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2006-05-15 || 6:51 p.m. || make your headlines pack a punch! || I went to Seattle last week for a copywriting workshop. I drove alone on Wednesday night northbound with a book on CD for company. The author read it herself. At first I scoffed at her un-radio voice but then came to love her. She has a faint east-coast accent, and her voice got raspy every once in a while from all the orating, leading me to imagine her in some darkened sound booth with a glass of water and headphones. I don�t know if she realizes her untrained voice is filling up the insides of cars on freeways, spilling out of opened windows at rest stops and the parking lots of gas stations. I was proud of her for writing the book and reading it aloud, like listening to the way she draws out her syllables and deadpans dialogue let me into what she is like as a person; it wasn't so much listening to a story as it was listening to a woman who wrote a story read it. it became about her rather than her characters. When I parked in front of the hotel I sat in the dark to keep listening. A car mistaking me for leaving and coveting my spot honked at me and I got out to get my suitcase out of the trunk, leaving my phantom friend mid-sentence. The hotel is the fanciest I have ever stayed in. When I checked in I thought they would bust me. The strap of my bag is held together with a frayed knot. My suitcase has a cardboard skeleton. I will undoubtedly steal all the hospitality items your room offers. They gave me the key, though. In the elevator I kept imagining people stopping me in the lobby and asking �business or pleasure?� and my shaking my head slightly and plaintively answering �business.� I stayed in an executive suite. I watched television in both the living room and bedroom because I could. I never sat at the desk, preferring to look at $10 internet while lying on the bed. I lay on the couch once while filling in the crossword of the complimentary newspaper. I moved the robe from the closet to the bathroom although I never got a chance to wear it. I kept the windows uncurtained, and someone came back both nights to close them and secure them with a clip to shut out the city light and improve my executive experience. I kept the lights on in the living room when I went to sleep because I don�t like running around in the dark in rooms I don�t know and they don�t charge for electricity. I threw all the executive pillows off the bed. I decided I could never be a traveling businessperson. The workshop wasn�t helpful. I sat at the back table with three women my age. We came to a consensus that the middle-aged moderator was ten years behind what we were expected to learn and gave up on paying attention by mid-morning break. We talked over her presentation. We blew off the group exercises. We laughed when we weren�t supposed to. We went out to lunch in the hotel restaurant and talked about boyfriends and eating habits and intimate details of our personal lives even though we consulted each other�s nametags to keep each other straight. Two of the girls gave me their business cards and I gave them mine. (note to self: write about seeing b+k and b+b. write about how much you love them.) guestbook || notes || archives || profile || photos || d-land |