We’re now well into the Dog Days of Summer. Pretty much wherever you are reading this, it’s hot (unless you are reading this in Antarctica, which would be pretty fricking cool).
Turns out that the origins of the phrase “Dog Days of Summer” have nothing to do with baseball, summer carnivals, or beach vacations. It dates way, way back to a time before Derek was even born – the ancient Romans dubbed the 20 days before Sirius (the brightest star in Canus Major, or the “Greater Dog”) rose with the sun and the 20 days after it rose with the sun as the “Dog Days.” Seems that they believed the fact that Sirius was brightest in the sky on or around July 20 meant that it gave off heat that added to the sun’s warmth, thereby causing the hottest days of the year on the ground. And here you thought only Derek would give you useless information for your next cocktail party (note from Derek: I can contribute, too! The Harry Potter character Sirius Black was named after this same “Dog Star,” which means his name roughly translates to Black Dog. Sirius Black’s animagus form was, of course, a big black dog. Scott died from boredom while reading this.)
But you know where you won’t find any useless information, but rather extremely useful information? No, no, not on “X” (so weird to write that). We’re talking about CMEpalooza Fall.
I know, I know. Every since we teased the release of our Fall agenda in mid-July, you’ve been frantically refreshing your browser every 10 minutes to see if it’s on our website. You’ve probably let out a few “C’mon guys, is this really that hard?” expletives. I’d tell you to blame Derek and that my sessions have pretty much been locked down for weeks, but that wouldn’t be nice of me to point fingers at anyone else. So let’s just say that we’re both to blame (Note from Derek: Yes, let’s go with that.)
The blame game ends now (well, sort of) as we’re proud to unveil — FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER!! – the agenda for CMEpalooza Fall. If you’ve been following our saga for these last 10 years, you probably won’t be surprised that there are still a few “TBAs” with some of our sessions that will be filled in eventually, but there is still a lot of meat for you to gnaw on right now. We’re bringing back some old ideas and introducing some new ones. There will be some faces you’ve seen in CMEpaloozas past and some that will be new to us all. Which is the way we like it.
So check out the agenda, clear your calendar on Wednesday, October 18 (it sounds really far away, I know), and stop poking those needles into your Derek voodoo doll.
CMEPALOOZA 