Blotch

Today I was forced to attend a seminar. Actually, 'forced' is a strong word. I 'had' to go, against my base desires and will to remain coherent throughout the middle of the day. It was the final mandatory day for my certification: Assessments 1 & 2. It's not that the presenter was bad; he was really good, in fact. It also wasn't that the information was poor; it was very insightful. It's more that I simply did not want to sit in a room full of over-opinionated people for 8 hours.

The highlight was when I was called on to come to the front of the conference room and discuss a topic the presenter thought I knew a lot about (fooled him!), only to realize 3 hours later (after the seminar was over) that I had black ink all over the tip of my nose. The tricky thing about it is that I love, and I do mean L-O-V-E these certain ballpoint pens ... but they ooze. And by 'ooze,' I mean EXPLODE (slight exaggeration) all over my hands when I write anything more than a single check with them. So, the pen sprung a leak on my hand, and I'm sure I rubbed my nose (frequently with allergies here in the summer), which then implanted said ink on said nose. Lovely.

This brings up something that has always perplexed me: the phenomenon that no one tells you when something is on your face. The same applies to whales in the sea (hangers in the nostril region) and junk in the grill (food in the teeth). I mean, what's so bad about just telling someone? Do they think it would be more embarrassing to bring it to your attention than to let you sit in front of them like a total fool, basking in your unruliness? I digress ...

Ah, Hurricane Edwardo (right?) was supposed to hit the Austin area this afternoon, but never did. I am a little saddened by this. It's not that I wanted a monsoon or anything, but some rain might have been nice. It did open up a little and give us a taste on my drive home around 4. That was nice and the smell was delicious ... like clean, fresh, wet dirt. I think that is what I've decided rain smells like. Maybe the reason I am so enamored by it flashes back to my days of being a very little girl and frolicking about in my grandparents' yard, digging for roly-polies to put in one of my grandmother's Mason Jars (holes poked in the top and grass in the bottom, of course).

The only other morsel of information I have to share today is that I pre-ordered J.K. Rowling's new book, which comes out in early December, on Amazon the other day. I have absolutely NO CLUE what it is about, but I have to say ... I'll gladly purchase anything that woman puts out. Nothing will EVER be like HP, but that's okay. I'm *still* holding out for the promised encyclopedia, only because I'm a total loser/nerd like that. What can you do?