three days down, three to go

Everything went fine today. In addition to my main duties, I also was called upon to do a how-to mini seminar on news releases. I'd prepared a two-page handout. When Marilyn was at my home on Monday, one of her errands was to go to Staples and make 100 copies. The thought ran through my head that I needed to tell Marilyn which page went on the front and which page went on the back... until I had a moment of clarity... uh DUH.

So the speaker before me was clearly a graduate of "how to be a corporate speaker" school. She had the fancy Power Point, she'd stroll away from the podium to show how relaxed she is, how she could speak off the microphone, etc. Near the end, she literally told everyone to get a pen and paper and she dictated 20 phrases to them. It was endless. I don't know what that was about unless there's some corporate study that says if the audience writes it down, they'll remember it more. Then she ended it by asking the audience questions and she called on people and handed out gift cards for the right answer. Wow, I felt inadequate.

Then it was my turn with my cheap two-sided b&w handout, but, of course, my ego is such that I enjoyed my own presentation more. It went well, and at the end I said, "I don't have gift cards so all I can do is give you a round of applause for being so smart" and I started the applause and everyone laughed and joined in so it ended on a happy note.

Work went well. I am basically working with two other women with a constant stream of people coming in and interrupting our trying to do our work. Today someone came in and asked me if I knew the lyrics to the Davy Crockett TV theme song since she needed it for a presentation since one of the lines is "Born on a mountaintop in Tennessee..." I googled the lyrics for her, and then that fricking song wouldn't leave my mind.

The two other women I'm working with -- and me -- we are so aware that we want to snap at any moment, but we all really genuinely like each other so we don't want to take our unhappiness out on each other so we just keep eating and drinking and muttering and whispering mean things about other people to keep our spirits up. God bless catering. We even had decent sandwiches delivered for lunch. I had chicken salad.

On the way back to my room, I was tempted to try a different route, but common sense prevailed. I reminded myself to go with the known route, and I did. You can't trust these elevators to connect to the right level, etc.

So that's it for now. More later. No gift cards, though.