What The???

Okay, so I haven't posted in a while...and yes I have had an unusual number of typos lately too. Sorry
guys! What can I say? I guess I'm less anal rententive than normal with this. Things are busy with life in general so the blogs I've posted have been kind of rushed through, leaving the door open for lots of dumb typos. I'm a dork.

Okay, so today was really frustrating. And so, I'm going to take an opportunity to vent a little bit. My boss sent my to the Local History Conference today. We're swamped at work, so going to this conference meant that I wouldn't get any actual work done that needs done ASAP. But I was okay with that because I figured today would be good opportunity to do some professional networking and make some more connections in my field. And a free lunch never hurts either. And the lecturs could always be informative and fun too. I learned a lot of really cool and useful stuff at the other conference I went to last month. Unfortunately, that would not be the case today.

The lecturers were absolutely horrible! 2 out of 3 of them used their hour and a half to read papers that they'd written to us. Zero eye contact, zero enthusiam about their topics. You would think that if an organization is going to ask a person to be a presenter at their conference, they would at least choose people who have some sort of public speaking ability. But aparently not.

There is a difference between Public Speaking and Public Reading. A good public speaker is able to engage their audience and get them interested about their topic, build a repore with their audience through eye contact, humor, and interaction (whether it be verbal, or intellectual). And when you're speaking in front of anyone (conference goers, your classmates, or even your friends or family), if your talking about a topic you're excited about, chances are that they will get excited about it as well - or at the very least, they'll be more interested than they were before. Reading a paper you wrote? Not the same thing. How the hell can you have any sort of eye contact with your audience if your eyes are looking down at what you're reading?

And to me, there is a drastic difference between having information and having knowledge. If your able to speak about a subject, then you don't need to refer to your notes or paper. Sure you won't know everything or have answers to every question, but having knowledge gives you a certain respectability. Having information is something completely different. Obviously, if your not confident in your knowledge, you'll rely on informaiton...reading your information verbadium. Yeah, that'll get me excited about a topic. Not so much.

And beyond that, I feel like my intellegence is insulted when you are "giving a presentation" and read straight to me from your papers or notes. I can fucking read, I don't need you to read to me. I didn't come here for story time, milk & cookies damn it. Teach me something, don't fucking read to me you pansy. What the shit is that about?!

Anywho, that's enough of that. Onto another topic. I move into my new place on Saturday, but won't have any
electricity until Monday. Yeah, how much does that suck? So I'll be hanging at Randy's until I have
power. But I have to move my stuff in while I can. It's not like I can take any time off of work to do it
- we're freakin' busy as hell trying to get ready for the season to start (2 1/2 weeks away now). Yeah. So
I'll move in but it may be a while until it actually starts to feel like home. I don't know how much unpacking I'll get done without any power. Daytime is fine as long as my apt. gets plenty of natural light, but I don't know if it does yet. We'll see. It's just one more thing to make my day a little more frustrating.

Anyways, life isn't as bad as I make it out to be. I'm just moody because of the electricity thing, and because I feel like I wasted an entire day of work when there's lots of stuff to be finished in barely any time. The stress of getting ready for the season is starting to seem overwhelming. Hopefully once I'm out of the stress of living with the parents it will help with my mood a bit.