Jenny's Illustrated CVV Diary   Thursday: After months of work, CVV is finally at hand. I've been unable to sleep well for several days with excitement. At 4:00 p.m., Graham and I collected Colin and Zoe at the airport, made a quick side trip to see our name in lights at the Venue and then home to relax a bit. The weather was gorgeous and we sat out on the deck waiting for Helen and Debby to call. I kept jumping up and checking the machine every ten minutes. Did I mention I was excited? We went down to the St. Paul Hotel to pick up Helen and Debby. I was so chatty and excited that I got a bit lost driving to the restaurant. If it weren't for Graham, deciding to take the lead we'd have been half way to Wisconsin. After a lovely meal at 128, with lots of catching up and hearing stories about teenage Helen and Debby (troublemakers!!) I attempted to drive them back to their hotel. We did get there eventually, didn't we ladies? Colin and Zoe were zonked out by the time I returned so I couldn't put them to work in my tote bag and album assembly sweatshop as I'd planned. I went to bed around 11:30, and tried to sleep. Too excited. Do you sense a theme emerging? Friday: I woke up totally pumped!  I can't believe it's Caryvention Day at last! I had tons of errands to run and Zoe and Colin, troopers that they are, ran around with me to grocery stores (wow, carpet in a grocery store and free samples!) and the bank. After lunch we packed up the first load for the St. Paul Hotel. We all checked in and I was pleased to find a little note from Tabitha, the sales rep for CVV from the hotel. I finally got to see the suite. It really was a room with a view. Graham and I took pictures of our elegant surroundings. I didn't want to leave it, but we had to go home and get load two. Around 5 o'clock we returned to the hotel with tons of stuff and began frantically trying to put everything away and get ready for dinner. When the first guests arrived, I couldn't stop hopping up and down. It was so wonderful to see all of you again, and meet some of you for the first time. I made the worst toast in the history of fermented beverages. We had a cake for April, whose birthday was Monday. We got away with a flock of wine and eventually played our ice-breakergame: two truths and a lie.   We learned shocking facts about Vdeb...Also we learned that Graham likes cheese. The fun gave way for a short while for the first-ever, surprisingly productive Warbrides business meeting. Folks returned to their rooms to rest-up for a bit for the midnight screening. Graham and I, our friends from town, David and Gail and Claudia retired to the bar to await the movie. Claudia came along and amused us with some dog tales, and an unforgetabble image of her sitting and sipping a 7 and 7 while her dog runs on the treadmill. On the way to Oak Street I had the first of many fiascos involving taxi drivers, cab dispatchers. All I will say is I think they are all drunk all the time. Despite toothless smelly cabbies with no idea where they're going, we managed to make it to the theater, just in the nick of time. Vdeb took pictures of us watching the movie. We said the "You remind me of a man" to sort of wake ourselves up and the movie started. I think most of us even managed to stay awake throughout. Seeing Holiday with with the Warbrides was awesome. After another fiasco with the cabs, we went back to the hotel to try to sleep. It was 3 a.m. Saturday: I got up and put my hair in hot rollers (SPROING!) and dressed. My biggest worry at this point was the fact that I forgot my cufflinks at home. Little did I know...I was about to have something much bigger to fret over. We got the bell captain to take about thirty pictures of the group outside the hotel and then walked to the Venue. We arrived just at 9:30 a.m., and front door to Galtier plaza was locked. I started kicking the door. It wasn't my finest hour. Luckily a side door was open and we made our way in. Then disaster struck. I realized that I hadn't brought even one of the three movies we were supposed to watch that day... OOOOPPS. One of the movies was in my basement, back home in Falcon Heights. Graham to the rescue. He raced back to the hotel, got the car returned with the movie in a half an hour. My hero! During His Girl Friday, April went back to the hotel and got the other two movies from Vdeb's room that we were going to watch. April rules, by the way. After HGF, Rob Silberman gave his talk about His Girl Friday and Big Brown Eyes, which was very informative and thoroughly enjoyable for me. Then we watched Big Brown Eyes. Some of us will never be the same after that ventriloquism scene. We had lunch and by now we were more than an hour off schedule. David Long was gracious enough to truncate his presentation a bit so thatwe could still watch the third movie. I really enjoyed his talk about young Archie in Bristol and it whet my appetite for CV2004. I can't wait to hear more from David in Bristol. The third movie was My Favorite Wife. It was touted in the album as the "The Mystery Movie," but I think eveyone had figured out what it was by the time I started it. This was one of the highlights of the convention for me to finally get see this movie with the warbrides. I just love it, it's so fun and I hope everyone enjoyed it as much as I did. As usual I noticed more watching it on the big screen than I would watching it on TV. After the movie we headed out to buy up all David and Ron Hall's pictures of Cary. I finally got a chance to chat to Ron and had a moment to say hello and good-bye to Jolene and her dad. We slowly, in a daze made our way back to the St. Paul Hotel. This really was Cary Grant basic training. It was a fairly grueling (in a good way) day with three films, two speakers, and lots little AV snafus that I won't go into right now. As we searched for benches, Cheryl told us of a magical land called Texas where margaritas come from of slushy machines and they don't have any hills to walk up. I'm thinking Houston 2005. We had about an hour to relax before dinner so Graham and I collapsed back in our room for a while. We took the courtesy bus to Mildred Pierce and continued the now growing tradition of being really off-schedule. Our food arrived quite late, but everyone got fed eventually. I had a great conversation with Esther, Laura and Debby discussing the more surreal aspects of BBE, the delights of My Favorite Wife and maybe even some non-Cary subjects. After Jonas, our driver, dropped the last of us back at the hotel I raced back to the room to get the suite ready for the next activities. We were another hour and half off schedule, so I called Rob Silberman, expecting he'd say thanks but it's too late to join you all now.  To my surprise, he made it and stayed through the festivities. It was hard-core conventioneer time. Lil Deb, who saved my bacon by simply grabbing the check at dinner and putting it on her card was hard at work in the suite trying to count all the cash everyone was giving her to pay for their dinner. It really looked like you'd wandered into a secret craps game to find Lil Deb on the floor with pile of money and a look of bewilderment on her face. But I think it all got sorted and it was time to pull out the Carybucks (Can't spend those at the Mall, kiddos) instead.  This was my favorite part of the convention, first because there was nothing else for me to worry about for the day and secondly because I had the best time. Cary Taboo was genius. Thanks so much to Lil Deb for putting it together for us. In the end, the Taboo game was a draw. Tonya showed she's a true competitor as she was sort of hunched over like she was in racing starting blocks while doing her clues. We got a little loud while playing, and had to be told to shush by the hotel management. I spoke to Tabitha on Tuesday and she said that we didn't even make the hotel police blotter so I guess it wasn't too bad. After Taboo the endless auction began. Three words: suitable for framing. I have to thank everyone who donated goods to the auction, especially OFL who's vast collection kept us busy until 2:00 a.m. Ireally had a great time playing auctioneer and let me just say that you all showed your true colors as generous folks. There were no fisticuffs, even. Cheryl would like it to go on record as saying that the lack of Arsenic and old Lace memorabilia was appalling. Yeah, but we had a Pride and the Passion comic book. What more could you ask for? Sunday: The last day of a Caryvention is always bitter sweet, with good-byes, fatigue and those last few precious hours together.  Somehow I managed to sleep a bit Saturday night and woke up racoon-eyed and bushy tailed (I had forgotten to take my make-up off the night before, and I was getting about as much sleep at night for the last week as La Stat, so it was showing a bit). Graham helped me put breakfast together and eventually folks sort of crawled in for food. Except for Melanie--she seemed totally unaffected by the late hours and was so perky that I wonder if she doesn't have a future hosting a morning show. She amused us with her tales of her cat Stripe. While waiting for the bus to the Mall, I had a nice chat with Esther in the lobby of the hotel. I confessed that I was getting spoiled by the staff at the St. Paul hotel and was going to expect my cats to wait on me hand and foot when I got home. We made it out to the Mall of America, Esther and Laura schlepping their luggage, and met the other half of the group at Planet Hollywood. The Mall of America is a surreal place at best of times, but with my sleep deprivation, the giant cereal boxes, men in Lederhosen and the mighty axe, were all too much. I'm fully expecting flashbacks, sometime in the next decade. Lunch went smoothly (hey, whaddya know, we were right on schedule for once) and I bonded with Laura over our mutual love for the Three Amigos. Then it was time for our sad good-byes. As we walked out of Planet Hollywood we decided to have one last group photo. There was a man there with a fancy camera. I didn't really think much of it, but after the picture, he said he was "from the St. Paul Pioneer Press, you know, the paper that only costs a quarter." No thank you, I said to him, as I thought he was selling me a subscription. "No. I'm a photographer and I just took your picture for the paper." Ahh well, if that wasn't embarassing. After the photo Graham and I went shoe shopping, and met back up with some of the Brides for rides on the roller coaster, the mighty axe and more sad good-byes. Graham and I went home and collapsed. He was such a lifesaver so many times over the weekend I can't count them all. Monday: Panic set in again as I tore the house apart looking for the directions to the hotel in Davenport where we were meeting Doug Miller. Eventually we got ourselves sorted, Zoe and Colin arrived and we set out on big adventure. The drive down Highway 61 was really lovely, however iffy weather got at times. The phrase of the day: it's lifting and brightening. Then it would cloud up and rain again; repeat as often as you like. We stopped for lunch at Bescobel, WI, got many stares in the local diner and learned some interesting facts such as "Squeeky fresh curd" is something you can eat, Bescobel is the home of the Gideon Bible and that a grotto is something you have to see to believe. In Davenport (we were an hour an half late!) we met Doug Miller,Brandon, the film booking manager at a large theater chain, and a columnist named Bill Wundram from the local paper. We had a tour of the Adler, a beautifully restored music hall where Cary was to have played the night he died.   Doug told us about how Cary ran through the technical set-up for the show, like an old pro, checking the sound and lights himself (remember his first job at the Hippodrome!) when he started to feel ill. We saw the Green Room where he and Barbara were during that time. Then we went over to the BlackHawk hotel (Bill's comment coming into the hotel was, "This place has really gone to the dogs!"  What a character Bill is!) and saw the suite where Cary spent his final hours. I have to say that was an eerie and sad experience for me. Perhaps I was a bit over-tired, and emotionally exhausted, but it hit me harder than I expected. After a few tears and moments of quiet reflection, we were onto happier places, namely Archie's hot dog stand on the river front, where Cary visited the day before he became ill. The stand has been flooded numerous times and has since been renamed, "The Levee." Bill and I are going to head a campaign to rename it Archie's. Then we retired to the hotel bar for a drink. (Hey, I have a nickname to be worthy of, afterall.) I showed Doug and Bill some of my treasures from the convention. The pajamas that Lil Deb gave Graham and me were especially a hit. Also Zoe and I got to pose with Helen's pillowcase. We chatted first to Bill for his story, and then to Doug about what we had decided at the business meeting and what we envisioned for the centenary, before we had to climb back into our cage for the 400 mile drive back to Minneapolis. Wow! What a week-end this was. I can't believe it's all over. I still feel in a daze I guess. I want to think each of you again for making the trip and hope that you had a fun time. I surely did and I hope that living on Nipper time for the past three days hasn't permanently damaged your ability to hold to a schedule. -Jenny the Nipper