I sat through a Webstrainer seminar today, learned a thing or two (about average for a generic seminar) and answered a trivia question correctly. Apparently I have won bag o'Webstrainer goodies!
I have NO idea what it might consist of. I don't generally win things--raffles, drawings, etc. It's very exciting. I mean, I'm guessing, t-shirt, coffee mug, water bottle, that kind of thing, but still. It's fun to be a winner!
The weather is a winner, too. We set a record yesterday with a high of 84. (Hard to believe it was blizzarding four days ago, isn't it?) This week's measurable snow forecast seems to be confined to the mountains--maybe a little rain in the city tomorrow, maybe a little snow on Friday--but a nice weekend here in Denver.
That's good, because I'm having a Girls' Get-Together thing Saturday afternoon, with a couple of local friends l haven't seen in far too long. A warm, sunny day is always nicer for these little soirees.
I may blow off freelancing Saturday morning in favor of scurrying to the store and looking for some yoga pants. I need some kind of lightweight pant I can keep at the office and change into each day. I am determined to start taking a short walk every morning from now until the time when it's already too hot by 9:00 in the morning, but my work pants are not compatible with walking shoes/flats.
Hmmm…. What else?
I'm eating cantaloupe. Not worth the greenhouse pricing--not at all flavorful.
Time for my conference call.
We're certainly springing into spring here in Denver. Yesterday was gorgeous and today is even more beautiful. Most of our accumulated snow has melted off, the temperature is hovering around a balmy, even perfect, 65 degrees, and for the first time in a long time there are no new snowstorms in the forecast. I have the wildest urge to go home ("sick"), change into summer clothes, grab a bottle of water and some sunglasses, and go for a long walk.
I'm going to sit here and sip a soothing cup of tea until that mood passes.
I got another chunk of the walls in my bedroom cleaned this weekend and got the walls in the dirtiest corner of the living room (by the patio door and over the air conditioner) cleaned, along with the floors.* The R.C. advised me not to get started on walls--that it would be an endless and almost futile effort, and I'm starting to see what she meant. I have to dust them first, to remove the latest layer of grime, then wet-cleaner them, then it takes about four rinses to actually product any level of "clean" that does not include streaks of remaining dirt. Also, you don't want to start a wall unless you're really committed to finishing it within a reasonable length of time--the clean spots really show up.
Saturday I bought new cleaning liquid for the bathroom. This is important, because I had cleaning liquid but it was some organic/green earth-friendly company thing and, not to be too explicit, it smelled. I'd been using it, and trying to get used to it, for a couple of months, but I was never able to convince myself that the bathroom was really clean when it smelled worse after I was done cleaning than it had when I started.
This weekend, I treated myself and went back to Clorox. I did buy their version of a planet-friendly cleaner. (I checked the label--no ingredients I've never heard of.) It smells slightly lemony in the bottle and not at all after being used.
Even though I was raised to associate the smell of bleach with actual cleanliness, I can live with no smell at all. What I cannot live with is walking into my little private bathroom and smelling eau de public toilet.
Anyhow. The point of this interminable story about my bathroom cleaning problems is that I got my bathroom clean this weekend. Really clean. Last night I stepped into the shower and was happily making myself clean when I noticed that the water was starting to swirl around my ankles. It's not supposed to do that.
Turns out, the drain was not. I had to call maintenance this morning and I just know that when I get home this evening, my bathroom will be a wreck.
Sigh.
Hmmm…what else? I listened to more of my lessons, of course. I'm almost done with the Art of Reading course and think I might go back and repeat a couple of the lessons I really enjoyed before moving on to the mythology course.
It doesn't sound like an eventful weekend and maybe it wasn't, but it was pleasant. I'd sort of mentally "booked" about six hours for working on the Freethinker's campaign but I never heard from Bernie**, so I wound up with what felt like "extra" free time. I used it to just--exist. And be happy.
______________
* I love new cleaning toys. I don't know why. It's not like a fairly small apartment inhabited by two reasonably clean women takes that much cleaning but I'm a sucker for gadgets of almost any kind. The R.C bought a bistle(bistel? bissel? Bissell?) not that long ago. I have never used a bis(tle/tel/sel/sell) and I finally got to play with hers this weekend and you know what? It works! On floors or carpets! I swear it picked up more than the vacuum cleaner would have. I was very entertained. (Some days, it doesn't take that much.
______________
** Oh! And when I emailed him, he sent back an email saying that KU had lost their game and is now apparently ineligible to win the tournament and since I picked them to win, I was all bitter but Bernie wrote back to say I wasn't out of the running. I don't quite understand how it works, but apparently if no one in the group "wins" outright, there's some weird statistical thing that decides who gets the pool. This might all be more exciting if I understood it better, but "maybe a winner" is better than "you've already lost $20!" right?
Well, “work from home” day, but some (many) people in the city got the day off because of the foot or more of snow. I’m saving my remaining vacation days, so I’m actually working. (The #1 advantage of working from home is not having to put on make-up.
It was still snowing when I got up this morning and is still snowing now, but lightly—just sort of dusting down, in contrast to last night’s blizzard-like conditions.
Tree branches are sagging dangerously under the weight of ice and snow, making me very glad that 95% of the power lines in this neighborhood are buried.
I have made myself a breakfast sandwich—a thin wheat roll with a slice of roasted turkey breast, a slice of baby swiss cheese, and an egg. It’s surprisingly delicious.
I am working. Honest.
Otherwise? I am so on board for this. Hand-held gaming with 3D—and no clunky glasses. How cool is that?
That will teach me to go around spreading bad karma, won't it?
Gidget IM'd me this morning, telling me to stop putting time and effort into the Senior Central accounts. It seems that, having failed to spend the $75k they spent on a new website wisely, they now have to spend $50k to fix it. They're replacing her with a different agency. (I'm not sure how they have money for the different agency when they say they're letting her go because they can't afford her consulting services any more, but maybe the agency has their own tech staff to write code, which our little company does not offer.)
That's a big hunk of freelance work to lose. I wouldn't care so much if it weren't for the fact that Gidget was doing a lot of work with them that didn't involve me--and getting paid for it. Losing them makes a serious dent in her own income and, unlike me, she's trying to live on what we're bringing in from The Gidget Co.
I must focus on the Woofmen's accounts this weekend--they still love us (her) and I need to figure out how to make them successful on $4 a day when none of the accounts have any of the tools I need to measure success--what's working and what isn't.
Today's minor good news--my alarm clock went off when and how I needed it to. I'm very sure of this--I woke up at 6:45 and waited for it to go off so I could check it.
Today's second minor good news--the big storm that was supposed to move in last night is still coming, but did not arrive in time to mess up the morning commute. This means the major part of it might not move in until after tonight's rush hour, when the R.C. and I are both already safely at home.
It's not supposed to be huge, they're only saying 5" - 10" in the city right now, but big enough to make a mess. I can always work from home if I wake up to a winter wonderland tomorrow, but I'm not sure the R.C. can, especially not on a Wednesday, which is Big Meeting Day in her office.
_________________
P.S. Personal note to Rapunzel: I blame you! It's been over a year and Harvest Moon continues to eat my life. I started over on Cute last night but I think Island of Happiness will always be my favorite.
That's a good word. It implies something more interesting than a mere problem.
After many years of not writing (and intermittent whining about it), I'm dabbling in writing again. Many of my recent weekend (and evening) activities have been chosen specifically to encourage this state of mind. The results are--less than impressive, but I knew it was going to take time to get back in practice, so that's fine.
The problem, of course, comes in the when. If I could turn the creative part of my brain off from 8-5, M-F, that would be good. (And from 7-11 on weekends, since that's when I do most of my freelance work.) Arrange that for me, 'k?
Bernie called this morning. He passed my comments to the Freethinker and now the Freethinker is asking, 'what next'? Bernie wanted to know what we should do (and how long it would either take me to do it, or to teach Lorna, his Harried Helper, to do it). I hate questions like that. Questions about teaching someone. I am a horrible teacher* and I am honest enough to admit it
Lorna, his Harried Helper, hasn't done anything to me--I've never even met her. Why should I inflict myself on her in a role I'm completely unsuited for? Also? This is not a "beginner" project. This is not a project for someone who has never even seen the software.
I sympathize with his desire to have this work done in-house, so he doesn't have to pay a free-lancer for it. I support the idea of me not being responsible for the potpourri of random clients he has coming on board. He and his Harried Helper can, as I've told him more than once, log in to the free online lessons and learn. But I don't teach.
I don't mind reorganizing the Freethinker's stuff for him, though. (Even though it means I'll actually have to go read his web pages.) Anticipating that this would come up, I already have copious notes on what should be done. Organizing is much more fun than management and the check should cover the last of my travel expenses from the end of February.
The next leaf in Bernie's potpourri is Portuguese And wants to advertise in that language,. I tried--I did try, to explain the difficulty of this to Bernie but I don't think I got through. I know--the numbers are the same, but the words matter.
Crazy man.
Also, he told me that I'm in first place in our brackets group--we had a fifteen minute conversation about games that I assume must have taken place in the last week or something and have I ever mentioned on the blog how much I hate having to fake my way through in-depth conversations about teams and players I've never heard of**--but I can't figure out how to go look at it all to see how this strange thing happened, so I can't explain it.
___________________
* Seriously. "Here's the stuff. Just do it. If you have a question, search the web for an answer." That should be enough "teaching" for anyone.
** Some day I'm going to get caught doing that and someone's feelings will be hurt. (By the way, brackets are about basketball. Did you know that? I'm not sure I knew that before today.)
Posted by AnneZook at 02:22 PM | Comments (4)For the last couple of weekends, I've indulged myself shamefully. I've spent hours listening to my new courses, I've knitted, I've worked on my (increasingly frustrating) boat model, I've played DS games, I've done a little writing, I've even watched some DVDs. This must cease.
Wallowing around, playing with my toys, does not get the chores done. A "lick-and-a-promise" might hold the bathroom and the kitchen for a week, but by the second week I can sense the germs scurrying to coat my unclean floors. I can see the dust filming over my undusted bookshelves. Counter corners in the kitchen are, I'm sure, starting to accumulate random bits of filth--salt particles, bread crumbs, etc. The bathroom floors don't even bear thinking of. (I have thick hair, and I shed like a cocker spaniel. It takes Constant Vigilance to keep my bathroom floor clean. Vigilance that has been sadly lacking since I got back to town.)
Until this weekend, I was spending a lot of hours on freelance work, yes, and maybe that was some excuse, but yesterday's discovery that one client had "helped" their campaign into the toilet damped my enthusiasm. I did very little freelance work this weekend--if I put in more than four or five hours, I'd be very surprised. I should have had plenty of time for cleaning.
Goodness knows, I had plenty of time. My new alarm clock functions seven days a week. No power on earth seems to be able to keep it from going off on the weekends. When I was out of town, the R.C. complained that it kept going off, and nothing she did shut it up. She even unplugged it--but that didn't even slow it down. I begin to suspect it is possessed of a demon of some sort and needs exorcised.
Anyhow, when it goes off on the weekends, I'm instantly wide-awake.* I was up, more-or-less awake, drinking coffee, and working before 7:00 am both mornings this weekend. Very irritating.
Under the heading of, "one problem solved," I should mention that I have managed to actually turn the Demonic Alarm off
Under the heading of, "a new problem created," I should mention that whatever it was I did to turn it off, I did yesterday morning, after it woke me up. This morning, it did not go off. I scurried in to work an hour late, cursing and muttering. I hate starting the week this way.
I was meeting a couple of friends for coffee after work today, but we're rescheduling. One friend had to cancel because her schedule is over-full this week. That's okay--I have to stay late tonight to get through all the work I needed to get through today anyhow. (Work that, as I'm well-aware, is not getting done while I sit here, writing blog entries.)
Monday. Bleah.
______________________
* When it goes off during the week, I have to hit the snooze button half a dozen times before I manage to get vertical. This is a reflection of how much I enjoy days when I don't have to come to the office, but this job is still less frustrating, aggravating, and stress-inducing than any other job I've had in the last ten years.
Under the heading of "killmenow" is this morning's freelance adventure, when I logged into a new campaign I activated a week ago and discovered that the client went in to it secretly last Monday and loaded 600+ new words, all of which had really low quality scores.
The campaign is now trashed, all of the minimum bid estimates have gone though the roof, even on normally "good" keywords, keywords in multiple campaigns that I've slowly been coaxing into better performance have crashed and burned, and I'm starting off this beautiful, sunny Sunday in a really bad mood.
Posted by AnneZook at 09:54 AM | Comments (2)For reasons unknown to me, my brain is all writey this week. This must cease. As much as thoughts about the Great Imaginary Novel amuse me, they're just supposed to be for amusement.
I'm not actually intending to write the Great Imaginary Novel (G.I.N.), and I cannot justify spending "work" hours thinking about it. I do not require distractions. I am not bored or under-worked at the moment. Someone sit on my imagination--tell it to shut up, already.
I am working Today, for the first time since I got back to town, I'm chugging along, getting ideas about what to try and trying them here and there, rewriting ads, identifying problems, and generally doing the kind of thing I'm being paid to do.
So. Nutwise, I'm working on a new campaign for a 'Nut who has been with an outside management company since before I was hired. Marginally interesting. (It's a bit disconcerting--they're planning to spend pretty much the amount of money it takes to be successful. I'm not used to this approach.)
No news yet on the Freethinker. Bernie sent me an email early last week promising he'd be in touch with me last Thursday to discuss the notes I sent him, but I haven't heard from him. It also occurs to me that I haven't been paid for a couple of months.
On the off-chance that anyone cares--or, even if no one but me does because it's my blog and I can drone on about anything I want--I've put the sailing ship model project on hold. It's possible I made some kind of fundamental error in the few pieces I actually got attached to each other. It's possible I’m not the kind of six year-old they were talking about when they rated it, "6 and up." It's possible that I was doing fine and should have just kept going, having faith that it would all work out. But it's an actual fact that I just don't have room to leave random bits of wood laid out on a table for weeks on end. I need that space for things I'm actually doing.
I don't "some assembly required" debris laying around, reminding me that I'm a failure. If I want to feel like a failure, I can look at my checkbook--last balanced in 1989--or at one of my 401K statements--none of which reflect wise investment choices--or my "fringe this" pile of 98% completed knitting projects that have been preying on my mind for the last three months. If bits of balsa want to diss me, they're going to have to get in line.
Mostly, though, I'm in a pretty good mood today. Maybe it's the weather--it's warm and sunny and not supposed to snow again until Friday.
P.S. Clearly I survived yesterdays Expired Foods Experiment.
The sun came out, the temperature skyrocketed to somewhere around 48 degrees, and now it's a gorgeous day. Outside. Sadly, the building's HVAC system didn't get the message and the vent over my desk is pouring out hot air. If I didn't have a giant fan, I'd be melting, but I do, so I'm just a little soggy.
I had a nice, light salad for lunch and bread-and-jam for dessert.
Life is better. <--Tentative conclusion
OTOH, I have Doubts about the freshness of the chicken on today's salad, so I could be dead by tomorrow. (But, let's be positive. Since the bread I ate for desert smelled like it was on the verge of producing penicillin, it could all be a wash.)
This afternoon's excitement--a hair appointment that's coming just in time. I'm getting gray roots and my bangs are hanging in my eyes.
Can you tell that I'm really just Not In The Mood for work today?
Posted by AnneZook at 02:24 PM | Comments (0)Weekends are just not long enough. I need more time to live my life.
I am mentally talking to my boss about working 4-10s. Although I get pretty brain-damaged after sitting here for eight or nine hours on a normal day, I'd be more than willing to focus down, sharpen up, and stay in the moment for a full ten hours if I could "buy" an extra day off a week that way. (I wish.)
It's just a mood. I tend to get this way after a particularly fun and/or productive weekend and while the past two days might not, strictly speaking, fall into either of those categories, I do feel I was on the brink of accomplishing quite a lot. I just needed more time.
It was gray and snowy yesterday. Snowy-rainy, really. The temperature kept dipping below 32 and then it would snow and then the temperature would creep above 32 and it would rain for a while. It seemed to irritate the geese infesting the parking lot. They did a lot of shouting.
I worked, of course. Not a lot. Six or seven hours is all. I'm not "caught up" on the free-lance stuff, but I see a faint light at the end of the tunnel.
I knitted--I've finished two more scarves (all but the fringe because I hate fringing)--and am coming close to the point when I'm going to be allowed to shop for more yarn. Once I get these two fringed, I have half a dozen or so I can drop into the collection box in the Whole Foods parking lot.
I resolutely avoiding seeing or reading too much news coverage. I am not going to break my heart against that stone again--politiblogging ate my life for too many years already. (Glancing at the archives in curiosity, I see I commenced that waste of time and spirit in 2002.)
I read. Nothing new or especially riveting--I'm working my way through O'Brien's Aubrey-Maturin series for the ninth or tenth time. In the wings, I feel a bout of Dickens waiting to come over me.
I "studied." I'm well into (8 of 24) my Great Courses series of lectures on The Art of Reading. As I suspected when I chose it, I'm not really hearing anything new, but for a topic that interests you, a new perspective on old material can be useful.
There was one lecture on style that was especially good--I'll listen to it again once I've finished the full course. Also, a reasonably in-depth discussion of point of view. I tend to automatically select 3rd person, either omniscient or limited, but it's not something I put a lot of thought into. I can see that for the Great Imaginary Novel, I need to make more conscious choices about what I'm doing.
I blame this course for most of today's Monday Glum. The more my brain is engaged on the weekends, the more reluctant it is to turn back to mundane work-week concerns.
It's gray and snowy today. I used a 60-watt bulb when I should have used a 100-watt bulb in my bedroom's ceiling fixture yesterday. It was very dim both last night and this morning.
(NewBoss Anais wandered by to say hello just now and was immediately on board the idea of 4-10s. But, as we both know, with the Café's home office staff down to these levels--only one person in most departments--there's no way we can implement it.)
Life. Seems gray and dim. I am very ready for Spring to arrive.
I am poor (I've spent all my cash and haven't had a chance/remembered to swing by the bank this week and alone (I arrived in the office at 7:40 this morning. One other person was already here but so far we're the only two. Very sad.
This week has been both aggravating and annoying.
1) The diet is good, the diet is wise, the diet is pissing me off. Needs some adjusting. I've got to start bringing more food with me to work--even as sedentary as I am, it's tough to make it through the entire work day on 500 or 600 calories. (I'm not deliberately starving myself--I didn't cook anything for lunches last weekend and have been making do with whatever was in the refrigerator all week.
2) Gidget is happy and returned to full health and driving me a teensy bit nuts. The amount of work she needs from me is starting to exceed the 8-10 hours a week I've been willing to give The Gidget Co., and, what's worse, she's starting to need things between 8-5, M-F, when I really should be focusing on the Argonut Café's problems. I don't mind the occasional occasion when a client needs a phone conference, but two fifteen-minute calls this week is, IMO, excessive. (And, yes, I know that most people live about 50% of their personal lives on company time--taking and making phone calls from/to parents, spouses, significant others, children, day care centers, hair dressers, etc.-- but I've never really done that and I've always been a bit holier-than-thou on the subject.)
3) That could be because time has been in short supply since I got back to town. Over 50% of my hours at the Café have been spent on special (i.e., non-campaign-related) projects and, at last count, during the remaining hours I've been interrupted on the average of once an hour, every hour, by NewBoss Anais who seems to have missed me and to have lots of problems she wants me to help solve or at least have input on.
4) Yesterday, when I'd finally carved out an entire three hours to spend actually thinking about and focusing on what I'm supposed to be doing, she came over and wanted to chat about the bonus plan. I don't care about the bonus plan, okay? I honestly don't. They have, without actually announcing it, clearly decided not to reinstate our lost pay. Instead, we're all going to have to "excel" so we can get "bonuses" in order to get back some small percentage of the low-level salaries we were making before the economy crashed.
5) In the meantime, both Gidget and Bernie keep coming up with new projects and Bernie urgently wants to know when I'm going to quit the full-time job so I can take on more of the clients he's got lined up. I haven't had a chance to review the BunnyHouse campaign in three weeks, I suspect that I'll wind up with the Freethinker's campaign in my hands, I brought three new campaigns up for Gidget last weekend and there are four more waiting in the wings. I have not, as I've said already this week, actually had time to do the work on her campaigns (or Bernie's) that I really should be doing.
6) There are a variety of solutions for some of these problems. For the freelance ones, the first thing I need to do is get wireless internet access on my laptop, so I can work during the evenings during the week more conveniently.
I've been dreading that--fighting the battle to get a wireless router that can be configured to bypass C-*-m-c-*s-t's determination to block my $120/month+ cable/internet service from servicing my actual internet needs, but it's starting to feel like it's time. (Also, my sketchy research indicates that they're coming around and starting to offer wireless. Must call them.)
7) Also, I could work while I'm at work. It's 7:59 - time to get started.
I've been back at work for a whole week and haven't had a chance to complain yet. That's so wrong. Since I got back, I've done month-end reporting (12 hours), six "special projects" taking from 15 minutes to 4-1/2 hours each. I've had to do two conference calls and have two more scheduled for today. One meeting. Two data projects for the new website, four hours total. What I have not really had time to do is my job. (Oh, I've had an hour now and then when no one wants anything or comes over to "discuss things", but that just allows me to glance at accounts and make notes for which ones need work done--it doesn't allow me to actually do the work.)
I did work over the weekend, Saturday I sat down to Gidget's stuff, where seven hours was barely enough to scratch the surface. Mostly I just, again, made notes about what needs to be done. I'm planning to work this coming weekend again to try and get some of it actually done.
Sunday morning, I was on to the account analysis for the Freethinker. Six hours and 95,000 lines of data later, I had what I hope was wanted. Recommendations. (Work with me, people. Let's all send hopes that I am not asked to manage this one. Senior Central, the Woofmen, and the BunnyHouse are as much or more than I have time for already. I can't be adding gawd to the mix. There is only one of me.)
The report reflecting what people actually typed into the Webstrainer window was interesting. I mean, aside from the bazillion irrelevant searches his too-generous campaign settings allow, there were quite a few searches for his actual book/foundation.
The word c-u-l-t came up quite a lot. Queries around jeebus's children came up with frequency. Also, a-l-i-e-n-s. I'm not really certain if this b/f postulates a-l-i-e-n intervention in jeebus's life or if it was the movie A-l-i-e-n R-e-s-u-r-r-e-c-t-i-o-n those people were searching for (r-e-s-u-r-r-e-c-t-i-o-n is a high-traffic word for the Freethinker). At one point I was almost tempted to go read the Freethinker's website, to see what, exactly, I was being asked to facilitate the marketing of, but then I realized that I didn't really care. I trust Bernie's assurance that the Freethinking isn't advocating violence of any kind against anyone. That's about as far as my interest in gawdliness goes.
On the Webstrainer forum I hang around, I answered someone's question yesterday and today they're demanding that someone else verify that what I said is correct. I feel dissed.
I'm rambling on about random, uninteresting things because of what I'm trying not to think about, but it's the main reason I logged on to complain today, so….
MadBoy is back. Yes, the beast has resurfaced. The good news is that he'd like to sell his corner of the Argonut Café and so we might someday be rid of him entirely. The bad news is that, in the interim, it did occur to him that his corner would be easier to sell if it was actually making some money, so he's decided he wants a new Webstrainer campaign--managed by me.
He's willing to commit to about 1/3 as much money as it would cost to be successful, is demanding that we block the highest-traffic sources of leads we have, and doesn't want calls or emails from people before nine or after five, Monday through Friday. I just do not get paid enough for this level of stupid.
Although, seriously, I was going to try to work up a head of steam about it all, but I don't find that I really care that much.
Yesterday was the Café's monthly all-staff meeting, wherein I announced that I'm seeing an inexplicable but frightening drop in the number of inbound leads so far this month. I've glanced through all of the accounts--there are no problems, and there's traffic. There just aren't any leads. I've been wigging out about it for the last week (in my spare time) but no one in the meeting seemed to care.
"You'll figure it out," CEOJason said. "You always do."
Whatever
And then later he had the brilliant idea that all of the 'Nuts spending enough money to be successful will be moved to outside management and the lame duck, whiny baby, and incompetent moron accounts can all stay with me. So, you know, the fact that I'm not really famous for giving myself a lot of pats on the back (I tend to assume that success is become of something/someone else's work and failure is my fault) is probably good because I'm likely to have many fewer opportunities in the future.
I've been back on the diet for the last week. I've lost 1-1/2 lbs but I've also lost my sense of humor and most of my patience. Today I visited the junk food machine on the first floor and bought two bags of chips. And I ate them both. Now I'm eating chocolate.
The world is starting to get brighter!
Now it's over a week in the past and I'm over it.
Short version. (I know, it looks long. Trust me, this is the short version.)
I arrived at the airport in Denver, double-checked my itinerary, and realized I'd been reading the landing time as my flight's departure time all day. (Not the first time I've done that.) Got on the flight with only a minor kerfluffle, made it to Ventura and then the hotel--realized that not only was I at the wrong hotel, I had no actual memory of ever knowing what hotel I was supposed to be at. In fact, standing there in the lobby of the M*rr**tt, I would have given even odds on my being in the wrong town.
Because M*rr**tt people rock the rockingest, the fabulously nice desk guy not only didn't mock me, he gave me a key to the hotel's business center so I could check the gathering's website and figure out where I was supposed to be. And then he called me a second cab to take me the mile or so down the road (no sidewalk, or I'd have just walked) to the place I should have been all along.
The weekend itself was uneventful, adventure-wise, with the tsunami from Chile's earthquake turning into a no-show, the food being plentiful, and my friends being fabulous, but my trip back was similarly adventurous.
A shuttle company I had not paid called me--they had my cell # and my flight info--to confirm my ride back to LAX. In spite of a moment of panic--clearly my brain is not to be trusted and the fact that I couldn't remember booking that shuttle wasn't proof I hadn't done it--I held firm to my printed itinerary and refused to compromise. The right shuttle--the one I'd already paid--showed up and did have me on the pick-up list.
I was peacefully watching the scenery whizz by the highway, double-checking my itinerary to confirm that I'd have a comfortable two hours to spare when I got to the airport, when my cell phone rang. Un*ted's automated system calling me to say my flight had canceled and they'd rebooked me on one three hours later.
Having no choice, I stayed on the shuttle heading to the airport. Once there, it turned out that the Un*ted terminal was under construction--a state of affairs that seems to have been going on for so long that they no longer felt it necessary to have informational signs redirecting travelers to the gates--but eventually I fought my way through to the goblin castle* of security, confirmed my 6:15 reservations, got put on standby for the 4:15 and 5:15 flights, and staggered to the nearest Starbucks.
You'd think that with three to five hours of excess time on my hands I'd have at least gotten a meal, wouldn't you? I did buy a sandwich from one place but the bread turned out to be rather tough--not stale, just overly chewy, possibly as a result of having been kept in a cooler--so I wound up picking the meat and cheese out of the middle of it.
They got me on the 4:15, but it was close--I'd wandered away from the gate to call the R.C. and complain about it all and only coincidentally wandered back in time to hear them yelling at me to come and get a seat.
These adventures aren't the onset of early dementia. I feel it's necessary to keep repeating that. I think most of the problem is that I used to travel so much that I got rather careless about it. I mean, as long as you print out your itineraries and have a list of relevant phone numbers, you're good. There's no need to obsess over the cab situation in a strange town--when you get there, it will be what it is. I think I took that whole mentality just a bit too far this time.
But I had fun!
__________________
* Gratuitous Labyrinth reference.
Home! It's good to be home. As much as I love seeing my friends (and family), there's nothing quite as happy-making as sleeping in my own little bed (and knowing what city I'm in when I wake up in the morning).
The trip to Kansas went well, I think. I haven't been to a costume con in many, many years. While I did anticipate that an anime con would feature a lot of cosplay, I was somewhat surprised by the number and variety of costumes worn by attendees. Rapunzel and I were admiring the more creative costumes as we wandered from panel to panel. (After a while, I started feeling silly for not being in costume. I felt out of place!)
It takes very little snow to disrupt Kansas traffic so when a storm moved in on Saturday afternoon, Pippi and the L-i-K-S packed up my stuff and Rapunzel's and came down to the hotel where we all stayed over until Sunday. That was fun, because it meant we could keep attending panels until midnight.
Surprisingly enough, the weekend panels I enjoyed the most were the more generic ones--ones on the history of Toonami (and its affect on today's USofA anime fans), the star panel with voice actors, and the history and disappearance of OVAs. I didn't recognize "Toonami" when it appeared on the panel list but it turns out that I've seen at least a few episodes of all the most popular Toonami programs. Who knew?
The more specialized ones--chick gamers, etc.--turned out to be much less interesting. (There was nothing wrong with the topics, they were uninteresting because they had moderators who weren't quite sure how to lead a panel and who, in consequence, sat in front of the room and told endless and pointless personal anecdotes tangentially related to the subject matter.)
The two panels that Rapunzel was most excited about, the ones on dollfies, were both very good. I hadn't expected to be particularly interested in those, but the presenters really knew their material and there were a lot of different sizes and brands of dolls there to look at. Really, much cooler than I'd thought.
I spent, I am proud to say, very little money in the dealer's room. Mindful of the fact that I was experimenting with traveling "carry-on," I bought a couple of buttons, that's all.
Anyhow. I hope Rapunzel had fun. I think she did--she talked about going to the con again next year, so I think her first convention experience was fun for her.
In fact, it all went very well until I got home. Owing to a complicated variety of events, I was parked rather far from my usual outlying parking lot. I didn't anticipate this would be a problem--I've driven to and from that airport 30 times since it opened--so, after I'd scraped six inches of melted snow and ice off of my car, I hopped in, retraced my inbound route, found my road, and started happily, if tiredly, homeward.
Only.
It wasn't my road. I don't know what road it was.
I'm sure that at one point I drove under an overpass that was the road I needed, but there was no ramp, so I couldn't actually get to it.
Not a problem, I thought. After all, all roads lead to Rome, or something like that. It's Denver. All I needed was a reasonably major east-west road and I could get home.
I drove and I drove and I drove. No such roads appeared. In fact, since it was now long after sunset, the complete absence of any kind of city lights made it appear as though I was halfway to Wyoming. Eventually I came to an intersection large enough to warrant a stoplight. The crossroad was 140th street and I live at about -15, so I'd gone about 155 blocks too far north. But! It went west, so I took it.
And I drove and I drove and I drove. Having granted my wish for an east-west road, I guess the gods of asphalt decided to take the rest of the night off, so none of them heard my subsequent plea for a north-south artery.
I drove west for about six or seven years. Then, knowing I was too far north anyhow, I found a road that sort of promised to go north-south and took it a mile or so south--where it abruptly turned into a dead-end, forcing me to turn back east and eventually--wait for it--dumping me back out on 140th street.
I drove back on 140th for a while but it was feeling no more generous with north-south roads than it had been earlier. I found a Colorado highway and, under the assumption that it, at least, would not turn into a dead end, I took it, even though it seemed to be headed more east than south.
I drove on it for a while, pondering the fact that if you're in an unfamiliar part of a large city and you're accustomed to navigating by the mountains--invisible at night--you can't really be sure of your compass heading. (Also? Roads and highways in Denver are frequently labeled "north" or "west" but that doesn't mean the roads actually go "north" or "west." Sometimes a road labeled "west" will head dead-south or straight north for several miles.) Eventually I ran into--brace yourself--144th street. After 15 minutes of driving, I was four blocks farther from home and I no longer had the faintest clue where I was, east-west-north-south, in relation to any part of Denver I've ever seen before.
My options at this point were, (A) pull over and have a meltdown, (B) find a hotel and go to bed (not unrelated to (A)), or (C) call the R.C.
There's a reason she's the Resident Consultant. I found an intersection large enough to be labeled (in a suburb I've never even heard of before), pulled into a parking lot, called the R.C., and demanded that she Mapquest me and find out what freaking reality I was in.
Because she's good at that kind of thing, she talked me off the ledge, put up with my refusal to get back on the same highway that had been dumping me out on 140th street all night, and navigated me back to "my" part of town.
I am not suffering from early dementia! I think that needs to be stated, very clearly. I have a very bad sense of direction, I always have had, and I rely very heavily on being able to see the Front Range when I'm traveling around Denver.
You probably think that's all pretty weird. Wait until you hear the story of my second trip.
Posted by AnneZook at 04:33 PM | Comments (4)