Worst day ever. Okay, maybe not ever, but pretty darn close.

It started out okay. I got some sleep, though I was really groggy this morning, I went to class with the stuffed shark to face critique. It was all good.

The critique was extremely useful. I got some great feedback I have no idea what to do with. I’ll work on revisions though after Clarion, so I’m not stressing about that quite yet. So everything was okay.

After class Will and I went to pick up Howard’s gift(s). I won’t go into details on what they were until tomorrow after they have been presented. I will say that getting what we want exactly proved impossible, and getting close was something of a fiasco. Will is a wonderful guy to bear with it. Especially since we had four stories to critique, the group dinner, and the reading today, so time was a major issue.

Still, until this point things were just minor annoyances. The real misery came with the group dinner. It was held at Harpers, which is a brewery and restaurant. I’m extremely allergic to alcohol to the point that the smell sends me into anaphylactic shock. This had the possibility for trouble. However, the Clarion staff went to a great effort to minimize any problems, and Howard was incredibly sweet. He checked on me when I got there and when he thought he smelled alcohol.

Unfortunately, the precautions didn’t work. I was there for less than ten minutes before I had a reaction and had to run out of the place. It was a pretty bad reaction too. My chest still hurts a bit and while I’m not shaking or gasping I still feel like I can’t quite breathe right.

So, as one of the good things that happened, my entire table in the restaurant, which was the same group I rode over with, Stephanie, Jonathan, Robert, and Doug, came out and went to dinner with me at a Chinese place down the street. It was unbelievably nice of them to do so, and I appreciated it greatly.
Anyway, then we went to the reading and that went perfectly fine. Howard is very enthusiastic when reading, and I had a seat right up front. The only negative to that part of the evening was that the bookstore cat, Moe, kept ignoring my attempts to shower attention on him.

Then, it got bad again. We were walking back to the car, and passed a bar in doing so. Normally this wouldn’t’ even be an issue, but I was already hyper sensitized and so a small whiff from the bar sent me into another much, much minor reaction. Still, minor or not it wasn’t pleasant.

After than I got back to my room absolutely ready to collapse when I discovered that I had lost my keys. I had absolutely no idea where they were. Luckily Jonathan, who is very calm and rational, was with me and helped me track them down. It turned out they were in Stephanie’s car, but it took us about half an hour or so to get to that point.

It just sucked.

And it’s not over. I have four stories to read. Thank all the gods in the heavens that tomorrow is Friday.

I want my Brian!

Night, all!