alien(ated)

I'm in Washington DC at the Association of Business Communication conference. It's the first day of the conference and I have never felt more out of place. Some people don't differentiate between technical communication and business communication, but to me the difference is vast. Which results in me not being much interested in most of the sessions. So what am I doing at 11:00 am Eastern time instead of attending a session? I'm writing a blog and about to do some work on my dissertation prosepectus, which I'm so far behind on that I'm almost sick to my stomach (of course, that could also be the pumpkin spice latte I had this morning, since my body's not used to such a large infusion of sugar at once--I'm more of a salt girl, myself).

I did have an interesting trip here, though. As predicted, my layover through O'Hare was extended (but this time due to weather, to be fair). I stopped into the bar near my gate to have a beer and ended up talking to a cop from Liverpool for an hour and a half. He was in town for the Chicago marathon (which got cancelled due to heat--he said he went nine miles, and the only reason he went that far was because he saw people running out from side streets and stealing the shoes off of people's feet when they collapsed from exhaustion on the ground). We had an interesting talk--Jon (or Jonny, as his email address says) was nice, tall (6'8"), and ended up offering Al & I a place to stay if we ever make it to Liverpool. We exchanged email addresses and plan to keep in touch.

Like I said, I plan on working the majority of the day today, and I think I'll go ahead and do a little sight-seeing tomorrow. I wanted to bring my camera, but I had forgotten I left my cameras in Michigan when I left for school. I may buy one of those disposables, though. Just depends since I don't have anyone to take pictures of or to take my picture. (I am here with some people from school, but after making at least ten remarks in the last 13 hours--as long as I've been here--that people seem to pretend I have not even made, I'm starting to feel like I don't exist and nothing I say matters to them anyway. It could be that they're just too caught up in their own stuff, and I know I can be like that, too, or it could be that they didn't hear me, but I don't think it's likely that every single time I spoke they didn't hear me. So I plan on being alone. It may be more fulfilling.)

Okay, gotta get to work. Oh, yeah. Saw a huge rat on the sidewalk on my short three-block walk from the train station to the hotel. I hoped it was a squirrel, it was so big, but nope--just a rat.