the people who are still alive

happy bastille day, flist! it's also apparently national mac&cheese day in the us. chop off some heads, enjoy some delicious pasta and cheese sauce.

still hot, also.

so on wednesday one of my groups at work (technically one of my groups and a larger group that it belongs to) is hosting a summit through friday and so far it has been a massive pain in our butts. the project manager keeps saying this is the last year and she is not kidding. we still haven't printed the name badges yet because people keep registering. it starts wednesday! we're fully booked! registration is closed! and yet one of the pi's organizing it (or more accurately, one of the pi's who's going to get credit for it but who isn't actually doing anything) keeps telling people they can come. we can't feed them. there's nowhere for them to sit. we're full! but no. on the plus side, we weren't expecting to do better than last year (about 350 people) and until a couple weeks ago we thought we'd be lucky to break even. i mean, no one wants to come to the us and can you blame them? and then suddenly we were fully booked. wtf.

(this morning a woman in another group involved in the summit basically gave me a heart attack by saying "so does the minister [one of the keynote speakers] have transportation from the airport to the hotel?" implication being that the minister was already here - i pictured this poor woman stranded at the airport - even tho the ticket that i booked for her got her in at 7:40 tonight. she did not have a car booked to take her from the airport to the hotel because a. that's not a thing we offer to do for anyone at the summit, and more importantly b. no one told me i needed to do it. turns out she didn't arrive ten hours early. her assistant panicked. and then this other woman involved in the summit panicked. and then she made me and another admin panic. and suddenly the minister's not even here yet and we're all panicking for no reason. the other admin booked her a car and i haven't heard anything so i assume she got here in one piece and got to the hotel in one piece and to be honest i'm glad it came up this morning and not tonight because i sign off at 5:30 and would not have been checking my email if the minister got here and everyone freaked out because she didn't have a car to take her to the hotel because no one told me i needed to book her one.)

booking travel is legitimately part of my job but summit travel is A Lot. the summit is just A Lot. at least i get overtime, and they'll feed me.

last thursday i met some folks from writing group for pizza. it's nice to see them in person since we're still virtual. pizza was good - i split an onion and sausage with writer g who moved to california but comes back for like a month every year - company was fun, getting home was a trial because a bunch of t stations were closed because they were doing work on the line and when i got to an open station... it was closed. whut. even the t employees didn't know what was going on. it took me like two hours and twenty minutes to get home which is absurd. glad i went tho.

saturday unpacked some, dicked around some, met my sister for dinner and superman which i have mixed feelings about. ( spoilers! )

and sunday i bought a suitcase! i need a big one since my other one broke when i went to italy. it has oranges on it. :D

h-e-b is a texas grocery store chain and one girl went viral on tiktok for taking 200 h-e-b tortillas through airport security in her backpack. the store totally leaned into it. apparently it's a thing and lots of people have taken h-e-b tortillas onto planes in their carryons. i find that incredibly adorable and also delicious.