almost 3/5 done

P told me this morning that one of the interns told her if she had known how much work all this was going to be she honestly would have said "No." This of course was not news to me, who actually DID say "No" but was overruled by P & A. Oh well. This week will pass... tho up to a few hours ago I was not so sure. Now that we're past the halfway point and two of the most stressful events are overwith w/o any major snafus I'm feeling considerably better even tho as soon as I go back to the conference center the probability is high that there will be plenty of weird details out of kilter to get me stressed again (along with the odd oh-so-dire need from various people around who seem incapable of doing much on their own - suffice to tell you that some of our speakers think I'm their personal assistant rather than assistant director of the conference at large - witness the one today who could not go to the front desk herself to look up a phone number of a local acquaintance in the phone book but sent me back twice with name variations since she couldn't believe that neither I nor the front desk staff could find the person in the book or online... Alas I'm sure I should find a way to be more gracious [tho outwardly I seem so already - in fact it's chiefly the suppression of rancor that adds to my stress - being a Mean-or-at-least-quite-Unhappy Person but having constantly to don the Nice-and/or-Thrilled-to-be-a-part-of-all-this Person hat is quite exhausting]).

Oh well... with only 2.3 days left (tonight is our latest-running evening session) I don't think the stress will feel quite as icky as it did, say, Monday morning or even this morning. Tomorrow is our trip to the Capitol so once our charter buses arrive on time and we are all aboard and we get thru all our carefully timed stuff there in 5 different venues with about 30 other people involved and catered luncheon with envoys from the governor's office and busing or walking throughout the day... Hmmm... I'm starting to think that flask would have been quite a good idea...

Everything in perspective... the father of one of our interns died Monday night so that was properly humbling in making me take all my own crap a bit less seriously... tho, of course, not as much as it probably should have done.