This was actually a reasonably quiet week at work. Except for one major briefing on Tuesday morning, I was barely out of the office at all for meetings. Our new guy showed up and seems to be nice enough and bright enough. I believe that we'll pull out our favorite training aid (an electronic whack-a-mole game with the mole holes labeled according to various tasks we deal with) tomorrow when Alex will be back from his vacation.
My big spare time commitment this week was all tied up with preparing for the weekend. It's amazing how much time can go into preparing for a half-hour storytelling program. The program I did at the Washington Folk Festival yesterday was titled "Fortune, Fools and Fowl" and the theme came about when I noticed that I know a lot of stories that have chickens in them. One story I told was new and I, obviously, spent a lot of time working on that during the week. But I also had to brush off and time the other stories. It's always hard doing that in your living room because you don't have audience reaction to account for. In the end, I had just about the right amount of material. I thought it went pretty well and Jane (who was organizing the storytelling) seemed pleased.
By the way, I'd gotten to the festival early enough to be able to hear The Chromatics, who did amusing a capella songs about science and the internet and the like. I was particularly amused by a song about cicadas, which are alleged to have peaked but are still plenty noisy in my neighborhood. I also enjoyed just walking around Glen Echo Park. The restored carousel is delightful, for example. All in all, it was quite a nice day, despite dreary weather.
Copyright 2004 Miriam H. Nadel