Miami, here I come! And NYC, if Delta Airlines cooperates.

I'll be in Miami soon to speak at the ever-fabulous Great Ideas Conference of the American Society for Association Executives and the Center for Association Leadership. Having cut my teeth in the working world as an association executive for many years in Washington, D.C., it's kind of like going home again. Their Great Ideas Conference was always my favorite, what with their "idea labs" and all. To go back and give a keynote speech about Life is a Verb is, well, a real pleasure. Let's call it Life is a Verb at Work and do away with this notion that we can only be fully human on our days off.

If you're in the Miami area, perhaps you'd like to come to the conference! I'll speak on Monday, February 23rd in a session that runs from 8:00am to 9:30am (only in America would a conference session start at that hour, am I right? A smile and a nod to my Portuguese, French, and Spanish colleagues). The kind folks at ASAE said they'd be glad to talk with folks about a one-day conference pass — if that's of interest, give Anne Blouin a ring at 202-626-ASAE.

After I speak, I'll do a book signing and then run to the airport, fling myself at the mercy of Delta Airlines (bad idea, I know, oh lord I know), and wing my way to New York City to meet Emma who supposedly will arrive on another Delta flight from North Carolina just three minutes after mine.

Of course this timing will never work and we'll each spend a week in New York watching Sarah Jessica Parker teeter along in high heels, and searching for each other like that family from Home Alone, but that's the plan nonetheless. As I booked Emma's ticket to fly alone from home to NYC, I had a tiny little panic attack. And then I realized that at her age, my parents put me on a plane (I had never even flown before) and saw that plane get smaller and smaller in the sky until it was a tiny dot that finally disappeared and I disembarked 12,000 miles away in Sri Lanka to live with a Buddhist, Sinhalese family in a tiny village with no air conditioning, no ice cubes, no cars, and an incredible sense of community. So all of a sudden, New York looked eminently doable.

She and I will (supposedly) arrive just in time to get to our hotel, get dressed in some ravishing cocktail party outfits that I don't even own yet and likely won't own even on that very day, and go to the ceremony for the "Books for the Better Life" award to see if Life is a Verb won! It is a finalist along with four other books like Randy Pausch's bestseller The Last Lecture, having been chosen from over 440 nominees. The winners are chosen by secret ballot of three expert judges. I wonder how secret that ballot really needs to be with only three judges. Hanging chads could be a problem, I guess. They almost always are.

Evidently it's a big deal (tickets are available if you want to support the National MS Society who sponsors it!), with lots of important publishing type people, and win or lose I'm just happy that Emma will be my date, seeing as how I wrote the book for her. If you want to splurge and go, please let me know. Perhaps we'll sneak away and get a big plate of pie somewhere and skate at Rockefeller Center or try to find the shop where I can buy this datebook. Sitting through awards ceremonies–and even watching them on TV is too painful (the Oscar's? Can't do it. Oh sure, I can look for Johnny Depp on the red carpet, but then I'm out of there. Feel too bad for the ones who lose).

Your job is to light a candle and modazz some good Verb vibe from 6-8:30pm on February 23rd. Emma and I will have an excellent adventure staying at a very special hotel in NYC and hopefully it won't catch on fire like the one she and I stayed at last week in Atlanta. But that's a story for another day.

Wanna have lunch in NYC?

While in the end my schedule wouldn't permit a book signing this time around while in NYC, a few folks asked about meeting for lunch on February 24th. Let's do! If you're interested, send me an email to patti at pattidigh dot com by Tuesday, Feb 17th and we'll see what can be arranged!

We're going to tour Pratt and the School of Visual Arts while in NYC because evidently Emma is planning on graduating from high school next year and leaving me. The School of Visual Arts has the singularly most gorgeous college catalog I have ever laid eyes on. One look at it and I wanted to enroll. I think Emma might have other plans.

And so, Miami and NYC, let's get together! I'd love that.

(NYC painting by Natalia Piacheva)