Argh. I wanted to write like every night this week but what happened? Fatigue hit me like a hard brick on my way home from work each day, and some evenings I didn't even log on to check e-mail. There are two possible reasons for this:

1. I'm getting old.
2. It was my Week to Get Tired even though I Didn't Do Much Work.

And I really mean I didn't. I went to a speechwriting course on Wednesday and Thursday, which might have accounted for the sleepiness --- as distinguished from the previously alleged tiredness --- because while the trainer was quite interesting and told plenty of good stories, he was also about sixty years old and spoke a little slowly and ran the course a little too slowly. So while I learnt stuff, I also spaced out a lot and expended most of my braincells thinking about stuff other than speechwriting.

On Monday, Tuesday, Friday and today, while I had to go to work, and while I did some stuff at work, I didn't have any headless chicken days. I didn't even have any too-busy-to-eat-lunch days. The week just took its time passing me by, and I guess it just effortlessly swept my energies and zest along with it.

Speaking of speechwriting, I came back from the course and immediately had to turn a few bare-bones facts about a particular event next Saturday into a four-page speech for one of our ministers. The speech is a throwaway one, really (i.e. of zero national significance and I'll be lucky if the event even gets reported in the press), but that doesn't make it any easier to write. The fact that a minister is issuing it means it has to have some substance, some points that sound as if they're made by an intelligent person, even when he's talking to kids who are 10-12 years old. And I had to make up all of that stat on Friday, so that I could get a draft to my boss by today, get her remarks back (which I had by lunchtime), tweak it a little more over the weekend, and then send it to the minister in question before I leave next week.

Yeah, that's the other reason I was hankering to write my web journal this week. I'm leaving on Wednesday for the Midwest and I won't be back till the end of the following week, so this journal is going to lapse then. If I feel like it, and have the internet access for it, and just can't bear to not have a journal going during those ten days or so, I may use my LiveJournal account to update things. But it's just a short vacation to see my brother graduate and see some college friends in the Chicago area, so I don't think there'll be much to tell. Watch this space towards the end of May for a full update.

So the big thing I have to do this weekend is to pack. I've decided that the only shoes I have appropriate for travelling, without sacrificing entirely on their hip value, are brown shoes. Therefore, all the clothes I bring (and I'm trying to travel light, as evinced by the distinctly small bag I borrowed from my mom today) will have to match brown shoes --- no easy task in a wardrobe like mine which is too neatly halved into Clothes Which Go With Brown Shoes and Clothes Which Go With Black Shoes. It means, for instance, that I can't bring my favorite black pants or my favorite but rarely worn black jacket. I know I agonize far too much over this, but I try not to clash brown and black --- it just sits entirely wrong with me even though I pass people everyday who wear both colors together and do not look hideously wrong.

The other reason I'm travelling light (or what counts as light, for me) is that I have to maneuver my bags and myself up and down a bus to Madison from Chicago, and later up and down the el within Chicago. The latter is a particularly daunting thought. I definitely couldn't do it with a regular-sized suitcase.

Aieeeeeeeeee! I just checked the United Airlines website (never a good thing to do when you've already bought your air ticket and made your travel plans) and found that they're having a fare sale on Chicago flights! I can go see KK for just US$109! Now I have to call her and see if that's feasible. I almost hope she says no, so I'm not tempted to spend more money. The current austerity drive, kept firmly in check by my handy Palm application into which I log every last cent I spend, is going well. But it's a fare sale, and I haven't seen this particular no-longer-in-Chicago friend in years, and I'm resigned to being flat broke for the rest of the year anyhow. I'm not going to kid myself: I know how I behave once I'm in a bargain basement or at a factory outlet, and I have never travelled to the US since graduation without successfully blowing my budget. (Actually, that applies to my one pre-college trip to the US too.)

Oh, evil, evil internet. How you tempt me.

Going to check on the laundry now. It's safer than surfing the internet.