02.12.07
Snow, flooding, rock slides, laryngitis
I gave a talk last week at Web Directions North that I didn’t get to rehearse as much as I’d wanted due to snow, flooding, a rock slide, and laryngitis.
Snow: This might not sound like a biggie, but the Annual Green College Ski Trip happened on Feb 3 and 4. I had been ignoring my husband for days on end as I worked on my presentation, and I couldn’t really spend the domestic credits that it would take to skip the trip.
Flood: While Jim, I, and 26 other residents were on the ski trip, one of my neighbor’s sprinklers failed and gushed water into his room for 40 minutes before the firefighters and residents got it shut off. (Yes, we collectively are looking into the emergency procedures around here.) While our room ultimately had no water damage, nobody knew if they other sprinklers were also going to go off or not, or if the water would leak into our room.
Resident Mika McKinnon, who impresses me more and more as time goes on, basically took charge and organized posses of people to go into neighboring rooms (via the we’ll-let-you-back-into-your-room-if-you-get-locked-out master key holders), unplug all of our electrical appliances, and take laptop computers out and to hold them in a dry place.
Note that they had zero legal right to do this. If I wanted to, I could probably sue them up one side and down the other for breaking and entering, and trespass to chattels if not outright theft. And yet, they had absolutely every moral right to do so. As Mika’s father is a lawyer, I presume that she realized that she could get in legal trouble for doing so, yet did so anyway. I greatly admire her for that, and I am very grateful to her and all the others for rescuing our laptops.
Rock slides: On Sunday, the day we were supposed to come back from the ski trip, a rock slide closed the only road back to home for eight hours. This meant that we got back late. Not only did that mean that I didn’t get Sunday evening to rehearse, but tapping lightly on the door of the guy who had our laptops failed to rouse him. It took another day to get our laptops back.
Laryngitis: On Tuesday evening, my co-presenter emailed me to tell me that he had lost his voice. It looked like maybe I would have to give his presentation and mine… and while I knew about some of his stuff, there were some detailed technical issues that I didn’t actually know anything about. So I tried to cram knowledge about his area.
Fortunately, his voice came back by Thursday, so I didn’t have to give his talk.
My talk went okay. I got some trustworthy feedback that at least some people liked it, but it wasn’t nearly as polished and professional as I am capable of. Next time.
