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Morning, ALL-

Hope everyone is having a wonderful Saturday morning. We had lots of
rain last night which we desperately needed. The conference diva is
thrilled:))

Hotel update for everyone: you may want to start making some
reservations soon for Albuquerque if you haven't already done so. We
are doing very well on our pickup for this year and are on the verge of
selling 75% of all of our available rooms at the hotel. We are doing so
sooner than in past conferences. To give some numbers, we only have 60
of the 169 rooms reserved for Thurs, Fri, and Saturday (7-9 Sept) still
available. On Wed (6 Sep) and Sun (10 Sep), we only have 26 rooms
left. Historically, we don't sell as many rooms the night before and
the night after the conference, but this year's pick up has been good
since we're hosting the Ice Cream Social on Wednesday evening and have
the BYO picnic on Sunday afternoon. Having said that, we went with
history and reserved only 136 rooms for Wednesday and 111 rooms for
Sunday -- which is less than the main conference nights (Thurs-Sun). We
believed we'd be ok when we signed our original contract. For other
rooms before the 6th and after the 10th, we still have good numbers of
rooms available. So far, the conference rate extends from 1-14 Sep with
folks staying this far ahead and after the conference dates.

Kelly and I were in Massachusetts last weekend for the NE Unschooling
Conference, and many people who'd not planned to make the trek to New
Mexico are strongly considering it; some have already registered. I
hope this e-mail encourages others to do the same soon. Conference
history has shown some people wait until the last month to make a
reservation for the hotel. I'm encouraging folks to register sooner
than later. You can always cancel your hotel reservations if you need.


Ben Lovejoy