Meetings Ad Nauseum

Patience can't be acquired overnight. It is just like building up a muscle. Every day you need to work on it.
Eknath Easwaran


I am jet-lagged. I am exhausted. Needless to say, my patience is at all-time lows. So, of course, the very thing I needed was to be stuck in all-day meetings for an entire week. I don't do well in all-day meetings at any time. I get antsy unless there are frequent breaks, and in this set of meetings, the breaks are few, far between, and appallingly short.

Here's a list of things other than being in the seminar that I'd rather be doing. In no particular order:

1) Riding the London Eye with a cute guy
What can I say, I love that giant Ferris wheel. It would make a perfect date thing...except for the possible fact that you might wind up in car with 18 teenagers. Now if you could contrive to get a car with only the guy you were out with, that would be insanely romantic. I bet that doesn't happen, though.

2) Reading a book
Any book. Any way to escape. Hard to be polite and read when it's a lecture hall of fewer than 20. Hmm....

3) Making bread
I need to start my sourdough again, and I'm intrigued by the brown bread I had in Ireland. I have to find a recipe.

4) Sleeping
Ah, to be home in my own little bed again....

5) Playing the piano
Can you say, "Out of practice?"

6) Photographing onigawara in Kyoto
Or photographing anything in Kyoto, for that matter. Kyoto is a painfully beautiful place. I don't think there's a bad camera angle in the whole place...with the possible exception of any shot that catches that giant ultramodern glass monstrosity of a train station....

7) Deadheading roses

8) Go walking in the woods
No purpose, no destination, just endless greenness. I think the lush verdancy would erase some of the frustration.

9) Listening to blues in Clarksdale
I STILL haven't gotten to Clarksdale and the Blues Museum. That was supposed to be a long roadtrip this summer, but I guess I'll have to put it off again. Maybe I can go this fall and spend a weekend.

10) Dancing with a cute guy
Surely, no explanation of this one is needed. I'm in a crazy, dancing mood. I think it's because I've been pent up in a cannibal chair listening to the buzz-saw drone of a lecture all day. Seat dancing in the car on the long drive home just isn't the same.

11) Sleeping

Can you see any recurring themes? ;) Just a bit of pointless silliness with which I distracted myself during the day. This has to be, hands down, my worst entry ever. That's what happens when you get a non-juried publication. Oh well, you know what they say...you get what you pay for....