Up early Sunday to get ready for the flight home. It has been a really fun conference. I finished classes with my small group, which was sad because it seemed we were just beginning to bond, and to warm up into working together. It's hard to just have three days, but still worth it, I think.

Terrific readings by Elizabeth Searle, who has written this wacky "Opera" about the Tonya Harding-Nancy Kerrigan-Jeff Galooley knee whacking story from the 1994(?) Olympics. What a hoot. Apparently she will be bringing it to Portland, and then to Bumbershoot. I can hardly wait to see it.

Also heard Tania Katan, who wrote My One Night Stand With Cancer, a book about getting breast cancer at age 21, and then again at age 31, and her adventures with that. It sounds really sad, but she is really very very funny, and poignant. I want to give this book to my sister, and to BK.

Also heard Cynthia Houge read. I just loved her story about being in France with her family and how she happened to look at her daughter-in-law's (?) hand at a restaurant, to read her palm in a very simple way (she is not a palm reader), but before she knew it, a crowd of French people had gathered around her, all of them wanting their palms read, too; for her to tell them when they would meet someone, when they would have a baby, etc etc. And how she just went along with it. And told them what she think they wanted to hear. Very funny. And she has a good poem from this. And I thought, it's sort of how it feels to be a doctor sometimes, when I really don't know what is going on with a patient, or it really is unexplainable, and it almost feels like palm reading, like sooth-saying. But important, in its own way, giving people hope. Hmmm.

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Home soon. Back to work for a couple days, and then off to AWP. Can hardly wait to see Hotlanta! And, best of all, to pal around with Kathleen F.