dispatch from embassy row hilton, washington, dc

I almost missed my flight this morning. As alluded to in my last post, I was up all night last night, in part because of massive computer problems and in part because of some massive annoyances going on with some aspects of my job (not to be further elaborated here). Anyway, I did get a little more than an hours sleep from about 8:30 to 9:45, with then seemingly about an hour and a half to get my stuff together and make the 25-minute drive to the airport in time for my noon flight.

Two major forces conspired against me being on time:

1. As it turned out, the computer problems that I was having that were part of the reason that I was up all night last night appear to be the result of a computer virus, still unresolved. As a result of this, I had trouble transporting files to my laptop or printing any of my directions, etc., vis-a-vis this conference. I ended up copying stuff down by hand and just throwing random electronic equipment into my bag, hoping that out of it I could reconstruct what I needed. So far as I can tell, I don't seem to have left behind anything essential.

2. Tuesday night, I had bought Official Pants of Resignation to wear to this workshop. Pants of Resignation being, of course, the pants you have procrastinated buying earlier because you do not want to seem resigned that a recent weight gain is anything more than ephemeral. Anyway, I go to pack the Pants of Resignation on Wednesday morning and discover that the person who rang them up for me forgot to remove the little exploding ink tag. After a couple of gingerly efforts to see if I could take the exploding tag off myself, I realized I was going to have to make a run for the mall (I do have other pants that fit, but they all were in one way or another not acceptable for a presentation to a Bureau of Labor Statistics Workshop). The mall being in exactly the opposite direction from the current location of the RV as the airport.

I made it in time because (1) my peppy new Corolla really does have some speed when one chooses to floor it and (2) I beat out this soccer mom in an SUV for a proximate parking spot at the airport. Well, that and the fact that my flight turned out to be a fifteen minutes delayed.