Just in the last month, I started working on #5, finished it up, and attended one of the most defining conferences in my life. This conference had even more of an impact on me than MBLGTACC �02. For those unaware of what conference I am talking about, it was the UPC in bowling green, Ohio. About 500 zinesters, musicians, filmmakers, and the like were in attendance. Admission was $10 for the whole weekend, but I (and my g/f) were only there for a day. To start that fateful Saturday morning, I turned off the alarm while I was still asleep, something I never do except when I am with my g/f. This caused us to get on the road 45 minutes late. One has to keep in mind that Lancaster (my hometown) and Bowling Green are on opposite sides of the state, and my fuckup caused us to get into Bowling Green 20 minutes late. Our late arrival capped off a wonderful trip in which Alyson�s car spew yellow foam at us the whole time, and I kept getting hit by random buggy things.

Getting into Bowling Green was easy, however, since we rushed out of the house to get to Bowling Green in a reasonable amount of time, I hadn�t been able to find all of the directions that I had printed out the night before at 2 am, after Aly and I watched Mi Vie En Rose (sp). We got to the campus fine, but had to walk around in the scorching sun looking or the building until a nice professor showed us the way to the building. Finally entering the building, we got our bags full of wonderful goodies, and saw we had 45 minutes until second session. Raiding the free table, we then proceeded to sit at a table to cool off.

Intimidated by all of the zinesters tabling, I felt like a kid going to school for the first time. I cased the perimeter of the table, finding only a few people that I was familiar with, including from The World Would Be A Better Place if Everyone Wore Tight Pants Zine, Chris from Recluse zine, and Brooke from the SLC zine library. Through my interactions with a number of tablers, I was able to talk to some hella cool people, such as Jill from Recluse, and a girl from Chicago-based Loop distro. For those who were wondering, I was dropping names actively.

All of the conference isn�t about trading, so Aly and I decided to go to some workshops. I went to a workshop headed by the girl from Ker-Bloom about book binding, and Aly went to the forum held by the Ashville Global Report. Alyson seemed to love her forum, and I can say no less about the workshop to which I went to. Lunch was right after this second set of discussions, and we tracked out into the sweltering heat to nosh on some food, which we placed in the car. Getting done with that, we drive around in the car for a few, finally figuring that our ride with no ac was no match for the ac in Olscamp hall.

Out time and strength continued to ware, and we drug ass to the "women make movies" seminar, which was a collection of movies by -guess what- women. I don�t remember what the first film was, but the second film, about making a zine, was a light-hearted romp that was very informative. However, the same could not be said for the final film of the show, which were a lot of cut-n-paste filmed along with epileptic seizure lights and a grating score. Both of us were falling asleep by this point, so we thought we could wake up with a hot meal. Forgoing the last seminar of the day, we decided to experience bowling green.

We first went to this awesome little music store, which had some cheap bootlegs and an incredibly cool cashier. Going around to different stores, we finally came to the pizza shop which had an excellent deal (2 Pepsi and a medium pizza=$6.99!). Feeling full, we went back to Olscamp and decided that it would be better if we went home, so that Aly and I could have more time together. In the event of the day, I can honestly say that I reached heaven, if not only for a few minutes.