Suzy Says

…all my troubles wouldn’t go away…

I had a really excellent day.

Got up for an early conference call which my boss had scheduled without a) checking with me first; 2) telling me what it was about. About ten minutes after I got up and was in the process of making bad coffee (why am I so bad at it after so many years of practice? Why?) he called me to say he couldn’t join the call, but here’s what it’s about. Fifteen minutes later, he called again to say we’d have to reschedule it. Oh, and could I cover for him at a conference in SF today? He couldn’t remember when he was supposed to be there (but it’s after 11 so if I got there at 10:30 it should be OK) or who he’s supposed to see there, so I get to go to the St Francis and ask for whoever is running whatever conference is on, and then tell them I’m replacing the person who is supposed to be meeting with someone whose name I don’t actually know.

All this after rush hour on BART. Yippee.

When I got to the hotel, I discovered it was the wrong hotel. Called my boss, got the right place. Went there. By this time, both my heels were blistered from the new shoes I had bought for work but foolishly hadn’t broken in before trailing all over town in them. Tried not to visibly limp to the registration desk, where they asked me if I was taking Boss’ place on the panel that afternoon and whether I brought a PowerPoint with me. Excused myself to call Boss. The naughty words were hanging invisibly over my head as I dialed. He told me he couldn’t do it and didn’t have anything he could email me so I could replace him. I explained this to the people running the show, and they were nice about it, but dang. Can’t imagine why he didn’t mention this minor fact when he asked me to replace him at the meeting.

Turns out it wasn’t one guy, it was four. And it was at noon so I had an hour and a half to kill. Went to Walgreen’s, got moleskin for my heels (hope it’s not made of real moles), went back to the hotel and managed to apply moleskin to both heels in a teeny-tiny cubicle in the ladies’ room (how does Superman change his clothes in a phone booth? How?), struggled back into evil, unforgiving nylons (who invented those horrible things anyway?), put on the shoes that caused the whole thing in the first place, and went to have breakfast.

Oddly, the meetings took place in one of the hotel rooms, which the person before me had locked, so I had to go back downstairs in my Little Mermaid shoes (the original version, in which it feels like she’s walking on knives with every step) and get the concierge to open it again. Spent the next hour doing weird speed dating meetings (15 mins each!) and explaining why Boss wasn’t there.

Good times.