Monday, January 18, 2010

I'm Back

I got home at about eleven last night after a seven hour flight and sixty dollar cab ride. Clever Wife met me with hugs and chocolate cake. Then I slept for eleven hours. One more cup of coffee, and I'll feel normal (though I should aspire for something better than that).

The flights were safe and on time. On the way, I read most of the way (Anthony Grafton's Defenders of the Text) and took a short nap over North Dakota (Minnesota and Montana residents can insert their own joke here). On the first leg of the trip back I read Sydney Perkowitz's Hollywood Science. The book was an easy enough read that I expected to finish it on the second leg. Instead I sat next to a man who was so interesting that we talked non-stop the entire trip. Fortunately for her, the young woman sharing the row with us was listening to her Ipod so she didn't have to put up with two geezers bonding.

Every session at the conference was interesting and I got something of use out every single one. I'll post separately about some of the sessions. The socializing and networking went better than expected. I'm naturally rather shy, though I can be a crashing bore when I come out of my shell. I think I managed to stay in the middle most of the time. I must have done something right, I just received a friend request in Facebook.

I had one technical glitch. I took our spare cellphone and skipped taking the camera thinking I could use the phone and it would be one less thing to carry around. Then I discovered that the camera in the spare phone doesn't have a flash. There will be no pictures except those others send me (which probably won't be of me at my best).

The biggest problems for me were medication related. I've reached the age where I have multiple prescriptions. I'm bit of a physical mess. between us, Clever Wife and I have something like eleven prescriptions. I had at least one unpleasant reaction each day, each one worse that the previous. The first day, I went to a session on graphic tools and found my eyes so dry that I couldn't focus (naturally the eye drops were back at the hotel). On day two, I had an attack of tremors during my presentation (I'll post the presentation later today or tomorrow). The last day, when I should have been running around trying to make my best impression for some last minute networking, I had an attack of tremors so bad that I couldn't eat with a fork at lunch. If there hadn't been finger food, I would have gone hungry. It was only at the airport that I realized I had taken a second dose of the morning pills the night before and was going through violent withdrawal from the night pills. When I popped a night pill, the tremors were gone in twenty minutes. At home, I have avoided this by using a daily pill box. I understood that TSA regulations required me to carry all of my pills in the pharmacy labeled bottles, so I left the pill box at home. Let's call that one a learning experience.

Now, I have to check my Luddite paper notes from the conference and try to put everything I learned into action. I need to get over my Twitter aversion and join the noise. I started tinkering on a more specifically blog a while back; I need to finish it and get it online. I need to send letters to the people I chatted with (networking, you know). I need to get an agent for the book. I need to work on my elevator speech. I need to do the laundry from the trip. I need to get a new sport's jacket because the old one is getting really ratty even though I've only been wearing it for nine years. I need to get some groceries and fix Clever Wife a nice dinner. I need to make it up to the cats. Blah blah blah. And so on.

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