So yesterday was our first day in the new office.

Let's see, where to start? The fax machines weren't hooked up, and even if they were, nobody knows the new numbers, there are no shelves in the cubicles, only one little set of drawers, so no-one has anywhere to put anything, and there wasn't a single garbage can on the entire floor. Including in the bathrooms.

Also, for some unknown reason, neither New Chick or I have a computer with the new system on it, so we couldn't do a smitch of work! Now, I don't mind that for a day or two, but any longer than that you can't really finesse on the phone anymore.

I wonder what will happen today?

Then after work I was On Display.

You see, Pamela O'Connell of the Mining Company had been asked to speak about personal home pages to a New York group called Technochix and she invited four local journalists to be on the panel, The Journalist Who Will Hopefully Start Writing Again Soon, Terry Baker, Steve Brownlee, and the late great me.

I was very relieved that Tracing would be there, because I hate meeting strangers so much, but Pamela was very welcoming (and much prettier than that picture on her column, and Steve and Terry were really nice too, so it was okay fairly quickly.

It was weird being up there like a zoo animal with the audience saying "You do what? Why on earth...?" but usually it was pretty cool. And I got a few laughs. I'm always happiest when I get my laughs. Of course, they also laughed when I said I was shy, which I wasn't crazy about, but I guess I'm either going to have to start acting shyer or stop saying that, because nobody believes me anymore.

The funniest bit was realizing what an ultimately perfect, and completely co-incidental, demographic mix we were: black woman in her thirties, white woman in her thirties, foreign-born Asian woman in her twenties, and a man!

What do these four unlikely people have in common...?

Anyway, it was great fun, and I'll bet the farm that someone in the audience will start an on-line journal within a week. It's like the ebola virus, baby, passed on by casual contact.

It made me think, though. The funny thing about turning one's life into a story is the obligations that one feels.

Not to write often or well, though I certainly do the former and attempt the latter, but the obligation to have the story have a happy ending. I really feel that people are rooting for me to live happily ever after, and I certainly wouldn't mind it if I did, but because a life is less a story than a series of stories, the fact that there will be no ending as such sort of makes that obligation somewhat unlikely.

But I feel it nonetheless...

Recently seen on a t-shirt:

Jesus is coming...
Look busy!

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Last Updated Sat 9 May 13:06:09 1998