edgeblog 5
The TESOL convention was good. Talk went fine. I was in good form, tho I say so myself. Started off with a hugely positive response to my opening line of, ‘You know what? I didn’t prepare a Powerpoint presentation for this session.’ Crowd goes apeshit. I’ll post a text of the talk. Not that I “read” papers, but if I’m giving a talk I usually produce a written version to help me keep my ducks in a row, then talk to a handout, so that I have my prompts and listeners have a set of notes they can add to if they wish.
Low point of the trip overall was the DJ not calling me to perform ‘El Paso‘ at the karaoke bar on the Friday night, especially following Bob Oprandy’s ‘Don’t Be Cruel‘. Thing is, the place was taken over by a 21st birthday party and a number of young women dressed more as if for a Louisiana bordello in June than a New England night in March took to performing rap numbers that seemed to feature repeated rhetorical questions along the lines of, “Dja wanna liddl bidda dis n a liddl bidda dat?” accompanied by ample and unmistakable manifestation of what it was that “dis” and “dat” were meant to index in this context. After a while, I was forced regretfully to acknowledge the appropriateness of the DJ’s decision.
Saturday morning, trotted off back to the airport to pick up pre-booked Dodge Neon.
“Oh, Dr Edge,” breathed Roxanne. “I can see your booking in the computer, but I’m afraid it’s frozen. It will take us five or ten minutes to deal with that, but, for your inconvenience, we will be able to offer you an upgrade.”
“That’s fine, Roxanne,” quoth Dr Edge authoritatively, “We’ll take the gold Mustang convertible out there.”
“Well, we could offer you that for an extra $12 a day, but otherwise we could offer you an upgrade to a Ford Fusion.”
“We’ll take the Fusion.”
“That’s fine, Dr Edge. Martin, can you make sure that the Fusion is ready for Dr Edge?”
“We ain’t got no Fusion, Roxanne.”
“There’s one here in the computer.”
“You may have one in the computer, Roxanne, but I ain’t got one out on the lot.”
“Dr Edge?”
“Roxanne?”
“I’m happy to be able to tell you that we can offer you the gold Mustang convertible at no extra cost.”
We were also very glad. Especially as the temperature proceeded to shoot up to almost eighty as we toured off to visit friends who have built a house in the New Hampshire woods near to Newfound Lake and then further to friends who have built right on the waterfront of Lake Cupsuptik.
Manchester is OK.
