I didn't get as much done yesterday as I'd have liked; couldn't face working when I arrived in Salt Lake, so I went shopping instead. I needed white sandals, because the ones I had last year were pretty dead by the end of summer, and because it's supposed to be 80 or so in Florida right now. It's in the mid-60's here, which is actually rather nice. If I weren't presenting...I dunno. I'm tired. There's a little part of me that would be tempted to just stay here, rest a bit, and then try to slam through as much of my backlog of work as possible. But that would be dumb. I'll just go.
I've done most of the research for the e-zine paper at this point; I have a lovely database full of info (Jed keeps sending me things to incorporate, but at some point I'm just going to have to stop adding things, at least for now). I'm planning to actually write up the paper once I get to the con (or possibly on the plane; I'm travelling for about six hours tomorrow). What I really ought to do today is take screen shots for all the magazines, so that I can hook up my laptop to a projector during the presentation; that's a lot cheaper than making transparencies of all of them, and I think graphics really help focus people's attention. The only problem is that I'm not sure they'll have the cord necessary to hook up a Powerbook to the projector; I have one, but it's big and heavy. I'd rather not pack it, but I suppose I will, if I have room in my bags.
I'd still like to revise my story before I hand it in to workshop tonight. Technically I have two hours when I can do that today, but I also need to stop at the bank, deposit checks, withdraw cash, stop at the library, check out history books, and probably some other random errands, which will probably eat up an hour. Ah well; if there's time, there's time. If not, I'll live. I hate doing things half-assed, though. Maybe if I let my students go a little early today, then I can run some of those errands between classes.
I'm still having some trouble coping with things in the larger picture: My finances are not good, and they don't look to be getting better soon. I desperately need to find some time to exercise in this schedule -- all this travelling is horrible for my body; I end up eating a lot of crap in airports -- I ate at Burger King twice in the last week; yuck. Since Kev is travelling too (he's speaking at Yale this week), between our two schedules we haven't talked in weeks. I hate that. I'm just still feeling overwhelmed, I guess. But the short term stuff looks manageable. I suppose I should be grateful for that.
8:50. Feeling a bit better. I'm mostly packed; I have one load of laundry to do and then I'll be able to pack everything up. I'm going to watch Voyager while the laundry's going, and pay bills, and water plants. And then I'll revise my story (due to the school server being down, I wasn't able to get to it on campus) and e-mail it to Kelly, who'll kindly distribute it to the class for me. Basically, almost everything is, I think, under control -- except that because the server was down, I couldn't look up or check out the library books I needed. I've not had any luck trying to find them in bookstores, so I'm feeling a bit doomed on that one. But I'm not meeting with the professor until Thursday of next week, so I suspect Wednesday is just going to be a big history reading day. I can live with that.
If I think too hard about certain things, I get really upset. But if I don't think about them, I'm fine -- I can even laugh and have a good time. For now, I'll settle for not thinking.