SIFF and meat loaf

Soooo...

I leave my office at noon, since the showers have blown through and the sun is coming out. I need to pick up my tickets for the Seattle International Film Festival downtown, and think this will a) take care of an errand; b) give me a reason for a noontime walk.

Two blocks away, and I remember that I have left the confirmation sheets lying in my printer, so I dash back home, race upstairs, grab the documents, and am off again.

By the time I screech into the SIFF booth at Pacific Place, I'm deep into my lunch hour, and am starting to realize how silly it is to try to pack all of this into 60 minutes. But I figure "breathless, and wearing sunglasses" is a good persona for someone buying SIFF tickets, no?

The boi working the desk is quite ultra-deluxe, in that all dressed in black, tragically hip kind of way, but he's got nothing on me. I'm wearing black and charcoal. Ha.

I saunter up, grin, lean forward, and triumphantly (but not TOO triumphantly, because that would be so NOT cool) slap my sheets of paper down in front of him.

He's all business and grabs the sheets up, scanning the sheets for meaning.

Can he not find the confirmation code?
Has the printer garbled something up?
Did it spit out blank paper?

None of the above.

He looks up at me with the blank stare of someone being addressed in a completely foreign tongue.

What I have handed him is an unsolicited but dutifully printed out e-mail from my mother, giving step-by-step instructions for how to prepare her MEAT LOAF.

CLUNK.

That is the sound of my pride hitting the concrete floor.