Changes of plans
I had a plan for this coming Sunday: in the afternoon, I was going to go to workshop, and then afterward I was going to have dinner with Kam and Tamara.
But in the past 48 hours that plan has undergone a radical change. The new plan is that I'm going to go to a couple hours of workshop, and then hop on a plane and go provide moral support for Mary Anne in Salt Lake City before and after her exam. (I mean, not that she'll need the support; I'm sure she'll be fine.)
Much like Mary Anne's spur-of-the-moment trip to California last month (which was half the inspiration for this), this went suddenly from silly too-bad-it's-not-feasible idle speculation to reality in a very short period. Everything just fell into place: Tamara, having taken such exams herself, practically insisted on my cancelling our dinner plans (I'm hoping Kam will feel similarly when she gets back from Mexico sometime in the next couple days); Delta has flights to and from SLC at exactly the right times; workshop is scheduled in such a way that I may even be able to give my crits of both pieces we're critiquing before I have to rush out; my manager said it was okay for me to work remotely on Monday and miss our Tuesday-morning group meeting; the Delta flights would've been pretty expensive, but Mary Anne suggested using frequent-flyer miles; I don't have nearly enough frequent-flyer miles on Delta, but Mary Anne pointed out that you can get a Delta flight using United miles (this would never in a million years have occurred to me to try); according to United's website, I was a couple hundred miles short of the number I needed to get a free flight, but it turned out the site only showed about half of my miles ('cause it only goes back to 2002 or something), so I actually had way more than I needed; I spent a great deal of time on the phone last night and today with various Delta and United representatives, and on various parts of Delta's and United's sites, but all of the United people I talked to were extremely friendly and helpful (and the Delta people were helpful too, though a bit more brusque); and in the end they got me exactly the flights I wanted, on six days' notice, for a total cost to me of $5.
This is really remarkably different from my usual customer-service experiences. I'm very pleased. Knock on wood.
This evening I had smaller-scale changes of plans—intended to spend the evening reading subs, finishing edits for one story, starting edits for another, and reading the novel for workshop. Instead, spent the evening at work, then grocery shopping (for the first time in weeks), then skimming SWAPA while eating dinner, then doing email and chatting with Susan. Did finish the first story's edits, and did read some subs, but didn't get as much done as I'd hoped. Ah, well. Tomorrow is another day.
In fact, today is another day, and given that I was awakened at 6:30 again this morning (though I did eventually get back to sleep this time), I really oughtta go to sleep.
