The event happened last Tuesday and the last four days were simply hectic. Saturday morning answering emails from everyone, Saturday afternoon and evening putting the last posters up and leaving fliers in different places, arrive at my houseboat so tired that when I noticed the electricity was gone I just went straight to bed. Sunday morning sort out electricity, visit my ex in prison, then go pick my shopping trolley to give it to the Buddhist Engineer, who was organizing the event with me and bringing all the necessary things, spend the rest of the afternoon and evening with him finalizing the details of the event, then go home and answer emails, finishing after 1 o'clock. Monday morning go to work, then get a roll for dinner, then call Local Celeb to confirm he was coming, then go to the Transport Group meeting, go home and answer last-minute emails, and finish the program because some speakers were late in giving me their bios, finish around 2 o'clock. Tuesday morning Local Celeb calls to say he isn't coming, send text to Charming Guy asking him to come in place of Local Celeb, then go to work in the morning, take afternoon off, go to my houseboat to finalise details, take a nap because I'm about to drop dead from exhaustion, call Charming Guy and convince him to come in spite of all the things he has to do, call Green Journalist (one of the speakers) and explain that I need her to do both the last short talks and convince her that's OK, send a couple of final emails, put all the presentations together in one and find that a couple of them can't be done, put on the clothes I chose for this, have a wardrobe malfunction, hold everything together with a safety pin, take the things I think will be needed for the event, dash off to the place of the event, buy roll and orange juice on the way, as soon as I arrive be told I need to bring the projector from my workplace, bring projector, explain to all the helpers what they can do, explain to all the speakers what they don't know yet, be at the event, walk around during the chatting session afterwards to see who isn't joining the tables, grab my roll at the end of the event because I'm starving and I hadn't had a chance to eat it yet, speak with all the people that want to say goodbye, make sure that we've taken away everything, take a lot of things to my workplace to be picked the next day.
All in all, it was worth it. At the end, lots of people told me it was good. About a third filled in the forms to volunteer. Now it's only a matter of seeing if I screw up in the aftermath...
Then, to relax from it all, roads made a secondary theme this week. We talked about them in the Transport Group, then on Thursday I went to a presentation by the Council about improving bus stops to make them more accessible. Looking at roads, seemingly endless stretches of asphalt, was a quiet way of spending time, in comparison to the crazy non-stop-hold-it-all-together of the last few days.
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