The ache

I am swamped right now. I am out of town and I spent 14 hours talking (teaching hands-on) on Sunday. For those of you who know me, that's not a huge challenge, but my vocal cords were swollen after that.

I'm working at a very intensive technical course right now as a workshop instructor. It's a very prestigous assignment to teach people from all over the world, and it's absolutely fantastic. Also, we are working in a lab that is about 30 feet from the Atlantic ocean, so I get to look up periodically and zone out with the view.

I've got pictures...

Anyway, I'm sneaking reading sessions on For Whom the Bell Tolls, and I feel like a coke addict must feel--sneaking off for a few minutes to get through a particularly engrossing section or purposely being late 20 minutes just so I can finish a part that I'm craving to know the ending to.

HOWEVER--I have not had a decent cup of coffee in 5 days now, and I'm starting to get pissy about it.

Also, they are feeding us swill from a dining hall--I picked up some power bars because they gave us tomato soup that looked like that blood/milk mixed stuff from Africa--I guess I've gotten soft and high maintenance. I used to be able to just deal with whatever food dropped on the plate in frontt of me.

So, the aching that I am feeling is to write a short story about some of the craziness that I am seeing here--it is a mini-drama with heroes and losers and villians and heartbreak. Everything except thankfully a love story, but I'm sure I could work one into the story somehow.

Here's a scene, written briefly and badly without my "magic" keyboard that lets me type at the speed of thought--I'm ruthlessly pounding this out on the normal keyboard on my laptop which makes me more carefully consider what I'm doing...

Sitting across from lunch from a very experienced co-worker. She's just reached over and taken a french fry from my plate, saying "I'm gonna have to take a couple of these..." (not asking--in Spanish, we call this "bruta"--a brutish woman).

"That's okay."

"Well, I'm gonna tell you something that no one else knows yet. I've just been given the position of manager of Region 3."

Inside, my heart sank and I got a feeling of dread. My boss was supposed to get that assignment. Once he did, I was going to get promoted and all my cares in the world were going to go away.

Forced smile, but unnecessarily so, for you see she was so self-absorbed that she had no idea that this had any ramifications for me. I felt like one of the Oscar candidates with the camera trained on me when it is announced that...someone else has won.

"Congratulations. I know you'll do a great job."

"Yeah." She reaches across and grabs another fry, dunking it in the ketchup.

There's a lot more--I'm trying to make mental notes, so I'll do the best I can.