QOTD: "If hell is anything like the road to it, then I want to go." - Anonymous
Reading: Mary Morris (editor), Maiden Voyages
Listening to: The Bestiary of Flanders and Swann
Decluttering accomplishments: threw out some old college notes
I'm trying to write daily this month, at least when I'm home. That's likely to mean shortish entries. And I may or may not backfill entries when I travel.
Work is relatively slow. I always have plenty to keep me occupied, but nothing is really urgent. My biggest news is that I have an in-person interview next week for the job in D.C., which suggests that the phone interview went well. Also, I am done with jury duty for another year. I had the call-in system this time, so never actually had to go in. I actually prefer going in, because it makes it easier to plan. With the call-in system, you don't know until the night before whether you need to go in the next day.
Tonight was Long Beach Storytellers' contribution to the "one city, one book" program. The book Long Beach chose was Tuesdays With Morrie. (Los Angeles is doing this program now and has chosen Fahrenheit 451, by the way.) I was glad to see that we had a reasonably good turnout. Nancy put me at the end of the first half, which worked nicely since I had a fairly short and funny story to tell ("Thank You Miss Tammy") and people needed that break after a couple of long lectury sorts of stories. The story has to do with what I really learned from ballet class and I was quite amused to see a couple of young woman showing off their ballet moves after the concert.
More to the point, I was glad I'd followed my instincts about what to tell. Nancy had suggested "Ein Harod" but there were several children there and it would have gone over their heads. Pretty much anything that was vaguely inspirational would have been suitable. I was also quite pleased when a couple of people commented on how well structured the story is. I've been telling it a long time, but I still remember struggling with how to pull it together, so it would have a satisfying ending. Most importantly, it's still fun for me to tell.
We were also being videotaped. I didn't hear all the details, but I gathered that the videographer was a friend of Julianne's. She's going to arrange for us to get copies. Of course, every time I've been taped it's taken me months to actually get up the courage to watch the tape, but it's still nice to get a copy.
Copyright 2002 Miriam H. Nadel