It’s just about 5pm here on the show floor Thursday evening and things are starting to shape up. Those with smaller booths (or those who have larger booths but are so organized its embarrassing to the rest of us) are ready to go for tomorrow’s 10am opening. The rest of us are still here, still sweaty in this air-condition-less hall, still wondering why it’s so hard to find coffee, and still putting on the finishing touches on the booths.

The Live Design staff are heading out of here in a few minutes to get ready for tonight’s ESTA Dinner over at the Rosen Plaza. ESTA Prez Bill Groener and company have a lot of important stuff to announce tonight so it’s expected to be a jam-packed evening. But they promise it won’t turn into an endless evening of Jerry Lewis telethon like proportions, and we’ll take their word for it.

We’ll have more on that event tomorrow, when the LDI blog really hits the ground running. In the meantime, maybe we’ll see some of you at the bar later. But not too later.