personal

Saturday

It snowed today, though not so much that you’d really notice. Most, if not all of it was gone by the middle of the day. Last winter, that kind of snow wouldn’t have even been worth mentioning.

This evening, I watched a pair of movies, more or less back to back. First, I watched the distinctly weird The Nines. The AV Club called it “winningly loopy” and a “cinematic mindfuck,” which seems fairly accurate. (Although, fair warning: the less you know going in, maybe, the better.)

After that, I watched Rise of the Planet of the Apes, which I thought was surprisingly quite good, especially in the second half, although it’s definitely not the feel-good movie of the year. Andy Serkis probably did deserve some kind of special recognition at this year’s Oscars.

That, plus some Kaleidotrope slush (and disappointing episodes of How I Met Your Mother and Supernatural), was pretty much my Saturday.

Up and down

Oh, it was another busy day, although I think the bulk of the work that’s kept me (and some of my co-workers) so busy this week is actually finished. Which is good, because I was only able to attend a couple of meetings this week, and that simply won’t stand in the long run. Not in this, the year of the meeting. It’s reassuring to glance at my calendar in Outlook and know that so many future hours and day are accounted for.

Unless, of course, I get trapped in one of the building’s elevators again, which is what happened to me at lunchtime. I saw one of my co-workers head downstairs in the same elevator not five minutes earlier, but when I got on it, it stopped on the floor below us, picked up another passenger, and then stranded the two of for the next fifteen or so minutes. We spent that time talking with the lobby over the intercom, trying the buttons as the people at the desk there suggested, and wondering how long we were going to be trapped there. (You hear all sorts of horror stories.) Eventually, though, the elevator lifted us all the way up to the twentieth floor, where she and I got out — just to get free — while warning a gentleman on that floor that he might want to wait for the next one.

When we got to the lobby, the building staff were very apologetic and assured us the elevator was being taken out of operation until it was fixed. I’m still not entirely sure why they felt they had to ask for our names and the companies we worked for. When they asked over the intercom, it was with a “do you want us to contact your offices?” — which was almost like them asking if they should contact our next of kin. “Why?” I almost wanted to ask them. “Do you know something we don’t?”

But really, in the end, it was just fifteen minutes out of my day, and an interesting (if slightly panicked) fifteen minutes to boot. I mean, it’s no sitting at my computer all day, paginating manuscripts and staring longingly at my calendar for the next meeting — what? not til Thursday?! — but it’s something.

And this evening, when I left the office? Which elevator did I take? The very same one. Yep, right back on that horse.

Sometimes I miss the old office where we could take the stairs.

Kicking it old school

More of the same today, which will almost certainly continue tomorrow, and which threatens to spill over into next week. How busy am I at the office? I have an away message up in my e-mail, even though I rarely leave my desk.

I left only briefly this afternoon for lunch and then a presentation — that’s meeting-like, so I think the Year of the Meeting will allow it — on the role of adjunct professors at colleges and universities. Apparently, it’s really on the rise, with some schools relying on adjuncts for two thirds or more of their faculty, and with tenure becoming increasingly a thing of the past. The focus, obviously, was on what that means for those of us trying to put textbooks in instructors’ hands and secure course adoptions, but it raises all kinds of other issues, like about who’s teaching (and with what credentials), how honest a university is about that (since “adjunct” can still carry a stigma), and the value of a higher education. Which isn’t to say that adjuncts — or whatever a school is calling them — are worse than tenured faculty; often enough the opposite can be true. But the presentation and discussion did reveal that higher education, at least in the US, is rapidly changing.

This week, though, seems like it hasn’t changed at all since Monday. At least tomorrow is Friday. I know I won’t be working over the weekend. (I don’t get paid for it if I do.)

Some kind of week

I don’t quite know how this happened, but I wound up with more work at the end of today than I had at the beginning of yesterday. It’s really shaping up to be that kind of week.

I took a quick break in the middle of it to attend one of our regular “brown bag” lunches, this one with pizza — good, if cold, and with a real shortage of plates — and screenwriter Richard Vetere. It was okay.

Then this evening, it started to snow. Not a lot, and it’s already tapered off, but it’s sometimes nice to be reminded that it’s actually winter.