the universe is in us

Despite the misery of getting there, the conference was worth attending. Thanks to D's help I got the bus I needed, I wandered in the direction I thought I was supposed to go from the bus stop and immediately was spotted by someone calling my name; it was one of two event organizers who'd recognize me. That felt very lucky.

My keynote speech was the second of three, which meant I didn't have to deal with all the technical failures of the first one and I wasn't the last thing in the day so I could decide after little sleep and long days in hot rooms and trains that I could leave early. My travel home was much smoother (if sweatier) and being home at dinnertime instead of bedtime did wonders for me.

The conference only had a couple dozen in-person attendees but apparently seven hundred online. I forgot the whole introductory section I had worked so hard on, but it went fine without it. There was still good discussion in the room during the Q&A bit, people are saying nice things on LinkedIn, and I was able to make friends with the first keynote speaker over lunch and she's a very useful work contact for me.

Yesterday at work was rough. I slept through my alarm -- something I never do -- and when I turned on my laptop an hour late I already had missed a call from my manager who'd had to route around me not being available when his manager tagged me to do something. So that was stressful but I was able to complete the task in a reasonably timely fashion, and while it is not my best work I think it ended up being one of those things that we didn't end up needing anyway. It was a slow day at work otherwise.

Unusually for a Thursday, there was no Doof so D and I decided to go to a queer social that we usually miss because it's every Thursday. He'd also invited a person new to the local discord and it was great to meet them too. We stayed out late (for us: he had to do his last-minute before-midnight duolingo lesson while we were waiting at the bus stop to go home!) and had a great time.

Today, the editing process my report has to go through was finished unexpectedly early, so I had to decide whether to accept or reject thousands of track changes. The editing was a weird process last time which we tried to streamline this time because we're up against a tight deadline. I tried to write to the style guide (now that I've laid eyes on it! I didn't know there was one before), but the style guide sucks and the editor I have to work with isn't good at using it. He also thinks all his own opinions and foibles are "just general grammar" and twice lately he mentioned "not using the passive voice" as if that was a) desirable or b) well understood by people who claim to care about it. I cannot cope with someone who doesn't know the difference between what's "correct" by even the widest interpretation of that word, what's a matter of register, and what's stylistics.

After work I had two startling and unsettling things happen in the space of about 15 minutes, the first of which I won't talk about here but the second of which is that I'd forgotten about my mom mentioning that some family friends were traveling to England on vacation and "are going to be somewhere near you." Of course I asked where and of course she didn't remember. She wanted to know if she should tell T to call me when they got here, "...if their phones even work there..." FFS. She should know their phones won't work here because hers and my dad's phones never work when they are here but of course she hadn't thought about it that deeply. She just is a boomer so would call. Well we're millennials so we can email!

I forgot immediately about this of course, in the sea of parental nonsense. T is an anglophile and a history teacher so tends to come to London and Canterbury and whatnot with school trips of teenagers. At least one other time, before covid, we vaguely arranged to meet up when she was here on a vacation but she was in London then and I think it was around Christmas so the trains were all fucked up and I was too poor to go to London on short notice anyway.

My mom might think they're "close to me" when they're in Ireland or something so I wasn't worried about it. But it turns out they are close to me! D and I now have plans to go see them on Sunday!

This does bring up the awkward point of how, if at all, I'll hide my life from them. My parents exhibit untold levels of oblivousness but surely other people might think my beard and voice and everything are surprising enough to be remarked upon when they get home!

I made the plan like normal but am not sure how to approach it now.