Ehnnnn....

Must...post...something...

I'm catching up on Bloglines and trying not to be exhausted. This was a whirlwind week for sure, and I've still got the whole long weekend ahead of me. Travis gets in tonight around 11:30 and I. Cannot. WAIT. I have slept alone for three nights and spent four days without him, and while I have had company while here and enjoyed all the quality time with everyone, I'm ready to have my husband back! I can't imagine having a job that required a lot of travel; we've never spent this much time apart, really, and it's been tough! (I know, I'm a girl.)

For those who asked what my Fourteen Awesome Things About Me were: I dunno. I had my laptop with me for the whole conference (I'm that generation, you know, born with a joystick in my hands, so taking notes to me involves a keyboard and a screen and the tap-tap-tapping that probably drove a legion of pen-and-paper types NUTS throughout the conference) and I typed the list on my notes pages, and of course after reading them to the entire freaking room, I deleted them.

While it was moderately embarassing to rattle off how fabulous I was, as the Head-Head Boss Lady put it, "hey, they know you now, and being known is always a good thing." So every time I got on the elevator with a flock of Agency Types, and they said, "hey, you're that girl!" I'd just exclaim, "Yep! I love me!!" and smile.

So basically, yeah, I don't remember. I do know that there were things I admire about myself (toot, toot!) that I left off the list and later I psychoanalyzed myself to death about. ("Do I really think that 'fun' and 'silly' are more important than 'honest', 'loyal', and 'loving'??") I remember there were a few similes, which felt like cheating when I read them aloud...there was fun, funny, AND fun-loving; there was also silly; talented and skilled; smart and clever. I remember being a little nervous about reading them aloud because I was afraid that my co-workers would be thinking, "Is she kidding? Clever, my ass!" And thank God, I had thought "pretty" but didn't write it, just in case. I'm not ashamed to admit that I think I'm attractive, and I think every woman should be able to say she sees the beauty in herself, but I don't really need to announce to a room of my peers that I'm pretty. I call it self-confidence, but to a lot of people, there's a fine line between self-confident and snotty bitch, ya know?

I left "slammin' dancer" off the list, too, and it's probably a good thing - last night was the banquet and "entertainment". Oh Hannah....was that a treat - ever seen a room full of Federal Types get jiggy with it? Our Head-Head Boss Lady requested a song and got us all on the dance floor (PS: Head-Head Boss Lady is tons of fun and really awesome and we are all big fans of hers). The DJ, sensing that he was dealing with a room full of slow-burners, started off with the standard party tunes and threw in a couple of test-the-waters tunes, like 50 Cent and Justin Timberlake, but I had a hard time staying excited when he played "Electric Slide", that new song that's kind of the Electric Slide where you have to jump and cha-cha and all that crap, AND - pause for effect - the freaking "Macarena". (I had thought Congress had done something about that song. Wasn't there legislation on that?? A constitutional amendment? Something???) In any event, I did dance plenty, and I'm not sure whether I humiliated myself or not - but I do know that in a moment of insanity, I gave up watching the fumbling and suffering and reminded everyone how to properly execute the Macarena.

(It has not escaped my attention that I have retained that but have not retained other things I have learned since learning the Macarena, and I wish we had a choice in those matters, because if someone had ASKED me whether I'd prefer to recall the pythagorean theorem or Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, or the Macarena, I can tell you which one I would have NOT picked.)

This afternoon was Nordstrom (cute Michael Kors pants on sale) and So Much Yarn (Addi Turbo needles on sale) and now back to the room to sit here for six hours and wait for Travis. I know it's sad, but he's picking up the rental car, and I could walk around the city some more in the meantime, but I'm almost certain that if I do any more walking, my shins will fall off.

I swear to God I'm going to upload photos, I mean it. I just haven't yet because my brain is fried (see also: all these fractured thoughts and parentheticals) and I don't think I could handle the simple act of cropping and resizing.

Did I mention that I finished one of the Fiesta Boomerang socks? Hell if I can remember - well, I did. It's nice. I'll get a picture of that too.

I'm finishing off with my favourite observed moment of the day, from Nordstrom. Two girls, maybe 11 and 7 (but I'm terrible at guessing ages, so they could have been 6 and 3, or 22 and 17) were walking with their mother past the lingerie department, and the younger one pulled a bra off the rack and waved it tauntingly at her older sister and neener-neenered, "You're gonna need one of these soon!" I've never heard such wonderfully snarky use of the phrase "shut UP" in my whole life as came from the older girl. I hope to recreate her tone and inflection someday - it was awe-inspiring.