Over It
We went to a Concord Grape Heritage Association annual dinner last night. It was very nice and all, but I increasingly dislike these functions. Maybe I always have. It's different for Rick -- he has much more contact with these folks and they know him well and seek him out for conversation. I'm just the chick standing next to him that they've met before, but don't remember. Which is fine, really, except that I'm notoriously bad at making small talk. I don't really see the point of small talk. I mean, if we know so little about one another that we're reduced to talking about the weather or what kind of growing season it was, chances are that we really don't care about the words that are coming out of each others' mouths. It seems like a waste of time to me.
Two other things were conspiring against me last night -- the tail end of my cold (I have a truly scary gasping, snotty cough (sorry) that totally belies the fact that the cold is almost gone), and my blindness. Of course my cough was absolutely fine until the speaker stepped up to the podium. I ended up ducking into a nearby restroom in the middle of it and hoping that nobody could hear me. The topic was singularly unexciting -- Culinary Tourism (not exactly new or cutting edge, but this is a staid group anyway) -- and left me wondering why we're everyone is so concerned about getting people to visit their locales. Maybe your locale sucks and you should just move somewhere else. OK, I was in a sour mood. All the economic development "tell your story" chirping gets to me at times.
I got a sympathy card from Lola's vet yesterday. I need to write them a note. I'm still missing that girl all the time, every day. I'm going to take our walk over the weekend and try to get some pictures. The day after she died, I walked to the big pond and noticed that there are all kinds of trenches near the shore that her feet made when she was walking along the shore in the water. It just seemed so wrong that her footprints survived but she didn't. There was a grouping of three sunken tennis balls, too. Lola wasn't big on objects, but she did love her tennis balls. She could never figure out that they sank when she chewed a hole in them and would stick her whole face in the water to try to find them. It was really quite hilarious. I've got a bunch of tennis balls left since I had just bought her a bag when we got back from Hatteras. I'm thinking about cutting some in half for bird feeders for "her" tree.
Things are busy/not busy at work. There's a lot of stuff to do -- I worked on our web page redesign this morning -- but the office is very quiet. That's a good thing, but does make me feel a little like I did when I was in the library and could go whole days without seeing anyone if I chose. Back then I was even toying with the idea of writing a short story about a Milton Waddams type who was planning to commit suicide at work by playing Russian Roulette at his desk. The twist is that nobody else in the office should realize what's going on until he "loses." How would a character like that feel sitting at his desk with a gun in his lap? How would he react when someone came in to talk to him? Etc. It would be an interesting story, I think.
Lunch soon. Then, more work.
Two other things were conspiring against me last night -- the tail end of my cold (I have a truly scary gasping, snotty cough (sorry) that totally belies the fact that the cold is almost gone), and my blindness. Of course my cough was absolutely fine until the speaker stepped up to the podium. I ended up ducking into a nearby restroom in the middle of it and hoping that nobody could hear me. The topic was singularly unexciting -- Culinary Tourism (not exactly new or cutting edge, but this is a staid group anyway) -- and left me wondering why we're everyone is so concerned about getting people to visit their locales. Maybe your locale sucks and you should just move somewhere else. OK, I was in a sour mood. All the economic development "tell your story" chirping gets to me at times.
I got a sympathy card from Lola's vet yesterday. I need to write them a note. I'm still missing that girl all the time, every day. I'm going to take our walk over the weekend and try to get some pictures. The day after she died, I walked to the big pond and noticed that there are all kinds of trenches near the shore that her feet made when she was walking along the shore in the water. It just seemed so wrong that her footprints survived but she didn't. There was a grouping of three sunken tennis balls, too. Lola wasn't big on objects, but she did love her tennis balls. She could never figure out that they sank when she chewed a hole in them and would stick her whole face in the water to try to find them. It was really quite hilarious. I've got a bunch of tennis balls left since I had just bought her a bag when we got back from Hatteras. I'm thinking about cutting some in half for bird feeders for "her" tree.
Things are busy/not busy at work. There's a lot of stuff to do -- I worked on our web page redesign this morning -- but the office is very quiet. That's a good thing, but does make me feel a little like I did when I was in the library and could go whole days without seeing anyone if I chose. Back then I was even toying with the idea of writing a short story about a Milton Waddams type who was planning to commit suicide at work by playing Russian Roulette at his desk. The twist is that nobody else in the office should realize what's going on until he "loses." How would a character like that feel sitting at his desk with a gun in his lap? How would he react when someone came in to talk to him? Etc. It would be an interesting story, I think.
Lunch soon. Then, more work.