I kind of want to cry or scream or run away in panic.

I am giving a three-hour cancer pharmacology workshop next Thursday at a conference. There are some scheduled breaks, so it's more like two-and-a-half hours of material.

I've spent the last month and a half putting together my presentation. I have over 200 slides. I spent this weekend writing out what I would say, even though a lot of it would just be reading from the slide.

Tonight I finally read through my whole talk as if I were giving it.

It took me an hour.

I know I talk fast, but I couldn't stop! The words just kept spilling out and I couldn't make myself slow down. And I was stumbling over everything I had written, even the simplest things. Nothing sounded natural. And my mouth got really dry after a while and I couldn't enunciate for shit, even after I drank some water. I was speaking in slurred vowels by the end. I had no idea I would be this terrible. I don't recall it being this hard when I gave my grad school seminar, although that was much shorter.

I don't know how I'm going to be ready to give this to actual people. I'm not even ready to practice a real live run-through in front of my co-workers before I leave on Friday.

I'm going to go watch cartoons.

P-C, relax. I'm sure your not so terrible.

As for the time: remember that people will ask you questions. If you fear you won't fill the whole 2 and a half hours, instead of giving people scheduled times for asking questions, allow them to ask things at all times.

As for the talking fast: crowd fear, for me, makes me talk slow in front of audiences. I'm not sure how it'll work for you.

Is there any chance you can invite some friends and practice on them? There's still time!

And cartoons are always a wise choice. Don't stress. You worked hard on it, and I'm sure it'll be fine.

Gah, The Girl is on the sofa next to me, trying to find wedding insurance. Nothing seems to cover potential bad situations involving her father, because he's already in treatment. Irritating as hell. We need to find a policy with a technicality we can squeeze into.

Hil, anti-pain~ma being sent your way. Do you get to talk to your doctor about pain relief much? I hope they're working on it for you.

PC, I'm with Shir here - if it's a workshop, there'll be questions. You can set aside half the time for that. You could also have discussion among the audience in groups, if you are so inclined. Very few people are willing to sit through three hours of a talk. They'll be expecting it to be broken up with something.

Shir, the boobs stuff in Bureaucracy had me in fits of giggles last night. Hope it was a bit of a distraction from packing.

Seska, I don't know how much that could help or if I'm even in the right direction, but friends of mine had a wedding 6 months, and the father of the groom was dying at the time (in fact, they feared he wouldn't make it for the wedding). Eventually, he was there on a wheelchair with an IV, and everything turned out OK. He was in conscious and looked very happy.

Do you mean something like that? If so, even though I'm sure weddings and insurances are different from country to country, I can try and ask them for you how they've done it.

Shir, if your friends have any advice on finding insurance that covers that kind of situation, we'd be delighted to hear about it! We're trying to find insurance that will cover the sort of eventualities that might lead to last-minute cancellation.

I'll ask them, Seska.

Thanks, Shir. It's driving us a bit loopy and causing some stress in the Watcher-in-Training household. Which has quite enough stress to deal with already! Fortunately, my friend of many years (an old Bronzer who I was roommates with for a while and who is really cool) is acting as our wedding planner, and she's fantastically organized. That should help with all this stress.

Back to my literature review! Got to write 1000 words by the end of tomorrow.

Good luck with your review. And a lot of ~ma and good luck to your friend with raising that money.

Seska, my friend said they explained the situation to the owner of the hall, and he understood. So they added a special clause in the contract, that if they'll have to cancel because of his dad, they won't have to pay.

Not sure how much that helps you guys.

Thanks, Shir. Discussing it with the venue owner was something we hadn't thought of. It wouldn't cover things like the marquee, caterers etc, but it would give us an alternative for some of the cost if we can't find insurance. Thanks for the idea.

Fay, I meant to mention but forgot: you are such a star! I've been following the #pepsifail tag on twitter, and people are incensed. They want PepsiCo to apologise properly and remove the application. Could happen, too. Nice one.