Despite high-quality support from the in-laws, last and this week’s coincidence of the convening of the *ahem* conference on *ahem* and abandonment by my wife (allegedly she’s coming home on Friday, but seeing is believing) has proved more fatiguing than expected. At my cello lesson yesterday evening, my teacher couldn’t believe it when I told him how little sleep I was getting by on. I told him it was okay, I didn’t really feel like sleeping anyway and it was partly research for a story I’m writing about a guy with sleeping problems. And he told me about how tired he would sometimes get on tour (so tired you’d have to drink a cup of coffee before a concert!) and I told him about sitting at the conference yesterday, taking coherent notes, and simultaneously dreaming: it dawned on me after a couple minutes that these were not normal background thoughts I was having, but actual dreams.
So I went and got a cup of coffee.
What can I tell you about the conference? Style-wise, the Africans are once again setting the pace. The shoes on the female delegates! The hats on the men! Wonderful. And several of the women are still doing this thing with their hair, wearing it in long, thin braids that are natural-colored at the top, and get lighter towards the ends, say the last six to eight inches, said light ends of braids being worn open as well, so these black/brown braids gradually turn into loose brown/blonde hair. It looks really cool, I might try it myself.
Also, in general, the delegates — male and female — are about 25% hotter this time than the ones at the last convention I attended. I fell asleep only once, next to one of my bosses unfortunately, but fortunately he fell asleep too.
Anyway. No one is hanging out in the press gallery, which means I can’t either, without looking like the last fish in an aquarium because although quiet, comfortable and climate-controlled, said gallery is a sort of big glass box hanging up in one corner of the ceiling of the conference room, and a lone person sleeping up there would be too conspicuous.
So, yeah. Lots of work getting done at the conference.
No one has written asking what progress I’m making on the quitting smoking. This morning I filled the tank of my car and when I was paying I bought some Altoids, some Fisherman’s Friends, some mints and several packs of gum. The cashier gave me a look that I figured required explanation, so I said, “quitting smoking is expensive.” She said she’d tried to quit once, she knew. I said, that’s nothing, I’ve quit several times. She said customers had recommended those fakey plastic cigarette things. I said I’d give them a try if the mints didn’t work.
They weren’t working earlier this week. Yesterday I was like, chewing gum and smoking at the same time. I got so disgusted I threw the pack of smokes into the garbage can and said, That’s it, no more cigarettes.
Five minutes later, of course, colleague walks in, sees me rooting through my garbage and is all, “lose something?”
“Somehow my cigarettes fell into the garbage, imagine that. Gotta light?”
