I Know It's My Own Fault; Leave Me Alone

You may recall that a couple of weeks back, I presented a training session. And, oh, the hijinks that ensued with that!

(Aside: "hijinks" is a cool word because it has three dotted letters in a row. Can you think of another?)

Anyway. I got a call last week asking if I'd be willing to do the make-up training. Anything to stay visible, and besides I like the person who asked me, so I said sure.

I made a couple of mistakes on this one. First, I brought along the laptop that Ms. R gave me the other day and I didn't check it out. Turns out it wasn't the same unit, so it wasn't configured for me and wouldn't allow me to log in. We still like the Ms. R, though: she probably didn't realize that it would make a difference. But it meant that I couldn't use that computer for my presentation. Fortunately someone had a unit I could borrow; otherwise I'd have had to rush home and get my own.

Second was pretty much the whole "saying yes" thing. When I got there it was completely disorganized: nobody knew what was going on, who was presenting where, and so forth. I was told originally that I'd be in one of three rooms. Then yesterday I was told that only two rooms would be available. By this morning I'd been moved into the school's auditorium. Makes for cool presentations but when you've got activities that involve breaking into groups...a little tougher to do. And, where I was originally on the same floor as everyone else, the auditorium entrance (from where we were) is two flights up stairs. And I have three boxes of handouts and other assorted crap. "We're going to get the elevator key," I was told. Yeah, I'll just schlep this stuff upstairs, now. I've waited long enough.

I really cannot stand it when I'm still setting up as people are arriving. Fortunately I was not the only presenter and, as it turned out, not the first one. So I had a few minutes to get my head back in the game and, in the long run, the thing went reasonably well and would have finished on time (I tend to run long) had they not changed their minds and cut me back at the very end.

I'm supposed to do another training on March 31. I can't get out of that one, since my boss volunteered me for it. But no way I'm sharing my work with the whole world this time around. And I'll have to think a lot harder about whether I'm going to do the makeup session.

(Answer: The best I could come up with is the island nation of Fiji. Got another?)