Friday, June 22, 2007

Random Access Memory

1. There are no fleas, well, almost none in Utah, which is apparently just the proper degrees of being too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter to allow the critters a toe hold on survival. Fleas that manage to get in are known to have originated in Nevada or perhaps Colorado.

2. Most times, when one of those warning lights goes on in the dashboard, the earnest sales rep explained to me, it is not serious, a shaky fuse, perhaps, or a an intermittent short circuit. But for you, the service manager explained, we have made an exception. A thousand-dollar exception.

3. The President of a small liberal arts university introduced me to the director of graduate studies as "the man who told me not to quit my daytime job," then invited me to breakfast. We'll see where that leads.

4. Waiting in the lobby of The Fess Parker Doubletree Inn for the staff meeting of the faculty of a writers' conference to begin, casually sipping from a bad double latte, I heard two women discussing in apparent seriousness the number of times each had gone forth into the world having shaved the same leg twice, thinking she had shaved each leg once. It was a surreal conversation to have unintentionally eavesdropped on. Unfortunately the surreal nature of their observations ended there.

5. For the second time in less than a month, a complete stranger claimed to have seen me on television, then accused me of false modesty when I disavowed having been on television at any time this century.

6. All the workshop leaders of the writers' conference hate the opening ceremony in which we are given the opportunity to describe briefly the thrust of our workshop. All workshop leaders except one, who invariably drones on well beyond the ninety seconds we have been allotted.

The master of ceremonies actually interrupted the one exception after he'd gone on for nearly five minutes, then, when it was his turn to describe his own workshop took seven minutes, told two bad jokes, and fell off his chair.

7. There were five dogs in attendance at the opening ceremony to the writers' conference. One was my Sally.

8. Persons who are otherwise critical to the point of conservatism about their individual traits, particularly their writing ability, are loathe to admit they are poor drivers, have no sense of humor, or are not skillful lovemakers.

1 comment:

lettuce said...

Sally - now thats a good name.

:o)