into the breach

once upon a time i had a reputation for being a tad nervous before presentations. cj was warned about this the first time we did a joint gig. but generally speaking i've been able to keep a lid on things in recent years. if i didn't vomit and they didn't cry then i was usually happy. but today i am strangely frighened. in the not good way. in the "oh hell i am going to try so hard i am going to be ridiculous" way. and run over time. and irritate everyone. and get blacklisted by ed bureaucracies for the rest of my life. so it is seriously time to do some deep breathing, think of calm blue oceans and dream of tomorrrow when this weill all be over. and prepration for the next one, next week, can begin...

to frock or not to frock

one of the biggest challenges of conferences is finding the right 'look' for day and night. at women's studies conferences, ffor instance, the standard dress is jeans (or shorts--and on some really unlucky days, jumpsuits) threadbare sneakers and overlarge t-shirts. and for day time the sneakers are optional. at Women in Leadership confererences, anything with linen is generally a good move, and gold plaited sandals usually score well. embroidered shirts also a winner there. but this one is a bit of a mix of teachers, bureaucrats, librarians, politicians, health workers and over paid famous authors. so it may just be anything goes, or it might be a feather boa zone. or a taffetta and layers event. so i am trying to decide whether to go with the little black cocktail frock (well, not that little really given that i am hardly claudia schiffer) or to settle for the black pants and fancy shirt number. safer but boring. but safer. and easier to iron

learning curve

well i have had a great big learning curve of a day. first of all i got to hear the minister speak. he is very very very smooth. he is to smooth as worms are to silk. very very close. entirely credible. even got a bit teary at one point (him not me; although i probably was too but for entirely diffferent reasons realted, mostly, to the chronic incapacities of the labour party...) anyway. i can see why he is so powerful. then i heard a bunch of other smooth people speak. then i heard mem fox teach us how to 'read aloud with feeling'. and then i ran back up to my room and added about 55 extra slides to my own presentation having negotiated to be allowed to update my originally submitted ppt. then i took about 52 out. thhen i put back about 4. so now it is longer but not stupid. well not totally. this is a crowd that seems to like stats: so now i have added in graphs and tables and have even rehearsed a throw away (throw up?) line about the 95% confidence limit of the statistics cited (and i am 100% confident i'll never actually be able to say that). and now i have rehearsed my jokes, brushed up my stats, polished up my most engaging examples and just want to go to bed!!!!

but i have to swan off and do dinner with a crowd of 200 people withhin which i know exactly no one. well almost. still i am sure it will be fun and if nothing else it will give me some ideas on what people liked about today. and then i can add another 4400 slides after the coffee tonight.

just like the movies....

hey i was just looking about for something with the phone number of this place on, and found a sheaf of hotel note paper and on this paper i can see the imprint of a previous guests notes...how freaky! so now i can phone someone called lucy and another one called bella and possibly do something that involves attracting a huge market, if i can just deciper the last line. or maybe i'd better just leave that to my imagination....

but why

okay so i'm a bit fuzzy and everything but i just don't get this: there's a lot of ads on TV at the moment for the new Viva paper towel whose defining characteristic is apparantly that it 'works well' even when wet. so you can wet it to clean a messy kitchen. but the thing is, WHY would you want to? what's wrong with a dish cloth??

time warp

so it turns out that the reason there isn't anything interesting on TV (aka House, which i know is terribly irritiating but which i enjoy for some peculiar reason-possibly because it is still new for me to be able to watch medical shows without breaking out into cold sweats remembering too many nights in hospitals with chubbies) anyway: the reason it isn't on is because it is in fact tuesday and not wednesday. it is a good thing i worked this out now rather than a couple of days time when i turned up for my plane a day early or something equally daft. anyway: i am making do with the 4400 which is kinda silly but at least travels quickly ffrom scene to scene. i am making that my goal for tomorrow (no, sorry, thursday...god this is hard): travel quickly from point to point and don't let them thinki too much. and my other goal is not to make any jokes about the government. boy do i set ambitious goals...

made it!

well thanks to an early flight and a bit of luck i am here, in sight, in a three room palace (well not exactly a palace, but roomy anyway) and trying to remember what on earth i am supposed to be talking about on thursday. thank god i've got a day to 'scope' (whatever that is) and i'll probably spend tonight watching TV and eating wildly expensive mini bar snacks....oh well...doesn't look like there's much on TV so might be forced to--work?? no surely i can do better than that??? ah yes. a book. a book and a bath. this is becoming a tradition!

inch by inch

well i managed to cross a couple of things of the frighteningly long to do list to day so that is good. and i even managed to avoid having a couple of other things added in their place. unfortunately the two really BIG things are still in ffront of me, but somehow they don't seem quite so scarey today. so it's all good. not as good as a vacation in vanuatu but pretty good nevertheless.