pet peeve #3

People who stand near the finish line of a race (marathon, 5K, 10K, 1 mile, whatever) and only cheer or clap for their loved one.  When I run in an event, I don't run to get my best time, but to finish, and when I finish, dammit, I want all of you in your warm coats and your travel coffee mugs standing on the sidelines to acknowledge that.  It is a crummy feeling to know I'm near the end and make eye contact with onlookers who glance over me when I'm not the person they're looking to cheer for.
Yesterday I ran my first 5K in probably about a year, and once I finished, I went back to the curb near the finish line and spent some time cheering and clapping for the runners.  People were shoulder to shoulder on both sides of the route, not even clapping until they saw their friend.  Lame.  LAME ASSES.  I hope all of them get their cars dented and/or their lunches stolen this week.
However, the event volunteers, the women's Golden Gophers basketball team, and random people on the bike paths passing us and meeting us as we ran were wonderful supporters.  A group of about 5 male cyclists cheered the women on (it was a women's running event) as they rode by, saying, "Great job, ladies!  Keep it up, you're awesome!  Doing great!"  That made me smile.  It's not hard to make someone's day, you know.
There was also an elderly woman with her fat pug on a leash, standing in the grass.  We passed her on the way down to the turnaround and she was still there when I was going back.  She didn't say anything that I heard, but she was smiling and would wave to the runners occasionally.  That also made me smile.

we're geniuses around here

I just had this conversation at work, with a man who used to work on the same team as me but moved to another department a couple of years ago.


He, looking at my name tag on my cube wall: "Did you change your name?"
Me, looking at my computer screen and typing: "Did I change...my name."
He:  "Yes.  I don't remember it being that."


I turned slowly to look at my name tag, thinking someone had messed with it and made it read Moron McWiggles or something.  As I turned, I said,


"No...did YOU change my name?"
"No.  I just didn't think that is what it is."
"What did you think it was?"
"I don't remember now.  But I did not think it was that."


I figured out he was talking about my last name, which has been the same for the past 29 years.  Always.


"Geez, and I thought our team's brains were fried tonight."  My team is all working late today.
"No, I just thought it was something else, but now I don't know what that is."
"It's always been that..."


As he started to leave, he said, "Well, at least it's short.  Five letters should be easy enough, right?"


Um..yeah.  Though apparently, it's not.
I wanted to ask him to pronounce my last name (I'm pretty sure he can't).  But I also want to be done working late and get out of here.

acupuncture #2

At my second appointment (Friday, three days after my first), I was laying in my recliner, waiting for K to see me, and a mother and her two boys came into the section in which I was seated.  Interesting.  I hadn't pictured non-adults getting acupuncture treatments.

The younger boy, Jon, was nervous.  He had a stuffed ladybug pillow clutched under one arm, and was incredibly fidgety.  He sat next to me and his brother, Paul sat across from me.  Their mom sat on the floor by Jon's chair.  I was curious to know what brought them here, but told myself to mind my own business.  I continued to lay with my eyes closed, trying to relax as much as possible until K was ready for me.

Jon was so nervous.  I don't blame him.  How in the world can having needles poked in your body AND LEFT THERE make sense to a seven-year-old?  I gathered from his frantic whispers with his mom that this was his first visit.  Paul seemed to know what he was doing, since he rolled up his sleeves and removed his shoes and socks while Mom rolled his jeans up past his knees.   Could be that Mom was a patient there and just knew what was expected, but maybe he had been there before, too.

Mom and Jon had whispered conversations wherein she tried to make him calm down (FYI, telling a 7-year-old to calm down doesn't work.  They don't have the self-control to make that happen.).  Jon had lots of questions.  He and Paul referred to the needles as "pins."  

Mom: "Do you want to go first or do you want Paul to go first?"

Jon:  "Paul!  He can go first!"

M:  "Shhh...ok."  (walks away for a second)

J:  "Paul!  YOU have to go first!  Ha ha ha ha ha!"

M:  "Shhh.  You have to calm down.  Just start relaxing."  Right.  Thanks for the magic words, Mom.

K was also their acupuncturist, and once my needles were in (again, about 12 total, same placements as the first time), I overheard snippets of her conversations with the boys, though I really tried not to listen.  Or mostly not to look like I was listening.  

Paul was a second- or third-grader, and did not appear to be at all nervous about acupuncture.  He may have been purposely taking it in stride for the benefit of his brother, though.  His pins were inserted relatively quickly, and then it was Jon's turn.

Jon had trouble containing his nerves to a whisper once K was at his chair.  She was wonderful at communicating with a scared kid, and made sure to talk with him mostly, rather than talking just to his mother about him.  She said they could use some kind of electromagnetic-pulse-giving device since it just pushed pin-like things against the skin rather than into it, and used an electric current, since Jon was so scared.  He liked that idea immediately.  Mom, however, was not as happy with that solution.

M:  "Jon, the pins will work better, though.  You won't have to have them for very long. I think we should do the pins."

After enough of her cajoling (nagging), Jon said, "FINE. The pins."

So much for K's attempts to ease him into the process.  Mother knows best.

K asked Jon, "How long have you had your headaches?"

Ooh, we're here for the same thing!  I wanted to tell him that and let him know about my same-day results, but it wasn't exactly the time for that, and I had a feeling that wouldn't be normal behavior.

J, in a very sad voice: "January eighth."

What?!  I couldn't keep my eyebrows from shooting up as I listened with my eyes closed.  Holy crap that is terrible.  That would be so miserable.

K:  "So that's when you started getting them? How often do you get them?"

J:  "No, it's just one.  ALL the time."

Oh wow.  Ouch.  Poor kid.

K:  "Every day?  And where does it hurt usually?  In the front, or by your neck?"

J:  "All over.  MY WHOLE HEAD."

Oh my.  I need to stop complaining.

Once they decided to go ahead with the pins, K talked to him a bit about them and where she would put them.  She calmed his fears about having them in his head, explaining that his head is where all the bad stuff is stuck and that's why it hurts all the time, so she wasn't going to put pins there.  She was going to put them in his hands and arms to draw the bad stuff down, away from his head.

While K and Mom were discussing something, Paul leaned forward a bit in his recliner and whispered:

P:  "Jon.  Jon.  You can do it!"

I couldn't help smiling a little bit.

As K inserted a couple needles, Jon asked how many he would have.

K:  "Well, I'm putting four in this arm..."

J:  "Four?  Four.  Mom, I can do four!  Only four?!"

K:  "Four here, then we're going to move around to your right arm and put four there, too..."

J:  "EIGHT?!?!"

Here, his voice raised to an alarming pitch and was not containable in whisper-form, apparently.  Not that I blame him.  He was being crazy amounts of brave, having his mom make him do the treatment when he had another less-pokey option, and then finding out that he will be stuck with twice as many pins as he had understood a second previously.  I had no problem at all with being in this section of the treatment area and dealing with this, really.  I wasn't going to fall asleep anyway, and this was interesting.

K assured him that he would only have pins in for a short time (ten minutes), and Mother reminded him that they were going to Toys R Us after they were done at the clinic.  They all agreed on where the clock's hands would be at the end of ten minutes, and K was gone to treat others.

A minute went by.  Mother sat in the chair opposite Jon, holding his book.

J:  "Mom.  Mom, hold Smiley."

I presume that Mom took the stuffed ladybug from Jon's lap and sat with it in her chair.

Twenty more seconds passed.

J:  "Mom, give Smiley lots of hugs.  He's scared."

M:  "Okay, shhh."  What a bitch.  Alright, I know that's a severe reaction, but she wasn't doing well at validating what her child full of nerves was saying to her during this entire visit.

I wondered if Jon would continue to have things to say, but he actually did stay quiet for most of the ten minutes, which I was hoping he'd be able to do for his own sake.  My previous session enforced for me the importance of making time to be in a quiet, comfortable space and relaxing.

My treatment was half an hour again.  I had gone in with a dull headache that I'd had off and on throughout the day.  Unfortunately, I didn't have the same results as after my first treatment.  I had that headache all weekend.  It dulled and strengthened at times, but never completely went away.  That was exhausting.

Thankfully, my next appointment was Monday after work, and I was hoping I'd feel better effects after that one.  This has been a very long post, though, so I'll be adding that later.

pet peeve #2

Double-wide baby strollers.

I don't care if you love your kids "exactly the same," just use a regular, one-seat-in-front-of-the-other stroller and make your kids trade off sitting in the front.  Your suburbanite-equal-love-for-all parenting takes up more room than you are allotted.  Unless you live in the middle of the desert.  Then you do whatever you want.
Or here's another option: space out your baby-making so one of your sweet cherubs can handle actually walking and just use a (gasp!) one-seat stroller.
I also don't care if you have twins or triplets.  Might as well teach them from the start that everything in life is not equal and they can't all be in the front at once.  Truth:  one of them has to make the most money someday.
I want you to love and care for your kids.  I also want you to not drive a child-care equivalent of an SUV on sidewalks and through malls and stores.

pet peeve #1

Getting a company-wide email at work and hearing people read it out loud. WE ALL GOT THE SAME MESSAGE. WE CAN ALL READ.

acupuncture #1

I get a lot of headaches, and when I say "a lot," I mean it.  "A lot" as in basically at least one every day for a month.  My boyfriend says it's been longer than a month, and maybe he's right.  I tend to play down the importance of the frequency of my headaches, largely because I don't want there to be something wrong with my brain so I pretend there's not.

Earlier this year I bought an online coupon for acupuncture.  It was a really good deal, and was the kick in the head I needed to finally try the treatment.  I had my first appointment a few days ago, and it was quite interesting.

My main goal is to get. rid. of. all. these. headaches.  I have lived too many days feeling like a Jetson (taking so many pills a day it’s as if I’m getting sustenance from them), and have wanted to try acupuncture, which has been approved by multiple health organizations that I’m too lazy to look up and link to as a headache treatment.

In preparation, I had to fill out a page of my health history and conditions, and another page of woman-specific health conditions.  Can you say “menses?”  Don’t.  I can’t stand that word.  It’s weird. 

Since traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) involves qi and the interconnectedness of the parts and organs in the body, some of the health condition questions were about my sleep schedule, pooping consistency (in all meanings of the word), appetite, various aches and pains, etcetera.  Basically, I had to let them know how my whole body has been doing.

My acupuncturist, K, was very informative.  I like learning new things, especially when I’m about to be poked with needles by a stranger.  I described my headaches and then she took my pulse(s).  Holding her middle three fingers on my inner wrist, she applied gentle pressure but would occasionally change which finger had the most pressure, as if I had a little wrist piano she was playing.  During this, she kept talking and asking questions (I want to know more about why she didn't have to stay quiet and count or something).  Then she switched to my other wrist.  While I was answering one of her questions, she interrupted me and asked if I have been feeling nauseous after eating, or have had little interest in eating lately.  Wow.  Yeah.  For a couple of weeks, I’d feel sick to my stomach after every meal.  It was distressing, and nothing I did to try to avoid the nausea helped, such as changing my diet, eating less, eating at different times of day, eating more frequently…nothing.  K replied that my spleen pulse was very irregular, which ties into the stomach and digestion, and that’s why she asked.  Neat.

Fast forward to the needles.  Now, I don’t mind needles, and I realize that many people are uncomfortable or have needle-phobias.  Here's the part where I describe the pokey part of my visit, so you may want to skip the next two paragraphs if you are sensitive to these things. I had a total of about 12 needles in me for 30 minutes.  Seven or eight in my arms/hands, one in a knee, and three in my feet.  I only felt one of them.  (K had said I should tell her if any of them was uncomfortable and she’d reposition it, but I didn’t realize it was twingeing until she had left.)  It wasn't bad, though; as long as I didn’t hold my arm in a certain awkward position, the needle was easy to ignore.  The idea is not to feel the needles.  They don’t go in deeply enough to draw blood, and are only the diameter of a couple hairs or something.

I leaned back in my recliner and shut my eyes, hoping to fall asleep to the ambient sounds/music coming out of the stereo in the corner.  Unfortunately whale songs don’t do it for me, apparently.  Yes, there were some whale songs playing with a piano in the background.  I didn’t realize how hippy-earthy it was until I concentrated, though.  Since I couldn’t sleep, I took some time to look at the needles sticking out of me.  It was only a little hard to get used to and become comfortable with seeing them attached to my skin.  I tested their staying power by gently wiggling my arms.  Then my nose itched so I had to move one arm to take care of that.  The needles were fine.  That made other parts of my face itch.  I had one needle in the top of my head, to promote relaxation.  That one made me slightly uneasy because I couldn’t see it, and I was worried that my long hair might get caught on the back of the chair for no good reason and pull the needle out, or I’d forget it was there and start practicing patting my head and rubbing my belly, thereby jamming the needle into my skull.  Thankfully, I was able to resist that.

That evening, I started getting ready for bed when I was tired, as is my norm.  When I looked at the clock, it was only 9:15p.  What?  Wow.  I’m NEVER tired at 9. And it’s hard for me to fall asleep at 11:30p or 12:30a, even if/when I am feeling tired.  K and I had talked about my issues falling and staying asleep, which she said made sense with the other things I had described.  She said that treating my headaches would likely help my sleeping issues, but I did not expect to feel same-day results. 

I slowed down my going-to-bed processes a bit when I realized how early it was, but I was in bed around 10 anyway.  I started a crossword puzzle, which I typically enjoy doing to unwind at the end of the day, but could not keep my eyes open.  When I shut my light off, it wasn’t even 10:30.  I was delighted, though thankfully not so excited about sleeping that my adrenaline kept me awake.

Appointment #2 is today.  I am excited for it. 

Even more good news:  since my appointment, I have had only one headache that I needed to take medication for.  Holla.

Encouragement

Well, here is a first in my life.  I have been "encouraged" to look for a new job.  By my boss.  


Wow, thanks, lady.


Apparently they can take only so much of my tardiness (including five minutes' worth), and two mistakes in a month is too high to tolerate now.


Granted, she and I had a meeting Monday wherein she asked me what I like to do. I answered generally first, then named things about my current position that I enjoy.  Perhaps I should have lied more.  
True, the things that feed my soul are nowhere to be found in my job.  True, she said it was obvious that I'm not happy here, and that chances are "we're" going to keep having problems if I don't enjoy my work.  True, I've been wanting a different job for, oh, more than a year.  I suppose now the fire under me is lit.


Positives: 

• my boss will "work with" me so that I can go to job interviews with little interruption in my work day, and make everything smooth with my teammates so they don't have to know what's going on.  (I think that last part is true.  I should probably check with her.)
• I finally have to do this.

Sigh.  It feels pretty ridiculous that I have gotten to be 29 years old before giving in to the fact that I just cannot effectively do a job long-term if I don't believe in what I'm doing.  Better late than never.  So here I go.


"There are many talented people who haven't fulfilled their dreams because they over thought it, or they were too cautious, and were unwilling to make the leap of faith."
-James Cameron


"All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous unpremeditated act without benefit of experience."
-Henry Miller

I dreamed I was in a sketch comedy stage show for schoolkids. The cast was roughly 30 people. In the sketch about invasions, my line, delivered in a ridiculously whiny voice, was, "But Rome never let us leave last time!"
I have no idea what that is about.
There were also animals for the circus sketch: I found three baby elephants wandering around and was overjoyed.
They were about the size of baby goats when I found them, but they could shrink even smaller to be the size of dimes. When they were that small, they were just images of elephants on round white erasers. This delighted me, since it meant I could carry them everywhere in my pocket! However, because I didn't understand what magic made the elephants able to do this, I wasn't sure that they wouldn't get squished or suffocate in my pocket. My solution was to tie the erasers together (as if they were marching trunk-to-tail) and carry the trio in my outstretched palm.
The trick to getting the calves to grow again was simple: love them.  When it was time to rehearse the animal skit, I laid the erasers in a line in the floor backstage. Kneeling down, I put my face close to the first eraser. I whispered loving affirmations to the tiny elephant while petting him and slowly he grew, with the others following.
This took place a few times during the course of rehearsals and the performance. I eventually tried paying as much attention to the second and third babies, since I noticed they didn't seem to be getting quite as large as they were when I found them.
The guilt of neglecting elephant calves is heart-shattering.
Somehow, yarrow plants also featured, with mythical alpaca-like animals who survived on them. They were too unpredictable to have in our stage show.

Again?!?!

Really, Facebook?  This didn't resonate with you, so you one-upped yourself?  

Now Facebook is suggesting I friend an ex's mom.  I don't know how fb even knows to do this, because I'm not friends with that ex on fb.  I don't even think he's active on fb, though I have no way of knowing for sure.  Either way, we have no friends in common.

What the crap.  How does technology know these things???  STOP IT, INTERWEBS.  You have proved your superiority.  Now get out of my head.

Like a Prayer for Sleep

Never again.  Never again will I take two Excedrin tablets and listen to Madonna's Like a Prayer before bed.

Apparently, I haven't treated many headaches with Excedrin lately.  Therefore, when I took some for a growing headache last night, the caffeine in the tablets was enough to make me toss and turn for hours.
And Madonna sang the entire time.  The. Entire. Time.  I tried reading.  I even tried singing How Much is That Doggy in the Window in my head.  I tried planning art projects.  All I could do was wait for the effects of the caffeine to subside enough to enable sleep.

Why would I listen to Madonna at bedtime?  I had wanted to compare her song to the new Coldplay single, Every Teardrop is a Waterfall.  I've heard it on the radio a bit lately, and it took me a few days to figure out what it reminded me of.  Yesterday when Coldplay came on when I was driving to work, I tried singing Madonna's song on top of it.  It worked pretty well, except I didn't know most of Like a Prayer's lyrics.  At that time.  Now I think I do.  It's a five-minute song, did you know that?  And after last night, I am starting to consider having this be my karaoke debut choice, if I ever gather the courage to perform karaoke.

stream of consciousness

In an effort to actually write something on this again, I am going to insert a stream-of-consciousness blog entry. 
Here goes:


I'm eating an orange that was purchased from Aldi on May 20.  Today is June 17.  The orange tastes only slightly garbage-y.  All in all, a satisfactory pretend lunch.  Does rotten fruit have the same vitamins in the same amounts as fresh fruit?
I don't think I ever call grown men "big guy."  Maybe I've called babies that, because they don't know what I'm saying and therefore don't have to either be offended or wonder if they should be.
I should re-paint my toenails.  Painting nails is more fun to say than polishing nails.
I'm not good at stream-of-consciousness exercises all the time because I still fix my grammar and spelling mistakes, and sometimes think, "is this interesting?"
It is ridiculous that the annoying lady at work insists she can't say the surname "Rujel."  Just because it is from a language/ethnicity other than one's own, it doesn't require knowledge of different letters.  I feel bad for the guy who sits across from me when the ladies around him make him say his own last name on conference calls.  Make some effort, old ladies.  He doesn't call you "those old ladies," does he?  No, he uses your names.  Because that is respectful and appropriate.
I am thankful that certain people I know are not teachers, or counselors, or in any kind of guidance position to young or particularly vulnerable people.  Annoying Work Lady, I'm referring to you.  And no, I don't use your name #1 to protect your identity from my scathing internet barbs and #2 because you don't know mine either and I bet you never try if you don't even try 'Rujel.'

And I think I'm spent on this exercise.  Pat on the back for effort.

My parents have iPhones.  This is a ridiculous turn of events.  Below is an actual email from my dad:

Thanks       How are you?    Love     Dad


And that was written at a computer on a full-size keyboard. Why the strange spacing?  I have no idea.  This man has a master's degree.  
I am half-dreading seeing what a touch screen keyboard does to his communication style.  For the longest time when he started texting, he would leave out all vowels.  I got the text below from him once:


"Hm ths wknd r cmg fr fd n fn?"


I replied:


"I have no idea what you are saying. What do you have against vowels?"


His response:


"Hams do it not working this weekend if you want to come for food n fun"


Right. Okay.

Open Letter to Facebook

Hey Facebook:
Stop suggesting that I make my exes my facebook friends.  If I wanted them to be my facebook friends, don't you think I would have done that already?  I don't actually need a reminder that they exist.  Thanks for trying to look out for me and my online popularity, though.
Seriously,
me

last night's dream

Last night's dream was some kind of photo shoot involving beans and a soccer ball.
I believe the idea was to make it look like the beans (which were almost lima beans, but slightly smaller and not green) were playing soccer.  The soccer ball was regulation size for humans, though, so the set-up included lots of trick wires and some fishing line.  I remember that there were a couple little beans on the ground, standing upright, and one hovering on top of the soccer ball at an angle. I think that bean was getting ready to kick a goal.

I'm pretty sure that I happened upon this scene, which was set up in a warehouse or photo-shoot-y type environment.  But once I was there, I was in charge.  Quite an interesting responsibility to have thrust upon oneself.  I'm still considering trying to do this shoot someday.

career girl

I created my first commissioned artwork tonight.  Granted, it was a drawing on a onesie and I was paid with a Sam Adams, but still.  Holla.

It feels good.

Product Idea

They should make alarm clocks that look like cake. Or brownies, cookies, piles of gummy bears, ice cream sundaes, whatever.  Assuming no one likes having to wake up to an alarm, people will start associating their favorite treat with the unpleasant noise and experience of waking up and hitting snooze or disabling the alarm.

I think this could catch on with dieters, whether or not it actually works.

Bring on the money for me! In the unlikely event this idea gets marketed, I hereby claim all rights and proprietorshipity to this idea.  Verily and forsooth.

time travelling wedding crasher orgies

Yesterday, my grood friend sent me this link.  We both enjoy the comics of Toothpaste for Dinner, and this one was pertinent since I have always had bizarrely intricate dreams that I sometimes enjoy sharing with friends.  She did say that she doesn't necessarily agree with the comic in regards to me, but it was topical for us nonetheless.


Apparently my subconscious was feeling defiant after reading that TFD comic yesterday and tried to one-up itself.


I dreamed that I was a sixteen year-old Latina who was wedding crashing in order to find my time machine somewhere in the giant cathedral. I carried two bouquets of white roses, ostensibly to blend in, but they were some kind of magical power source for the time machine. You know how Latino weddings are -- anyone in a dress and carrying flowers blends in. I explored the upper stories of the building, finding bed-and-breakfast-style bedrooms and sitting areas, and then decided to have an orgy with four old men. Yeah. Gross. It was even gross in the dream. I started with one and then told him to send two in the next time. Of course, the second two weren't old anymore and were now semi-attractive, but still creepy that they were willing to do this. I didn't even get to try though, because my dream-mother and aunt came in, but they were only in their early 20s, since the time machine worked for them and I technically hadn't been born yet. My mother concluded that it was rape and sent my aunt, who was some kind of social worker or social justice advocate, away to get the papers to press charges. I was too ashamed (and bewildered) by my willingness to participate in the elderly orgy to admit the truth, and I knew I was going to ruin the lives of these men. I felt horribly confused and guilty, then woke up.
Of course, the fourth man that wasn't even naked in the room at the time was the one who looked like Ted Danson, who I would have most enjoyed orgying with.

There is something peacefully satisfying about looking words up in a real print-and-paper dictionary. Hardcover is even better.  A part of me always feels slightly vindicated when finding a specific word within what is, essentially, one huge list of words.  Even when I don't find the word I want, I find joy in the distractions along the way.  Discovering which words the publisher has decided to illustrate has also never ceased to intrigue me.

I have a dictionary at work that I found in a pile of used supplies. For a short time it was kept in one of the overhead cabinets in my cubicle, but I've learned to simply never put it away.

judged at the museum

Yesterday, a friend and I went to a local art museum for their Thursday night event.  It was opening night for a photography exhibit, local quartet Jelloslave was lending their funky, jazzy music to the air, and the museum offered prize drawings, a cash bar, and other free activities. Not to mention the fabulous people-watching.
Running with the photography theme, one activity was creating cyanotypes.  These involve laying two- or three-dimensional objects on treated paper and exposing the paper to light.  The finished product is a blue and white image.  
I'm usually excited for free activities, and my friend and I set to arranging objects on transparencies before heading into the darkroom.  However, when we got to the doorway of the adjoining room and saw the line of people waiting to process their creations, I lost interest pretty quickly.  We hovered in the doorway while I weighed a take-home-art experience against the wait in line in order to create said art.  While I debated, two men approached and asked if we were the end of the line, to which my friend replied, "No, she's deciding whether she wants to wait in line."  One man looked at me and said, "Really?"  He sounded surprised or taken-aback.  I felt judged by his reaction.  Making eye contact, I responded, "Yes. I just don't know if it's worth it."  Then I stepped aside to lay my collection of items on the nearest table and said, "I don't care enough, to be honest."
He did not seem to know what to say or how to react.   Fine.  Good.  
As my friend and I walked around a gallery later, I remarked that I wondered if the man thought I was not appreciative of art, or not open to new experiences, or just impatient.  We agreed it would have been interesting to see his reaction had we told him that my bachelor's degree is in Studio Art.  While I don't like being labeled or judged any more than most people, I do like being honest and speaking my mind, which is what I did.  The finished prints that I had seen were fuzzy-edged, the objects were picked-over so I did not feel very attached to what I had arranged, and standing for five to fifteen minutes in a crowded, too-warm room did not appeal to me.
I felt more creatively stimulated exploring the photography exhibit, which we hadn't even made it to yet. Facing The Lens: Portraits of Photographers proved to be an immensely better use of my time at the museum and with a dear friend.