Books 'n Booze

I am supposed to be posting about our first “meeting” of Saloon, but I feel I can’t start without saying a few words about where we’ve come from and the impetus for this project.

I don’t think any of us will deny that we have shamefully stolen this idea from the Originators of Awesome, the Captains of Cool: Salon. The Salon group of John, Kim, Sarah E.W., Brad and Anna (am I missing anyone?) had this brilliant plan to meet regularly to talk about NEAT STUFF. I’m sure they’d explain it in a much more lyrical, elegant, intriguing manner, but for our purposes that’s basically what we’re talking about. An excuse to get together, talk, laugh, have fun… and to make the effort to have the important and interesting conversations you sometimes stumble on to, only on purpose.

So at some point we, the co-creators of Saloon, decided that we wanted this experience for ourselves. We thought about infiltrating Salon by killing off the members one by one but it seemed awfully complicated and potentially dangerous if not properly planned. So then we had a conversation about “if you were going to commit the perfect murder, how would you do it?” and then we realized THAT was a perfect Salon topic and behold: Saloon was born.

Ok, it didn’t really go like that at all.

In truth we just decided that if they could do it we could do it better. And what makes things better? Alcohol. Hence the “Saloon” concept, the “Books and Booze”… you get the point (yes, I would be remiss if I did not do my shout out to “Mattie” for the books and booze name. Nice work, buddy!).

So here we are, a week past Saloon (Volume I, Disc I) and way overdue on my blog recap but with you, whoever you may be, that much wiser in the ways of this website. Here’s to you.

Hooray for books, hooray for booze, hooray for friends that like those, too!

Please look in the Groups to find a list of meetings and the forums within each group reference the topics to be discussed, book and playlist for each month. Following each meeting the host will share a blog post with their summations from the meeting, though others are welcome to post as well.

Additional features such as a shared calendar, file-sharing tools and social media info will be forthcoming; please check back here for updates.

If you have any problems with the site, please reference @admin in your post or send an email to jen@riehle.net.

Enjoy!