I woke up this morning and promptly dry heaved. Can I tell you how terrified I am of this trip? How unprepared? I won't be OK until I am in my hotel room. Then I'll be able to relax. But right now I am freakin' basket case. I have to spend today running around and calculating grades and packing. Because I was in denial about the trip, it wasn't until today I discovered that one needs to book a airport/hotel shuttle 24 hours in advance. And then there is the, dear lord, I get to my hotel at 10 pm-I hope they won't say "Oh we thought you weren't coming and gave away ALL our rooms." And the hotel isn't where I thought it was because je suis in grande idiote. But I can't do anything about that now, so I might as well run around and work on the things I can get done. Speaking of which I have to go back to campus to pick up the rest of my books. And have I mentioned that I have to calculate grades tonight.

And when did it become one o'clock? Crap.

If any of you believe in God, please ask him to give me a pleasant trip. And you know to give me his undivided attention for the next 24 hours. Then he go back to his bang up job of managing the rest of the universe.

By tomorrow at this time I will hopefully be on a plane bound to the City of Lights with a very large glass of vodka in my little mitt with Marv as my co-pilot.

So scared.

While I'm gone, you might want to review some of my past Paris posts. (The second trip is here with lots of details.)

That should keep you busy for ten days.

So freakin' scared. So scared.

Labels: paris, travel anxiety

Jerry Falwell died today. Bill Hicks once said of Jesse Helms, "You know when he dies, he is going to commit suicide in a washtub under some pecan tree with the note 'I been a bad boy' pinned to him, while the skins of young children dry in his attic and on a continuous loop on CNN his widow saying 'I always wondered about Jesse's collection of little shoes" because there has to be something seriously wrong with someone that far to the right. You do know that, right?" (Rant in E Minor) I often thought similarly of Falwell partially for his comments about homosexuality and AIDs and partly because his post 9/11 comments.

At metafilter, where their tribute to Kurt Vonnegut made me cry, their, um, tribute to Falwell is amusing as well as full of the worst of the worst this man had to offer. A few cry mercy for him, demanding repect for the dead, but I would remind them how little respect he showed the those who died of AIDs and their families. I've known too many good people who died of this disease to respect a man who once said, "AIDS is not just God's punishment for homosexuals; it is God's punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals." Most of my friends who died of AIDs were such compassionate, sweet, decent men that Falwell would have to work very hard in the afterlife to even be worthy of licking the hopefully dog shit besmirched soles of their shoes.

I would also remind others who find my glee at his death offensive to remember the Inferno. As Dante descends into Hell at first he is compassionate towards those he finds in Hell, but as he travels he becomes more cruel towards the damned eventually torturing them himself. This is in keeping with the Calvinist idea that punishing the wicked is an act of mercy, thus his cruelty is actually a demonstration that he is becoming more at one with the will of God.

Or, to put it another way, not all hate is bad. There are some people who are truly abhorent and should be righteously reviled. Falwell was one. To respect his death is to do a disservice to all of those whose deaths and more lives he failed to respect. In honor of his death, I am taking a hiatus from being an atheist just so I can hope that, "Where ever he is now, you can bet he's surprised."

So it's been one of those days although I knew it was going to be stressful from the beginning, I had NO idea what was waiting for me. From all the printers except one in the adjunct office being broken, and that one out of black ink. To the broken copier. And me with an exam to give in an hour. And a large stack of papers still yet to grade.

Now a person with a smaller mind would have panicked. But luckily the bunnikins thought on her feet. The black ink was out in the printer so I switched the text to blue and printed it out. It printed the text so then I simply programmed the printer for 18 copies.

Sounds like a simple solution but on two hours of sleep after spending a weekend calculating grades, writing exams, and correcting papers I'm lucky I know how to use my metrocrad.

I am ready for my house slave to prepare my bucket of margaritas after cleaning the kitchen floor, washing the dishes, and picking up the laundry.

This post is an open letter of sorts to someone I don't think even comes here to read anymore, but I'll be damned if I'll send him an email. I do think, however, he needs to read the link in this post.

Last fall, this lapsed reader told me he was going to send me a packet of information to help me through this difficult time. He was an old friend. He knew me back when I still believed in God. When my father was alive. When I was young and sweet and still I had hope, I swear. I figured knowing me as long as that he would have some sense about what to send me. Still, I had no idea what would be in that envelope, and it was vaguely insulting to think that I had not investigated all possible avenues, but if it helped insult be damned.

Finally the packet arrived. One section contained information about yoga (I learned yoga, pilates, and guided meditation as part of my acting training), nutrition (including a book called the Cure for All Disease-how reassuring), and finally Scientology.

To say I was furious is kind of like telling a person in the path of a tidal wave he/she MIGHT experience moisture. It's an understatement on an epic level. When I confronted him about he claimed that he thought I MIGHT be angry.

Now being me, after a bit I began to think that maybe I over reacted to a person wanting to help me with all of my health/emotional problems with a cult (according to US Congress) invented by a science fiction writer. Sure it was misguided, but was it really as bad as I thought? I wasn't sure until I read this post at metafilter . As he said to me before I received the packet, "keep an open mind." I extend to him the same invitation.

For the rest of you this is a chance for you to gather even more material to disparage one of the most powerful "faiths" in existance. Take that Tomcat!
Last night's conversation with my old college pals was filled with decadent goodness (the steaks with bearnaise sauce, the cheese plate, falling in with old friends that I haven't seen in forever, dancing with Greybill 1.0 who thinks it is his personal job to set everyone, except me, up with someone else), but my favorite line of the night was this: It had more laughs than the Marquis de Sade.

Um, yeah.