On Thursday night, after struggling with pagination, which kept changing even though I had saved it, I begged the husband of a friend to come and give me a hand. One would think pagination would be simple. This guy, who teaches people how to do it, had a struggle, but we finally finished at 11:30 p.m. So the next day (Friday), I went to look it over one last time before work -- only to find that the pagination had messed up again. Overnight. Many of the changes that I had saved on this document had kept undoing themselves. (How can boldface disappear in only one place? How can it disappear at all?) It was as if it had been cursed.
So in the end, I had screwed up. I hadn't realized that I hadn't made all of the changes. (At this point, I was donating over five hours of work. I'm ignoring the fact that when I asked questions the first time, I didn't get a response for hours and my window of opportunity for working on the job had passed.) But I was frantic because ...
On Friday, I was scheduled to be a delegate to the Massachusetts Democratic Convention in Worcester. 6,000 delegates (and 2,000 others also attended) were to pick the Democratic candidates for Governor, Lt. Governor, Attorney General, and Treasurer. The doors opened at 4:00 p.m. and you could pick up your bag and lanyard (and a bottle of water, it turns out) and wait a bit for the uncontested runners to speak.
I checked my email when I got to the DCU in Worcester and I had received an email from the very unhappy client at 4:45 p.m. Since I had sent him the job at 7:30 a.m., I had thought that he might have responded sooner.
Anyway, I got that feeling in the pit of my stomach: I have failed. I didn't even care that he threatened to not pay me -- I didn't like the fact that I had failed. And I was frantic because after Friday night, I was going to be completely unavailable until 8:00 p.m. on Saturday. Of course, the client stressed how critically he needed it within 24 hours (that would make it Saturday). I just couldn't deal with it then. I had gone to the DCU to get some issues cleared up because the number one thing stressed during orientation had been, "Don't be late to check in with a teller on Saturday or you cannot vote." I wasn't going to be denied my vote after having taken vacation time, driven 50 miles, and ... blah, blah, blah. So I needed to get the lay of the land and I wanted the full convention experience. (Very few people attend on Friday, but instead they party. I was being a very good girl.)
I pulled into the parking garage ($5 all day) and, as I had been told with my delegate instructions, I had my handicapped placard ready.
"How close to the entrance can I get?" I asked the parking attendant.
"I don't know."
"You don't know?"
"You still have to walk outside," he said as he put the ticket on my dashboard.
"Is there any other garage that connects directly to the DCU?" (Is it unreasonable to think that there is a connecting tunnel?)
"You want to leave? This isn't just for you -- it's for everybody."
After thanking him for being so sweet (insert sarcastic font here), I left and had to go up to level 3. There was a handicapped space next to the elevator, luckily. Also, luckily, there was a sign at the elevator to TAKE YOUR TICKET with you. Normally, you pay before you leave; however, the ticket did get me $2.50 off my bill at Mezcal.
You have to cross the street diagonally to get to the DCU and there were so many campaign workers holding signs, it was difficult to get to the curb to wait for the light. (Did I mention it was raining buckets?)
At that point, I still didn't know where I would be sitting and I was worried about too many stairs. I was very glad to have my cane because those long corridor walks, which are easy for most people, are very painful for me.
Finally, I get in and walk the long corridor and I go to the table staffed with fresh bright-faced young people that has a sign "Access Issues." Or something like that. I can see headphones and wheelchairs, and maybe a couple of walkers. So I say, "I have trouble climbing stairs and I don't know where I'll be sitting. Is there an elevator?"
"Do you need a wheelchair?"
"No, I can walk. Is there an elevator?"
"So you don't want a wheelchair?" Her friend says, "She needs an elevator."
"How do I find out where I'm assigned to sit?"
"You need to go to guest services."
I go to guest services and remember my other question. "Will you allow me to bring a carry on bag?" I figure I can put my wallet, sweater, Kindle, camera, and net book in it and have an easier time pulling the case. I ask the cleanly scrubbed young man at the table.
"I don't know. I'd have to ask someone like my supervisor."
"Could you do that?"
"No, she's not here. Oh, wait. She's over there." He points in the distance.
"Could you go over there and ask her because I have some mobility issues."
Understand that at this point, I'm an early bird and the six (yes, count 'em, six) people at that table are doing nothing. They are waiting for the non-credentialed people in order to register them. The supervisor shows up and she says, "I think so, but I can't say definitely. But I don't really think they would turn you away."
Toward the end of the evening, I called Emily and suggested that she cab over and meet me when the convention session was over and we would eat a bite at Mezcal before the after party hosted by the Democratic Party. Mezcal is across the street from the DCU. The food was wonderful and we had shredded short rib stuffed masa corn cakes, spicy mole negro sauce, crumbled bleu cheese, cilantro crema along with pork sliders. Oh, yes, and the best guacamole ever.
We left the party fairly early to go back to Emily's house and fix what needed to be done to the dissertation, which was to insert some pages and re-do the pagination. I am so lucky that Emily loves doing that kind of stuff although I was a bit nonplussed to realize that she has a much newer version of MS Word and I had no clue how to use it.
We went to bed at 1:30 a.m. It still wasn't done. I had to be up at 7:00 a.m. Emily said she would work on it some more. We couldn't get the pagination right.
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Saturday arrived way too quickly, but I shower and dress and wait until the last minute to wake Emily. She has promised to drop me off and she puts a jacket over her jammies and we fly out the door. She even stopped at Starbucks to get me coffee and a muffin. (Both are greatly overrated, imho.) Emily promised to get the document to him come hell or high water. And she does, including her phone number in an email if he has any questions. [He responded with the equivalent of, 'I'll get back to you.' He hasn't so far (it's Sunday) and at this point I have given up caring,]
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From the day before, I know how to get into the DCU, but I still don't know where I'll be sitting and I'm worried about too many stairs. I am very glad to have my cane because these long corridor walks, which are easy for most people, are very painful for me.
However, not wanting to be stopped with a too large bag (they had said no back packs, no duffel bags), I have brought my net book bag which I made and the convention bag that they had given me the night before. Both are heavy. I had put my wallet in one.
At that point, I run into Bonnie McCracken who's pushing an old friend of mine in a sit down walker and she tells me we are on the ground floor just through those doors. Great! Well, sort of. It's another long, long corridor, and first you hit the campaign/cause tables and then the snack area. I sat and drank some coffee and ate my muffin. They had said you can't bring in food, but I figured I could always hit them with my cane.
At this point, I'm over-tired and anxious. So I sit down on an end chair thinking that I'll just compose myself. And a woman comes and says, "You are in my seat." I said, "You mean the seat with nobody in it?" She says, "You are in my seat. I was sitting there." I note that she has a cane too and I'm envisioning a close quarter fencing match.
However, I have my limits and the third time she said, "That's my seat," and she started poking and pushing me, I said, "I can understand English. Are these empty seats also occupied?" And she says no so I move in. It's then that I realize that the whole freaking row of seats is attached. Anytime anyone from the middle wants to get out, we all have to get up. Now add two bags, one of which doesn't have a zipper (I have to fix that!!), and you have a really aggravating situation. At one point*, the net book bag fell behind me onto the floor and a woman was standing on my phone! I had to whack her in the ankle to get her to move her foot. Thanks to the Otter that Emily had ordered for me, the phone was unscathed.
I noticed that Lynne Weintraub was about 6 seats down from me. Unable to move, I have to play telephone poke to get her attention and she tells me to save the empty seat next to me. I do and it turns out I was saving the seat for Rep. Ellen Story. And that's o.k., because she is a delight to talk to.
O.k., it's true that this picture is from the Kanegasaki dinner, but Ellen always looks this good. (My hair is way shorter now)
Imagine my embarrassment when Ellen tells me the woman on the end is Judy Brooks whom I have known for years. I hadn't recognized Judy because she has lost so much weight. So I introduced myself and apologized by bringing her some puffed chips some time later. We chatted amiably as the long day wore on.
Finally, everyone was there and we had all checked in with our teller. Every section had its own teller and the teller had a list of voting delegates and alternates. Then the speeches began; each was preceded by someone introducing the candidate and then a video.
Above is during the speechifying. See the jumbotron on the right? There was one in the center of the ceiling, but it gave me a pain in the neck to look up at it.
There were five candidates for governor and a couple for each of the other offices.
Below, the voting is about to begin. People are a bit restless, since by then, it's close to 3:00 p.m.
Alice Swift center, bottom and Lynne W. right behind her.
* Then the voting began. There is only one way to describe voting. It was a cluster fuck. Big time. The teller stood in one spot, luckily behind me (and I was in the last row of the Hampshire, Franklin, Worcester section) and everyone had to go to her. Can you say "crush of people"? All of us expected that our names were alphabetical. Nope. So right after the b's she called me. It was pandemonium, but nobody could move. (Thus, when the woman had stepped on my phone, she couldn't move her foot any place but up.)
Aforementioned CF (above)
The Teller is on the far right in white shirt with a notebook.
Above, you can see the Teller who had to HEAR your 5 votes even though some people tried to give it to her written on a piece of paper. Then she repeated your vote so you were sure she got it right. It was almost impossible to hear anything except the din of the crowd.
The voting took forever. Really. What about the Electronic Tellers? They were practicing. It occurred to me (and I told everyone) that a cruise ship with thousands of passengers checks them off ship when they dock in Mexico and checks them back on board with a bar code on a plastic card. Why didn't the Dems put a bar code on our credentials? (Our $75 credentials, by the way, were a piece of card stock) The bar coded credential could be used for check in and voting. Some people said that was too easy.
After the voting, naturally, was counting. In order to get on the ballot, each candidate had to receive a minimum of 15% of the vote. The voting and counting took hours. Really. Finally, we were down to Grossman, Coakley, and Berwick for Governor. Luckily, no candidate wanted a second ballot and the Convention declared, by acclamation, that Grossman is the Democratic Party's endorsed candidate. There will still be the three on the ballot but Grossman got the most votes at the convention.
I am exhausted, but had promised Emily whatever she wanted for supper. Still in her jammies, she picks me up and we get WONDERFUL Italian take out of shrimp scampi, fried calimari appetizer, and eggplant parmesan. Mmmm mmmm good!
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It's Sunday! Emily was a tad tired and slept until 10:30 a.m. which is o.k. because I got to watch CBS Sunday Morning. I love that show. Then I watched the Phantom Gourmet and they suggested the Twisted Fork in Worcester for breakfast or dinner. By the time we got there, it was almost 1:00 p.m.
I had my favorite: Irish eggs benedict. His twist? He added mashed potatoes and spinach. Emily had bananas foster French toast. Really. It was very sweet with brown sugar and banana liquor.
After that it was back to Em's house where we "mowed" her "lawn" with a weed whacker. Her lawn is a triangle about 5 feet on a side. And we cut down a lot of bamboo. It's too bad she's not a panda bear because she would be set for food for life.
And now I'm home blogging to you. It occurs to me that I did not show you my plants (which I forgot to go look at while it's still light). So this pic is two weeks old. I think. I'm chronologically challenged.
There's still more to go in the garden, but that's later. Cheers, I'm off to watch Longmier at 10:00 p.m. on A&E.
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Monday Aftermath: Wrong night for Longmier. Client said he had to make changes and will keep me posted. Why?
Thanks again for a wonderful story. You have been busy. The food sounded great and made me hungry LOL.
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