an excellent week (more detail)

okay, so back to describing my week in boulder at the conference on world affairs.

i've volunteered for the conference for the past 6 years, and this was the first time i'd gone to just help out during the week of the conference, without being involved all year. sure, i'd seen the emails flying around, and suggested a few people to invite, but i wasn't working every week with the science and generation y committees, and i wasn't down there on the floor at planning weekend, defending the panels i'd come up with.

despite all that, i had a fantastic time. i had the privilege of helping out with some of the big plenaries, which meant i got to hear molly ivins bash bush and gianni picco discuss internationalism and amy goodman champion independent media, which were all excellent. i got to discuss new zealand with melanie cordan, an animator from lord of the rings, and talk about how orson scott card can be such an excellent author and yet a complete asshole with melanie and judy dushku, a mormon feminist. i got to see my stepmom thereza show her wedding photos to just about everybody at the conference. (and i got to hear her sing and see my dad dance with her.) and i got to spend all week with my dad and thereza.

and i got to see my friends. i went out both saturday nights i was there to hear my friend nick dj in denver, where i got to see travis and ann and sophie and nick and jason and even juliet! not to mention playing pool and drinking with my conference friends joaquin and megan and savannah and gwyn and maria and elaine and yasin and russell and clare and bryn and christina and maura and jim and jane and donal and everyone else. and it was great to hear that savannah and possibly gwyn are probably moving out here to seattle, and that they can rent rooms from me in the house i'll be out looking to buy tomorrow.

but what beat everything, what topped all of this excellent dancing and intellectual stimulation and being a part of this great cwa thing, what far outstripped spending a week with ambassadors and jazz musicians and astronomers and poets and mtv veejays and environmentalists and storytellers and hostage negotiators and animators and film critics and known conservatives and super-liberals and geeks and everyone, was meeting lindsey.

i think i remember seeing lindsey at some point during cwa last year, as her cousin bryn is on the science committee, and i've spent some time hanging out with bryn and her roommates. so when lindsey showed up at thursday night's afterparty at bryn and maria, etc's, apartment, i felt like i knew her already. or maybe i was just imagining meeting her last year, and that feeling of knowing her already was something else. regardless, when our hosts had finally gone to bed, and lindsey and her roommate offered to either drop me off at home or have me and yasin come out with them for pancakes, it was only my sheer inability to remain awake any longer that made me reluctantly choose sleep.
fortunately, i had less than 24 hours before seeing her again, at the friday night dinner party. i'll spare you the details, dear reader, but there was a sing-a-long involved, and somehow my nearly tone-deaf rendition of "i've got you under my skin" was drowned out by others enough to not scare her away. then it was off to the traditional after-party at the excellent burrito joint illegal pete's, where much dancing was to be had. and dancing was had, indeed.
i was able to spend most of a wonderful saturday and sunday with lindsey, taking a nice nap under a tree on saturday afternoon (until it became apparent that some stickball players wanted to use our tree as third base), and enjoying an excellent breakfast of chai french toast followed by a very romantic walk in the snow on sunday.
but, alas, all good things must come to an end, i suppose, and it was with a very heavy heart that i left for the airport on sunday night. of course, after fighting through the blizzard to the airport, i discovered that my flight had been cancelled, and the next available seat back to seattle wasn't until wednesday. i very seriously considered taking that offer and spending monday and tuesday with lindsey, but eventually rationality forced me to take a different route home so that i could get a full week of work.

what happens next? who knows, really. she has a 2 hour layover in vancouver on her way to tibet early this summer, which is almost long enough for me to go up there to see her briefly, but due to the post-9/11 changes in airport security, i wouldn't be able to meet her at her gate to see her off; she'd have to come all the way out of security to see me and then go back through the security line, and i can't imagine that would leave very much of her 2 hours for her to get to the gate, if at all. and her layover on the way back from tibet is even shorter. but i'll be back in denver for alicia's wedding on july 2nd, so hopefully i will see her then. who knows what the future holds? regardless of what happens, i'll always keep the memory of those four days in boulder.