work

A whole lot of Thursday

Today was an awful lot like yesterday, only slightly more Thursdayish. Very busy, and running into some roadblocks at work — mostly things that seem like they should be easy but that I’ve been informed can’t under any circumstances be done. I grabbed a slice of pizza and worked through lunch, just trying to do what I can. This whole “textbook adoption cycle-imposed deadlines” thing is seriously harshing my mellow.

In other news…not a whole lot. There was a brief moment today when I thought Gordon Lightfoot had died, just minutes after I very coincidentally posted a lyric from his song “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” to my Twitter feed. That was kind of weird and creepy. Turns out, of course, it was a hoax, and fortunately the man is still very much alive.

And I actually watched a little more curling this evening — the women’s teams, Denmark versus the United States — and while I’m not sure I actually enjoyed it, it was a lot more entertaining when you at least think you have a vague idea of what’s going on. It’s not really enough to give me Olympic fever or anything, but maybe if I keep listening to Stephen Colbert. I believe in miracles.

“Come on baby, put the rock in the house”

Today is Wednesday, and there’s not a whole lot to say about it except for that. It was a lot more of the same — more reading chapters, more hoping I can get these two projects finished before February is done — except with much better weather than yesterday. I still don’t love the walk between the house and train station, especially today when I didn’t wear my boots but everything had iced over, but even this evening was a whole lot nicer than the wet sludge we had on Tuesday.

It’s Ash Wednesday, and as I joked on Twitter earlier this afternoon, it’s that day when, traditionally, we draw a circle of ashes around ourselves to keep the island’s Smoke Monster at bay. (Does that qualify as a Lost spoiler? If so, um, oops.) I hope that doesn’t make me a bad Catholic…although, truth be told, I also ate meat today, and aside from my sister’s wedding (which wasn’t a full mass), I haven’t really been anything like a regular churchgoer in years. Maybe it’s the four years at an all-boys Catholic high school that did it, I don’t know. I’d probably consider myself a spiritual person, if not a religious person, but despite how I was raised — and though it might pain my mother to learn this — I don’t know for a fact that I’d call myself Catholic. God and religion are definitely things I think about, seriously and often, but I’m not entirely sure I’d put a label on any of my beliefs. (Nor am I unwilling to admit that might be a little bit of a cop-out.)

In other news, I watched a little more of the Olympics this evening — mostly women’s hockey, Canada versus Sweden. At the time when I get home in the evening, it’s apparently that or curling on NBC. And despite having seen Men With Brooms, which is ostensibly a movie about curling, and despite realizing it’s not all that complicated, I remain a little mystified by just what those teams are attempting to do. (Though I’m with John Scalzi: these pants are nothing short of amazing.)

And that, really, is that.

Perpetual sludge

Today was such a wet and sludgy day, my first day back to work after a three-day weekend, and all around it was pretty busy. I’ve got several book projects in the pipeline, a couple that need to finished and off my desk before the end of the month, so I spent most of the day reading chapters for one of those projects and making some final edits where needed. I’m really just sort of glad the day is over.

This evening I spent a whole lot more time than I expected to working on a little side project, my mother’s birthday present. It’s all hush-hush, but her birthday is this weekend, and I’ve been putting together this gift for awhile.

And I also finished reading Scott Westerfeld’s The Risen Empire. It’s really space opera, and the fact that it ends on a cliffhanger with much of the plot unresolved is maybe the best argument against my whole “no new books for 2010” pledge yet.

And that’s that. Right now, I’m going to go to bed or watch Lost and then go to bed. I haven’t yet decided, though bed is definitely in the near future.

Goodnight, Friday

I spent the better part of the day doing the tedious job of reformatting fourteen chapters’ worth of PowerPoint slides for some online supplemental materials we’re developing. I can think of a lot of things I’d rather spend the day doing. But I think I managed to fix everything, so hopefully we can just upload them sometime next week. And then I can move on…to that other book’s PowerPoint slides I still have to edit. Ah, joy.

At least it’s a three-day weekend. Which is actually really nice, coming so soon after this past week’s unexpected snow day. I know I’m ready for the weekend.

Meanwhile…not much. My father is having a little problem with his eye, some blurred vision he went to see his eye doctor and then a specialist about today. It’s apparently nothing too serious, and also isn’t necessarily indicative of anything else that is serious, but I think he’s a little worried — and therefore so am I — that his vision might not improve, or might get worse. (“Even if you end up losing the eye, you can still drive,” the specialist told him, not very reassuringly.) My father has a follow-up appointment for treatment in a little over a week, so hopefully he’ll be fine.

On the plus side, did I mention it’s the weekend?

Day after snowday

It was back to work for me this morning, after yesterday’s unexpected snow day. The roads were still pretty terrible, at least between here and the train station, but at least the trains themselves were running on time. (Or whatever the Long Island Railroad decides to define as “on time.”) It felt a little like Monday, oddly enough, which just makes the fact that tomorrow is Friday — with a three-day weekend after it, no less — all the sweeter.

We had a couple of planning meetings for upcoming conferences at work today, including one I’ll be attending in San Jose at the end of March. (On my birthday, as it happens.) I shoveled a little more snow this evening, to clear the foot of the driveway, and discovered a huge branch that had fallen from the neighbor’s tree into our back yard sometime last night. And that’s about as exciting as my day ever got.

But hey, tomorrow’s Friday.