Sweet and Sarcastic: SPIEL!

Hi Friend!

I am not 100% sure what the week before last. I definitely hung out with puppies and watched Gilmore Girls and did laundry and avoided some key things that I had to do. So basically, a typical October week. I also went over to Becky’s and watched her bake cookies, so I did see two humans, at least.

I tried to vent about being of a certain age with a built-in muscle memory for two spaces after a period, and how I’ll never change. And the only response I got from Becky was, “This angst is 16 years over-due, and it took an entire year for me to beat that habit” which just reinforced how I won’t be torturing myself for a year for something that is truly ridiculous. And then I ate a cookie and moved on with my life.

I tried looking at the last 3 years of this time in case there was a nugget of interesting stuff to share, but it sure does look like I hung out with puppies, photographed those puppies for Fall cards and packed every year, so let’s just move on to the part where I took my suitcase to a new location.

Last week, I went to Essen/Spiel in Germany for the first time. New job, new convention. 7 whole days of travel and show to try to stay super lovely and professional. I started the trip by wrapping up a bunch of presents for my boss to open on her birthday. After the first flight, we’re waiting in the customs line in Amsterdam (which we would end up waiting in for over 2 hours). I left my boss to go to the bathroom, and when I got back she had an appalled look on her face. I immediately became defensive, b/c dude, I was SO speedy, but then she pointed next to her, to the man on the ground and said, "He just passed out, but I've seen that look before and I'm pretty sure he just died." And then it was 5 min before someone in the crowd started doing CPR and 5 more minutes before emergency folks ran over, erected a tent, and then... who knows. That put a real damper on the rest of the day, not going to lie. Also, we watched hundreds of people panic because they weren’t allowing people to skip the line until they were ten min from their departure time, also fun. All the while, I was pleasant and professional.

The best part of the show was walking around, playing games and then having my boss buy me anything I wanted. I’m not sure it gets better than that. We also met lots of designers and had crepes and I got to see Kathi! And I read the first 4 books of the ACOTAR series. And then we had a flight delay and cancellation which lead to a 12-hour delay in getting home and having to run to our gates, become super dehydrated and hungry and tired and I still managed to be pleasant and professional!