some people call him the cat

On the surface, today was a bad day, but I'm actually in quite a good mood. I overslept and so had to rush to get downtown this morning; instead of going to the office as usual, I had to go to a hotel to do a site visit for the big sales conference that I'm planning for my department in August. I'm not in charge of rooms, transportation, or meals, which is awesome -- but I am in charge of content, so I needed to be there to say how rooms should be set up for different activities, etc.

It was a completely different experience, which I thought was kind of exciting; I've never done bona fide event planning before, so it was interesting to meet the hotel staff, security, the vendor we're using for the production, etc. Also, a big mental health conference was going on in the space while we toured it, so I saw some people whom I would politically-incorrectly label as "crazies". All in all, it was a good time, and since I'm planning it with Natasha, we had fun debriefing on the drive down to the south bay.

Once at the office, I worked for another 4.5 hours, with a brief break to talk to my parents. I had an absolutely awful headache for reasons unknown, but it slowly subsided, and was erased altogether when I had dinner with Adit, John, and Jessica. We spent two hours sitting in one of the cafes at work, which was quite fun; despite his insanity, I'm looking forward to moving in with Adit. And, since some people call him "the cat", and since all roommate pairs need a nickname, it's likely that our combined name will be "swampcat". Isn't it catchy?

After dinner, I sat in my car for a few minutes texting and taking care of some tings. Then, I whipped out of my parking space -- but the amount of time I spent texting meant that I forgot that I was parked next to a curb. My RAV4 is big enough to handle going over a curb -- but the unfortunate part is that the curb was protecting a tree. Luckily, the tree was fairly small, but I now have a lovely dent over the left front wheel well.

When I scraped my car against the garage wall last year, I wanted to throw up. When this happened, I basically shrugged it off; and, luckily, when I got home and used a wet cloth to wipe it down, I discovered that what looked like scratches was just dirt, and luckily I didn't break the headlamp. The dent is still there, of course, and it cracked the paint, but since the car's already been damaged once, I didn't take this one quite so badly (although I did feel stupid, of course).

I think the fundamental problem is that I drive my SUV like a sportscar. It has a V6 engine and plenty of speed, so it's possible to accelerate and drive aggressively -- but my downfall is that it doesn't have the turning radius of a sportscar even if it has great acceleration. So, when I speed out of a parking space, and the turn can't keep up with the speed, problems arise.

Now I really need to get it fixed, though -- one scrape is one thing, but two scrapes on different sides of the car make me look like a maniac. And while I'm not eager to spend the money on fixing a scrape and a dent and repainting multiple body panels, the bigger issue is that I just don't have time to take care of it, what with the romance conference, my upcoming move, the sales conference I'm planning, the time I want to spend in Iowa in September, and a likely trip to India right after that. Sigh. Thinking about all of it just exhausts me, so I suppose I should go to bed!