Month: March 2011

Wednesday

Today was mostly just a cold and rainy Wednesday, until it became a sunny and surprisingly spring-like Wednesday. In between, not a whole lot happened. There was a brief spell — maybe an hour or so — when our servers at work went down, and I was left with no work to do beyond checking to see which pens in my desk still worked and which didn’t. I mean, we’re moving in a couple of weeks; I don’t want to be held down by the weight of those five or six broken pens.

It’s been a long week so far, I think partly because of my late night yesterday and partly because my weekend was only half a day. I’m looking forward to the regular two-day variety this coming weekend.

Lab partners

Tonight, I went to a live show of the public radio show (and personal podcast favorite) Radio Lab. I don’t know that it was a taping, partly because they did a show last night too, and partly because of the way the show is edited together. Tonight, on stage at the quite nice Skirball Center downtown, it was a mixture of live talking (hosts Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich), live performace (the frankly amazing celloist Zoe Keating), pre-recorded audio and video, and Slinkies (Slinki?) tossed on stage from the front row. I also happened to spot another public radio personality, Ira Glass, in the audience during intermission. Had I spotted Kurt “Explodo” Andersen, I would not have been at all surprised. 

The show was really great, all about symmetry and soul mates and mirror images and antimatter and the usual grab bag of funny, touching, and thought-provoking Radio Lab stuff.

I’m writing this on the train ride home, since the show ran a couple of hours and I won’t be home until late. Penn Station, and to a lesser extent my train, was full of inebriated hockey fans, so I can only guess an Rangers/Islanders game ended at Madison Square Garden just as my subway back uptown was getting there. Oh well, that’s what the iPod is for (on which I re-discover, with some pleasure, that I do have a song already by Zoe Keating). And honestly, I’ve been on far worse trains.

Back to work

I went back to work today, but spent most of a busy day dealing with the aftermath of last week’s conference: tallying sales, copying receipts, handing over the cash, writing up the official report, et cetera. In my report, I made sure to note that someone spilled coffee on our book exhibit during the conference — I saw him do it; it was an accident, and he tried cleaning it up, but I later discovered that two books were badly stained; though I sold one at 50% off, and left the other behind as a freebie for somebody, so it’s not a big deal. I also noted the irony of shipping a book on compulsive buying but neglecting to include it on the list of titles for sale.

Hey, I have to amuse myself somehow.

I did some other stuff, but the day was mostly just getting caught up after having been out of the office for two and a half days.