Die hard

I just spent over two hours waiting in outside in 5 degree weather in order to hear Judith Butler answer questions for 15 minutes at the end of a paper. I feel like a groupie. What is infuriating, though, is that after all that, I discovered that people who arrived after I did managed to sneak in through a side entrance, and got to hear the whole paper. It was such a ridiculous situation. The room the organisers had set aside for the event was really tiny, there was no overflow venue, and there was a queue around the block hoping to get in. I was right by the door, as I had arrived more than an hour before the start, and was among the last to leave, and so I got to hear at least the very end. But when people who had got in began leaving before the end, and the security guards wouldn't let those of us waiting outside in to take their places, people got pretty angry. It sounds more scary than it was, though. The atmosphere was almost playful, rather than really agressive, and those of us who had stuck with it exchanged email addresses at the end.
I think the whole experience may have fried my brain a little. I just let my dinner boil over on the stove while I was writing this post. No real damage done, though.