How to make this girl's day

A new friend left me a mixed disc on my desk at school this morning. It's a fabulous mix of soul, old skool r&b, jazzy stuff. Oh my god. So welcome today! I think she is destined to become a good friend over many years. Oh, yikes, I wonder if I should return the favour of a Liminal Me compilation. This gal is so much cooler than me, I don't know how it could achieve her standards.

The gift is so welcome today because yesterday was a massive professional embarrassment. A project I've been on for 3 years is finally moving into the data collection phase meaning we are holding a series of workshops, recording participant engagement and collecting surveys, and looking for more or less successful ways of communicating sustainability. The way things have progressed, I am responsible for a substantial portion of the workshop that will be tested against the control workshops. Yesterday we held a dry run of the experimental workshop and my portion totally, absolutely, distressingly bombed. Of course everyone volunteering as 'participants' for the dry run have heard me talk about the work over the last couple of months and attended the workshop in part to see how the work played out. So you see, everyone in the room knew that it was my part that failed. Plus the facilitators made a point of asking me by name what to do next when they lost their way; I was supposed to be a non-participating observer at the back of the room and the facilitation should have been well-prepared and professional. Ugh. Just disgusted with myself and with the research team right now.

You caught me on a bad day (though yesterday was worse) and the mixed disc arrived at the perfect moment for a little spirit boosting. Life usually figures out a balance, doesn't it? Cue the cheesy art print: