You should have been there.  The municipal library was more than generous in its sponsoring of this evening and the staff was amazing.  I had worked for days on a very complex powerpoint and the first thing I did was to drop the clicker I had brought and break it.   The guys there went searching through the offices for another one and at the last minute came through with a substitute.  

But I had other things to busy myself with.  For example, the hall, down in the basement, had a very large anteroom where the books and refreshments were set up.  All that needed arranging.  There was an enormous amount of food, vegetables, cakes, breads, wine, etc. but with all the recent recalls of canned and frozen goods because of parts of animals and bugs, as well as a story about a family that got high on storebought mushrooms, I demanded that the staff taste everything five minutes before the evening began.   You see how careful we were about keeping the lovers of literature happy.