work

Thursday

I’d be lying if I said today was particularly exciting. We had a team meeting this morning, mostly to discuss the books still in the pipeline, and not yet in production, for 2010. We have about a six-month production schedule, so it’s going to be a mad scramble to make the year with some of these titles. After that, I spent most of the day reading a revised chapter on counseling older adults, with lots of statistics about depression and suicide rates and all that fun stuff. With luck, I’ll finish with the chapter tomorrow and then receive the final chapter in time to put the book into production by the end of next week. I’d like to get it off my desk before I head off to a conference in San Jose in a couple of weeks.

And meanwhile…no, sorry, that’s really about it. Just your typical boring Thursday.

The city that never sleeps (though I do)

No weird sandwiches for lunch today, I’m afraid. At the office, we had one of our regular “brown bag lunch” talks, where they invite a guest speaker and give everybody free pizza or sandwiches. Today was a pizza day, which was okay, though I wish I could say the same about the talk. Ostensibly it was about New York, the love-hate relationship the rest of the nation (and New Yorkers) have with the city, and moreover how that relates to the current economic crisis. Wall Street fat cats, that sort of thing. And I guess it was that, but I just found it meandering and a little preachy, even when I agreed with some of the anti-corporate points the speaker was trying to make. In all, the free pizza was the best part of the deal.

This evening, though, I actually had a regular (albeit open-faced) Reuben for dinner. My mother and I picked my father up at the eye doctor’s — he’s doing well — and we had dinner at a pub/bistro around the corner. We actually just got home a little while ago, and I think I’m going to use this hour before bed to watch last night’s Lost. I tried watching it last night, but it just didn’t work out.

Onward to Tuesday

Today, not at all unexpectedly, was very Monday-ish. I spent it mostly marking up a couple of chapters on counseling older adults, because there’s nothing like reading about dementia to get the week of to a rollicking good start!

According to my Forgotten English desk calendar, today is not only International Women’s Day — which I guess means that every woman gets the Kathryn Bigelow “I Am Woman” treatment today? It’s also the Feast Eve of St. Gregory of Nyssa, who despite what you may be thinking was neither a capper nor a Doctor Who character. Apparently, he was a fourth-century Armenia archbishop.According to the calendar, he “relates a story of a nun who forgot to say her benedicte and make the Sign of the Cross before she sat down to supper, and who in consequence swallowed a demon concealed among the leaves of a lettuce.”

Which is neither here nor there, but it’s more exciting than my day, that’s for sure. I spent too much of the evening playing this Comedy Central game, and now I’m just getting ready for bed.

Live from New York

Today was about as close to yesterday as it could get without being a weird repeating loop in the space-time continuum. I spent it mostly reading through a revised chapter on a counseling book we have in development, and also reading through a few of the stories that keep coming for Kaleidotrope ever I since opened the zine back up to submissions in January. It occurs to me, with just the tiniest hint of accompanying panic, that the next issue has to be out next month, in April, and I should probably get some layout work done as soon as possible. I think it’s going to be a really good issue, but I need to bring it all together before that happens. And, because I’m just a little crazy, I’m still thinking about doing three issues this year, the third one coming sometime in July.

This evening, I watched the very first episode of Saturday Night Live (then NBC’s Saturday Night), since I recently purchased — on the cheap, although those prices don’t seem to be offered anymore — the first two seasons on DVD. I’d seen a lot of it, in retrospectives and the like, but I’d never seen the episode in its entirety. It was…interesting, occasionally even amusing. Andy Kaufman’s Mighty Mouse routine is still kind of inspired. But it was more of a weird relic from a time before the show really got a handle of what it would morph into. (Although, after 35 years on the air, it’s safe to say the show has morphed more than a few times.) Intriguing, if only because that first episode is so over-stuffed — George Carlin, two guest comedians, two musical guests (with two songs apiece), the Muppets, and the expected sketch comedy — but not hysterically funny.

And now, if you don’t mind, it’s time for bed.