QOTD: "Fill your mouth with marbles and make a speech. Every day reduce the number of marbles in your mouth and make a speech. You will become an accredited public speaker - as soon as you have lost all your marbles." - Brooks Hayes
Reading: Phyllis Rose (editor), The Norton Book of Women's Lives
Listening to: The Beatles, A Hard Day;s Night
Decluttering accomplishments: I've been out of town and you can't expect me to do housework from hundreds of miles away, can you?
An amusing news story I ran across the other day tells of an unemployed man who was ordered to leave his village of Daspella, India. His offense was resembling Osama bin Laden. The authorities said he was drawing crowds, due to his appearance, and they ordered him to leave to prevent "communal tensions."
I, too, was ordered out of town this week, but just for a quick business trip. This was a sort of pre-review for something we've been trying to get on contract for about a year and a half. The contractor has to resubmit the proposal very soon, so they wanted to make sure they were really bidding what we wanted them to. I'd normally have been able to handle this via telephone but the person in charge on our side is very junior and wanted some hand-holding. So it was off to Boulder on two days notice.
The actual meeting was less painful than I'd expected. It was fairly boring, since the technical issues involved tend to have more to do with how many of which sorts of computers they need, rather than anything state of the art. The Boulder weather was reasonably good - cold, but dry, with a bit too much wind. I like wind, but it makes driving a small car more challenging and it was noisy enough that i didn't sleep well last night. I also got to have an excellent dinner at Rhumba - their amazing chowder, a fish cake appetizer that I had as a main course (with a tasty arugula salad), and coconut sorbet for dessert. After eating, I browsed some of the shops on the Pearl Street mall. There were several tempting toys at the kite shop and more tempting books at the bookstore, but I managed not to buy anything.
As i mentioned, my meeting ended early, so I headed for the airport, hoping to get an earlier flight home. United has cut back their schedule quite a bit, so my only hope was the 5 o'clock. I got to the terminal at 3:40, so it looked like it was no problem. Which was a signal for the forces of nature to conspire against me and make the security line the worst one I've encountered yet. It took about 45 minutes and, when I was through, one of the National Guardsmen standing there actually thanked me for my patience.
Actually, I don't think of myself as particularly patient at all, but I'm far more tolerant of delays when I'm traveling because, really, what choice do I have? If I get worked up and yell and scream, it isn't going to help. In this case, of course, I had nothing to lose as the worst that could happen was taking my original flight. As it happened, I did make the 5 o'clock and even got an aisle seat. I was far less patient with a long wait to pick up something for supper on my way home. Even then, I didn't yell or scream (or even grumble out loud). But the supermarket doesn't have a National Guard presence so nobody thanked me for my patience.
In other news, I have further proof of my insanity, both at work and at play. The work related madness involves a new task I acquired earlier this week which requires me to summarize a 300 or so page presentation by our contractor and a 270 page government standard in roughly 15 to 20 briefing charts. Oddly, I am looking forward to doing this. There's a certain amount of challenge involved and I feel like I'm actually learning something by trying to apply the standard, which is one I'd barely even heard of a few days ago. In addition, I'll be briefing this to a fairly senior audience, which is always good exposure.
As for playful proof of my insanity, I booked a trip to New York for Memorial Day weekend. Part of that is going to involve taking my mother to see The Producers on Broadway. The reason this is crazy is that I know that, even though she will enjoy the show, she will complain about every aspect of going to see it. I take my mother to the theatre every few years and I always hear the same litany of complaints. It's not like I wouldn't have sprung for orchestra seats had they been available, for example. And it isn't my fault you can no longer find a Horn and Hardart's on every corner with their wonderful cream cheese sandwiches on date nut bread. The Long Island Railroad may merit some grumbling, but it's not within my powers to control either their schedules or their climate control.
If I have any patience whatsoever, I must have inherited it from my father.
Copyright 2001 Miriam H. Nadel