Thursday

When the best decision you make all day is to buy an orange and eat it at lunch, this suggests a number of possible things. One: all of the other decisions you’ve made that day have not been good. Two: you’ve made precious few decisions that day at all. Or three: it was an incredibly tasty orange.

It was a good orange, which I decided to add to my turkey sandwich and soda on a last-minute whim. It’s not much, as far as whims go, but it was a nice grace note to my lunch, while I sat and listened to the audiobook of Stephen King’s Wizard and Glass.

I tried making some other decisions. I wouldn’t call them “not good,” but they didn’t necessarily pan out:

Me: I’m not sure I want to attend this presentation next month…
Company: Oh, but you should.
Me: Really? Well, okay…
Company: But it’s full.
Me: Oh…
Company: But hey, here, we’ve set up another session on a different day.
Me: I don’t know…that conflicts with a meeting I already have scheduled for that morning…
Company: C’mon, everybody’s going! Don’t be left out!
Me: Well, since you put it that way… All right. So I just click this link here and —
Company: Oh sorry. That session is full.

Yep. Its not critical that I go, but it did seem like it would be useful. I mean, I skipped having a day of telecommuting this week just so I could attend another presentation, so it’s not like I’m unwilling.

I spent almost every other moment of the day working on a massive research report. It’s three hundred and twenty-something pages right now and counting, and it has consumed a lot of my time over the past couple of weeks. It’s partly my own fault for including so many instructors in the research — you ask thirty people nearly thirty questions each and you have to expect a lot of data to sift through — but I wanted as even a split between US and UK instructors as I could get. I didn’t quite get that, in part because this has been a lousy summer for getting reviewers to commit and then deliver their feedback. (That, or I’m just tangled in a string of bad luck.) But I’m fairly pleased with what I did pull together, and now I’m just trying to pull together some sense in it all, whereby I can make some active recommendations that will hopefully help us sell more copies of this one textbook and others in the same area.

And finally, summer hours are over after this week. I liked having a half day on Friday — tomorrow’s the last one — but I’ll really be glad to get back to the old work schedule. Especially as we move into autumn and the sun starts setting a little earlier. It’s already started to happen, a little, although otherwise, weather-wise, we still seem stuck firmly in hot and humid summer.

I think I just might be ready for fall, for long sleeves and jackets. August was a fast month, but not a great one, and I think it’s cured me of wanting an endless summer.