Mr. Clean

I spent the day mostly helping with our clean-up at the office, throwing away old correspondence, proposals, and other unnecessary minutiae from our files (in preparation for our move April 1). Of course, we also found lots of wonderfully odd and sometimes necessary minutiae, like checks written to Bruce Springsteen (for song permission fees) or a proposal apparently about owning and operating a taxi cab in London. (We get lots of weird proposals, sometimes even from otherwise perfectly normal authors, but this was in our Active Files drawer, had apparently been in there for quite some time, and none of us had ever seen it before.) We’ll hopefully finish up with the files tomorrow, pare down further what we can send off to storage — the new office will, as I think I’ve said, have practically no file room — and go through the weirdly named, anything-could-be-in-there Miscellaneous drawer. Then it’s just a question of consolidating everything so they know what to take with us and what to store.

The clean-up day, which as I say continues tomorrow, was about as much fun as you might expect, and more fun that you’d expect, mostly given those unexpected discoveries. (I also generally like my co-workers, so that’s always good.)

And I think I may actually finally have my year-end (2010) performance review. I e-mailed my boss to ask if he wanted to schedule it, since HR had said Monday was the deadline, and it looks like we’ll sit down for a chat tomorrow afternoon. A chat, hopefully, full of heaping praise for my work and exciting, interesting, and moreover entirely reasonable goals for the new year.

Wednesday

You know that snow I was grumbling about over the weekend? The majority of it, at least on this (somewhat sunnier) side of the street has already melted.

I spent the day mostly reading a manuscript on animal-assisted therapy and wondering when and if I’m actually going to have my year-end performance review. Technically, we’re already two months into the new year, and technically the whole process has to be finished by Monday at the latest. But, beyond mentioning it a couple of times in passing, my boss hasn’t suggested a specific time.

Tomorrow and Friday are clean-up days at the office, in preparation for the move in April. We basically won’t have any wall space, possibly no real bookshelves, and very little file space to speak of. (But lots of natural light!) So I think I’m going to need to part with a few more of the books on my shelf. Still, some I really do need to hold on to, since I do refer to them. If nothing else, maybe I can build my own cubicle walls out of piles of books…

Wednesday various

  • What It’s Like to Work for Donald Rumsfeld. You really do expect him to close with, “And has everybody signed Debbie’s birthday card? Invade Iraq and then ice cream cake in the break room at three!”
  • Why Nielsen Ratings Are Inaccurate, and Why They’ll Stay That Way. Frankly, it’s amazing any television of quality gets made, ever. [via]
  • Tyranny of the Alphabet. All these years, my last name beginning with C, and I was apparently the unknowing beneficiary of reverse-alphabetism. This is sort of similar to something Malcolm Gladwell has suggested, namely that being born after the first three months of the year significantly limits your success in life. Gosh, three letters into the alphabet, only three months into the year — I should be President by now!

    Though seriously, those of you with last names further along down the chain of letters than me: did it affect you in school, or your current psychological outlook? [via]

  • Speaking of Malcolm Gladwell, the Malcolm Gladwell Book Generator. (Also, this xkcd comic. The rollover text is particularly amusing.) [via]
  • And finally, When Should I Visit? It’s the reverse-Foursquare, finding the least busy times to visit museums, galleries, theaters, etc. By the site’s own admission, it’s only somewhat accurate, pulling data only from Foursquare users, and exclusive to London. But I am amused by the idea of “use[ing] Foursquare to learn how to avoid Foursquare users.” [