work

Tuesday

Remember that company scavenger hunt I took part in last month? The one my team won, even though I lost them somewhere between the first and second clues? The one that landed me a couple of free beers, a golden whistle (that’s right), and bragging rights even though I did practically none of the work and only a fraction of the running that my teammates did? (I mean, I gave ten bucks to charity to participate, but that’s it.)

Yeah, today it got me free pizza for lunch.

I’d forgotten that there was a pizza party for the winning team, assuming of course I ever knew it, and the scavenger hunt itself was over a month ago. But it was a nice lunch, and good pizza, and an unexpected treat. Of course, when my teammates (and the HR person joining us) all started comparing their cell phones, I could only say, “Well, I have an iPhone on order. Because I do; I upgraded last Friday, finally ditching my current phone (which I have never much liked) for something shiny and new. But because I couldn’t get the website to accept in-store pickup after it had located the store for me — it’s right around the block from the house, almost literally — I’ve had to wait for it to be shipped. And so I didn’t have a phone to take out and compare. If the pizza party had happened on Thursday…well, that might have been another story.

Other than that, it was a busy day. I didn’t quite finish doing the thing I desperately hoped I would finish, but I think tomorrow I can put it to bed. Which will be nice.

Meanwhile, this evening I finished reading Neil Gaiman’s short novel The Ocean at the End of the Lane. As I noted on Twitter, it may be the strangest, truest, and best thing he’s ever written. I liked it a lot.

And that was…wait, it’s seriously only Tuesday? Gah.

Tuesday

You know, I was aware that summer hours meant I would have to stay at the office a little later than usual, that there was a chance I would miss even my one-later train. But summer hours are a whole lot different when you’re working them from home.

So I did miss my train, by maybe half a minute. I had to stop by the UPS Store on my way to Grand Central — I ordered a book I needed for a meeting today through Amazon, then unexpectedly got another copy through a book swap with the publisher — and just missed the subway when I got stuck behind a woman with crutches on the stairs down to the platform. I’m hoping at least one of those things won’t happen again tomorrow and I won’t have to wait around Penn Station for half an hour.

But, honestly, the summer hours themselves aren’t so bad. An extra forty-five minutes a day, one of which I get to work from home, so I can take a half day on Friday? The occasional missed train’s probably worth that, right?

If nothing else, it’ll give me more time to read. I’m currently reading Stephen King’s Under the Dome, and that is a long book. I’m really enjoying, but I’m still only about sixty percent of the way through with it.

Thursday. (It is Thursday, right?)

So if you guessed I was going to spend the day watching the first season of Better Off Ted on Netflix, doing crossword puzzles, and reading the last of Kaleidotrope submissions (until January), then you would have guessed right.

I also made some changes to a couple of work documents and sent them around with an invite for a meeting next Tuesday. I figured that was better than waiting until next Monday to do it.

Oh, and I also went and bought my monthly train ticket.

And that was my Thursday.

Wednesday

It was a little weird yesterday, working from home, in between a three-day weekend and a five-day vacation. I can’t claim that I got a lot done — I spent most of the day researching instructors teaching a particular course — but it beat going into the office.

Today, I read a bunch of Kaleidotrope stories, getting the number of submissions still waiting on a reply down into the single digits. I should be able to get to the rest of them before the end of the week, if not tomorrow, which is good.

I’ll need to turn my attention, then, to editing stories for the next issue, in July, but at least I won’t have to contend with more submissions until January. That will help a little with my being full-up — everything I accept now goes into 2015 if not later — but also just with my sanity. The truth is, I don’t necessarily read every story front to back. I try to give each a fair shake, but if I can tell it’s not working for me, why would I assume it would be any better for a reader? (And why am I even doing this if these aren’t stories I want to read?) But even with the stories where you can tell right away it’s just not working, or isn’t what you’re looking for, that still leaves dozens if not hundreds of stories I need to give a closer look.

I topped off the evening by watching Rounders, which is well acted if a little dull.