Sandra Tayler's Blog, page 141

A Trio of Thoughts on a Sunday Afternoon

I have succeeded in rummaging through everyone's drawers and assembling a set of clothes that will look coordinated for a family photo tomorrow morning. The intelligent thing to do would have been to do the rummaging yesterday so that I could go shopping if necessary. But I was not ready to think about it yesterday. Instead we are loaning shirts to some family members and hoping that they will not retain the unpleasantness of loaned-shirt as the primary memory attached to the photo.

Patch...

Getting Moving Again When I have Stopped

This afternoon I found myself in The Waiting Place straight out of Dr. Seuss' book Oh The Places You'll Go! GenCon is finished and school has not yet begun. The space in between is long enough for me to get bored, but too short for me to begin new projects because I need to keep my brain clear for what is coming next. So I drifted around the house a bit aimlessly for a couple of hours. Then I realized I was not truly in The Waiting Place. I was in The Avoidance Place. I'm not sure how I...

Dinner, Driving, and the Impending School Year

I made dinner from raw ingredients and the kids did not like it. This is completely normal, except for the part where I made dinner from raw ingredients. Today provided enough space in my brain for me to notice the half dozen apples which had gone soft, but not yet rotten. I not only noticed the apples, but was able to formulate a plan for turning them into Sour Cream Apple Chicken over rice. I enjoyed it quite a lot once it was done. Getting started was hard though. My reserves of...

Reorientation

My front room has suitcases, some of which are newly emptied, some of which are half emptied, and some of which are filled with things belonging to my parents. My desk is covered with receipts, invoices, shipping labels, and post-it notes. Large mounds of color-sorted laundry block the walkway into the family room, waiting for their turn through the washing machine. Mail sits on my kitchen counter to tell me the details of my kids' school schedules. Then there are the children themselves, ...

Convention wrap up

The convention is over. The boxes are packed and hauled away for shipping and storage. Nothing went wrong. There were no disasters. I can feel myself unwinding, relaxing. This whole event has been a very stressful one for me. It was filled with things I knew I could do, but had never actually done. Most of them were small things, like calling for a cab. But small things add up and filled the weekend with variables rather than certainties. I spent most of the event riding an...

A day at the GenCon Booth

I stood in the booth for most of the 8 hours that the booth was open. This means I was saying the same things over and over again as I was pitching products to people who stopped to look. At first I stumbled over making the pitches, but it quickly developed into a patter that I could run through almost without thinking. This is good because as the fatigue grows, my higher brain functions begin to shut down.

Sometimes as I told people about the things we are selling, they would laugh and e...

Opening Day of GenCon

My job at this event is to be a facilitator. I run for packages, fetch food, shepherd kids, assure communication, and monitor the emotional states of those under my care. The kids weathered the first day really well. Link divided his time between the Lego giant inflatable pyramid and the electronic gaming room. Kiki was more eclectic and made friends with an artist who is exhibiting there. They each had a couple of tired spots, but for the most part they did not become over stimulated...

Disconnectivity

The Wifi network in my hotel is exceedingly annoying. It is almost ask-for-a-refund annoying. I am able to log in after a mere 5 to 20 minutes. Then it will work, randomly disconnect me, or connect only in random fits and starts. Fortunately my iPhone's 3G network is fully functional. This means I can still depend upon email for critical communications during the course of the convention. It was less annoying to thumb type this blog entry on my phone than it was to deal with the Wifi.

Addendu...

GenCon Setup

The exhibit hall is huge, but the space is far from empty. Crews were already working to set up multi-story displays, racks of shelves, and bigger-than-live statues. It is a sort of organized chaos made of boxes, cool gaming stuff, and large pallets of gear weaving through obstructed aisles via dollies and forklifts. The hall was also roastingly hot. We would have been sweating even without the physical exertion of shifting boxes of merchandise. Link was ready to melt. But we all kept h...

Arrival Indianapolis

Two plane rides and three airports, the only thing out of the ordinary was watching the kids react with wonder at travel details that Howard and I consider routine. That part was fun. I like it when my travel day is adventureless, because it is tiring enough all by itself.

The kids got their first experience of muggy weather. It rained this morning and then was hot this afternoon, the result was soupy. My desert born and bred children were a bit surprised to discover that hot could also ...