So. Portus

It was wonderful. It was distinctly peculiar to be there without delivering a paper. But that gave me a little more freedom to attend panels myself. The programming was multi-track, so I wasn't able to see everything that caught my eye, but on the other hand, that meant that there was usually something interesting going on. One panel (on Severus Snape) was a disappointment. It turns out that none of the four panelists (all fans rather than primarily academics) had done much preliminary thinking or planning about the topic at all. They simply said, "Well! Let's talk about Snape." And then made no attempt to moderate the audience at all. I left after a half an hour of frustration.

I caught two of three of the panels that Barb Purdom (psychic_serpent) held, as well as Catherine Schaff-Stump's (awelkin) panel on Neville Longbottom. Professor Ed Kern continues to please, with interesting panels on postmodernism, and the King's Cross chapter in Deathly Hallows (the two of us got into a fun and lively debate as to whether the Potter books demonstrated Tolkien's concept of eucatastrophe or not; he thought they didn't, whereas I thought they did). I had a great talk with him at the small HPEF reception, where we discussed the influence, among other things, of Jane Austen's work on Rowling's writing. It is always a pleasure to speak with Ed.

It was so much fun to see so many of the people I've been corresponding with online for years. Met all the snapecast crew and sat through the live snapecast podcast. I spent time with flourish, and got really excited discussing the preliminary planning of a new RPG. And I finally (FINALLY!) got to meet moony! We met first on line when her Snape was tormenting my Neville when we were on nocturne_alley together.

We enjoyed Jim Dale's presentations hugely; he was SOOO delightful and funny. We heard his Saturday morning program, and then we were also at the special dessert event--I have pictures of him sitting next to the girls, which I hope to post later. We also attended the luncheon with Monique Trotter. Wish we could have attended the one with Dr. Henry Jenkins, but couldn't swing that one financially.

I caught a few of the acoustic wizard rock sets, but the highlight of the weekend for me was the ball. Oliver Boyd and the Remembralls was first up, and then Ministry of Magic. They were just as great live as I hoped they would be, and we had a great time being dancing fools. My hips are still hurting, days later, I danced so hard. So many people said to me afterwards, "OMG Peg, you were right about wizard rock! It's fabulous!" Which felt really good.

Both girls had a wonderful time, too. They bought stuff in the huckster's room, played Quidditch (and unfortunately, both as Seekers on opposite teams, managed to crash each other when chasing the snitch; Delia was icing her leg for a 1/2 hour afterwards). They made mosaics at the Smashing Times art event; they danced to wizard rock; they brainstormed RPG with flourish; they sang along to "The Mysterious Ticking Noise" with moony; they volunteered at the Common Room, they were everywhere. So many people were so kind and friendly to them (after reading about them for years in my journal) that they felt very welcomed.

bekkio and the rest of the Portus team, you did a wonderful job. Excellent conference.

It was really tough to come home. (And Rob, true to form, practically gave me a heart attack on each leg of the trip. On the trip out, he was so late from his interview that I feared we'd miss the plane. When we were ready to leave to come home, he realized at the last minute that his driver's license was missing, so we feared that we wouldn't be allowed on the plane. He finally found it in a frantic search through the sofa cushions in our hotel room.)

If you saw us (or have pictures!) leave a comment. Wasn't it fun?

Reason #10,423 my husband drives me crazy

My cell phone, as I have mentioned, is on the fritz. Again. The cell phone account is through Rob's name, and T-Mobile will not talk to me if I call about it. They refuse to talk to anyone but Rob.

And Rob is phobic about using the telephone. He would rather have bamboo slivers driven under his fingernails than use the telephone. I don't know why. It makes absolutely no sense.

I hate being without the cell phone. But despite the fact that I have been berating him for days to make this call to T-Mobile to ask what we need to do to get me a working telephone again, he Will. Not. Make. The. Call.

He. Will. Not.

I left the cell phone with him yesterday so he'd have it with him to troubleshoot when he calls T-Mobile. I called him about it yesterday. I called him about it this morning. I called again this afternoon, and I just about started crying with frustration when he told me, yet again, that he has not yet made the call.

"What's your damn problem? Just make the frickin' call."

"Tell me what the symptoms are again."

I almost screamed in frustration. "I told you what the symptoms are. I've been telling you for days. The screen goes blank, and the battery won't hold a charge. The phone. Does. Not. Work."

"Well, I've been trying to charge it again. I want to see if it will take a charge before I call."

I made throttling motions with my hands. "I told you. I've been charging it, but it won't hold a charge. Call T-Mobile."

"Well, we have a spare battery around here, somewhere, don't we? I should find it before I call them."

I know it will take Rob days to find that spare battery, which is lost somewhere in the morass of papers that is his office. His happy excuse to not have to call T-Mobile: "I'm looking for the battery! I can't call until I find it!" My unconscious throttling hand motions increased in tempo and urgency. "What good will that do, when the screen goes blank anyway when it's plugged into the wall and fully charged? Nothing's going to do a damn bit of good UNTIL YOU CALL T-MOBILE."

"But I--" and then the phone went dead. I'm not sure if this was a strategic hang up on Rob's part, to avoid my increasingly shrill haranguing, or whether our home phone number went dead because the internet went down again (we use Vonage, an Internet-based provider). Which the internet keeps doing. And Rob keeps putting up with it because he won't call Comcast. Because that would involve using a telephone.

Tell me something your spouse/partner/dearly beloved does that is totally irrational and stupid that drives you bug-fuck crazy.

On the way home

It was hot and humid when I left work, close to ninety. And the wind was gusty, in the wrong direction, and then I realized that my tires were low, so it was really taking a lot of effort to move the bike. And I just wasn't in the mood. I'll take the light rail, I decided. So I crossed the tracks and swooped into the rail station at Cedar-Riverside--and then braked abruptly at the sight in front of me.

A man was lying stretched out on the ground, his head about six inches from the edge of the platform, having a seizure.

I hopped off the bike and rushed over, wondering why on earth none of the half dozen or so onlookers were helping him. They were, I realized later--two of them were on their cell phones, calling 911, but no one was approaching him. It also occurred to me later that most of the onlookers were Somali women, and I believe they have a religious taboo against touching any man to whom they are not related. I wonder, but do not know, whether that taboo can overlooked in a medical emergency.

My first thought was to check him for a medical alert ID bracelet, and sure enough, I discovered, when I extracted his arm (with a little difficulty) from underneath his body, there was a bracelet with his name and his condition: epilepsy. By that time, one of the women had reached and was talking with the 911 operator, and the operator asked the caller to give the phone to me, since I was assessing his condition. The operator told me not to try to restrain him or to attempt to put anything in his mouth (I knew that, but I'll bet a lot of people confronted with an epileptic episode wouldn't). She transferred me to an EMT, who talked to me some more, as I held the man's hand. After about five minutes the seizure stopped, although he was quite dazed for awhile afterwards. A light rail train pulled into the station, and the conductor was obviously concerned, and so didn't pull the train out. The crossing gate kept clanging, and the train kept sounding bells, and then the conductor came on the station loudspeaker to let the passengers disembarking know that there was a medical situation going on. It was all but impossible to hear the EMT on the phone over all the noise.

But eventually the confusion was sorted out and we waited for the ambulance to arrive. I continued to hold the man's hand, mopping up the saliva that he had drooled with a wad of Kleenex that a passerby offered to me. I talked to him as reassuringly as I could, addressing him by his name, telling him that my name was Peg, that help was on the way. I held up his fallen hat over his head so that the shadow fell across his face, until another bystander took it and held it up for me. He still wasn't able to verbalize by the time the paramedics arrived, but they pulled him aside and set him on a bench, dismissing the gurney back to the ambulance. He had some bleeding from scraped elbows and knees .

I thought about it as I got on the train with my bike to go home (and so great was my distraction that I realized, several stops later, that for the first time ever I had forgotten to pay for my ride. Sorry, Metro Transit. I still had a wad of unused Kleenex in my hand.). The whole incident, of course, was startling for the passersby, although personally I think I acquitted myself pretty well. I thought about all the milling around that people were doing, the startled squawks: Omigod! It's a medical emergency! But I suppose for him, it might be just routine--so routine that maybe it happens every month. Or every week. Or even several times a week. Maybe he came around to find me holding his hand, smiling down at him, and all he could think (once his brain started working again) was "Oh, great, they had to go call the ambulance again. Geez."

But I kept thinking about how close he was to the tracks. His head was a mere six inches from the edge of the platform as he convulsed there in front of me. What if he had fallen on the tracks themselves? I don't think I could have lifted a convulsing man back to the platform by myself. What if it hadn't been a five minute wait before the train came; what if it had been pulling into the station when he fell?

Well, it didn't happen this time. I did what I could. That is what it must be like to live with epilepsy--to know that your life, at each moment, might be endangered if you fall in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and your salvation may depend on the split second decisions of frightened strangers.

A curious reliance on grace, is it not?