Today I finished interpreting at LLC. The other interpreter never did show up. I talked to her on the phone around 10pm and she said she was 3-4 hours away and she would be there to help me out; around 9:30am she e-mailed me that she was still about 250 miles away. Um, huh? Whatever. When I talked to her on the phone she said “So yeah, I’m in deep trouble…” and waited for me to reassure her - but I didn’t say a thing. I interpreted for eight hours yesterday, more or less nonstop without breaks. I had no sympathy for her, and I was exhausted. But hey, whatever, it’s over now.

Today went fine. I was pretty tired by the end of the second workshop, and I hadn’t had lunch yet, so when one of the deaf guys wanted to say something I ended up staring at him blankly. He got a little irritated but I finally figured it out, and when the workshop was over I apologized. He admitted that he had jumped topics and so he could see why I was confused, especially given how tired I was. The two deaf guys didn’t show up for the closing ceremonies, but I interpreted for aidan_boi_x again.

The conference staff took very good care of me; I gave them my handwritten invoice and watched as the treasurer wrote up a check on the spot. (I had gotten permission to increase my rate by 25% given that I was working alone the whole time, so it was a nice check.) I also got a regular attendee t-shirt (black) and then later a purple t-shirt (staff), plus a couple of the enamel pins that are always at these events. They even remembered to thank me during the closing ceremonies, and the whole room gave me deaf applause.