I walked into work yesterday and was told I was supposed to go to an all-day digital government summit thing. right now. I had to cancel all my meetings, cancel my lunch plans, and shuffle all my plans for cat feeding (I'm cat sitting) and running errands. I spent all day at the Saint Paul Hotel with 200 people in business attire while a t-shirt, wearing jeans and tennis shoes with skulls on them. (on their website the hotel describes itself as the "most elegant hotel" in St. Paul.) I was wearing a name tag that said I was the Business Planning and Development Manager (my boss couldn't go at the last minute so I was pretending to be her so the registration fee wasn't wasted). Despite the fact that I was a good ten years younger than everyone else there and I was dressed like a teenage boy, no one questioned my manager status. Vendors were really interested in talking to me - they must have been reading everyone's name tags. (I only wore the name tag because I wanted to prove to people that I really did belong there and wasn't just someone of the street trying to scam free tote bags and pens. (but I did get a very nice free tote bag. and pens.))

and in case you've been wondering, I'm still alive. I just haven't been blogging. I was busy... and then I was kind of overwhelmed by all the pictures and stuff I have to go through for the whole month of July, so I haven't done them yet.

And I found out a few weeks ago that one of my uncles is seriously ill. It just makes me so sad because these are people I really care about a lot and I don't think things are going to get any easier. I know a little of what they are dealing with because I've experienced some of it myself when my mother had lymphoma 10 years ago, but we had it easy compared to what they are dealing with now. I'm worried about them.

This has also been hard for me because my feelings are linked, like sticky spiderweb threads. I get caught on one and then there are more and more and suddenly I'm completely stuck. I like to pretend aren't really there. But they always are, waiting. and while I know it is inevitable, I don't want to go back there.