of camaraderie -- it's unlike any other business most of us have ever worked in, in that respect. To that end, there are a lot of after-hours festivities that go on, such as our own MacBowl charity event, that are always a good time, even if it means some late nights.

This year I'm doing the trip a bit differently than I usually do. Because it's January, I often try to get a direct flight from Logan in Boston to SFO, so I don't have to worry about bad weather borking up the trip. But over the course of the past couple of years I've grown really intolerant of being stuck in middle rows in the ass-end of coach, and flying is drudgery to begin with. So this year I begged a boon from our travel agency, and the kind agent was able to get me exit row aisle seats there and back.

That means connecting flights through DFW via American, and going into Oakland instead of San Francisco, arriving and leaving at *very* odd hours compared to what I normally do, but I think it'll be worth it: The cramping and discomfort I usually feel on these flights is not the right way to either start or end a week-long trip that's physically and mentally exhausting to begin with.