Anyone interested in going to Texas for The Academy?

[Ryan Johnson]

Anyone is more than welcome to come visit. We try to put on a great show for everyone and seem to have more and more people from outside the state show up each year. Don't let any other involvement keep you from coming down (which is also pretty cryptic now isn't it?)- this is still the Lone Star Holidays Academy but we do have a few outside groups (or experts) coming to share their knowledge. If you are interested you can keep an eye on The Academy. I've had a number of friends here on CC so it'd be great to meet some of you in person!

Have a great week everyone!

[crazylightlady]

I'm going to the Academy this year. The LSP class will be taught by none other than David Johnson himself.

And due to the rude remarks made in this thread about Texas women, I've made my very last trip to the Carolinas.

[mschell]

I took a look at the class list, and some of the folks that are coming and teaching are very good folks. Yes, David is coming to teach LSP. If you want to get the inside scoop on LOR S3, then Drew Hickman has a special session on Sunday that costs extra but is probably worth it if you are serious about LOR. And there are some very nice women that live in Texas.

I still don't plan to make the trip this year - I've got too many other things that I'm tied up with to be able to carve out the time....

But we weren't trying to scare Annalisa away!

[Brad Caudill]

I am not going but looks like I am heading to Chicago this year with Tory. More of an event for the blowmolders but should be fun.

[Ryan Johnson]

You know I've never understood why more Texas folks don't use blowmolds and/or inflatables. With our weather down here it's an easy way to enhance a display but to each their own I suppose. I'm certainly not a "molder" but I have a few that I use each year and have always had inflatables, mostly because they're simple, colorful, and the kiddos that come by love them.

[Jack Stevens]

You know I've never understood why more Texas folks don't use blowmolds and/or inflatables. With our weather down here it's an easy way to enhance a display but to each their own I suppose. I'm certainly not a "molder" but I have a few that I use each year and have always had inflatables, mostly because they're simple, colorful, and the kiddos that come by love them.

Not living there, I can't comment fairly about why more people don't use blowmolds and/or inflatables in Texas, but here in NC, and it's probably something I'm doing, I have very poor success in keeping the inflatables from ripping. Once the fabric tears, the inflatable doesn't look so good any more. I don't know if it's the quality of fabric, my environment, or what, but I've given up on them. I've had good success with blowmolds holding up, though, and they look good with Denny's mod inside them.

Annalisa - don't let my comments about my first wife's kids scare you off; it's those particular people, not the state nor most of the people in that state. The kids are bipolar; it's a dominant gene they inherited from my first wife. No big issue there, but they don't want to accept the treatments to straighten out the screwed-up body chemistry the gene causes.

Oh, and yeah, I know you can sew up the rips once, maybe twice.....but the things are too expensive to use effectively only for one year display.

[kidcole]

I wish we were closer. The classes look great. I would like to learn to get the Visualizer to work for me. It's great you have this down there. And looks like you can get into the advanced topics too !

As Al mentioned, we have a strong technical forum here in the Raleigh area with the TASL group. The expertise is spread across a lot of members. And we're helping to expand the TASL idea to other areas around the Carolinas. It's a big boost to this hobby to have local support and meetings throughout the year.