personal

I guess that was Tuesday

I overslept this morning and somehow didn’t wake up until 8 o’clock on the nose. Even more remarkable, though, is the fact that I still managed to be on the 8:15 train. I even managed to shower and brush my teeth. (Well, okay, I did those two simultaneously.) And while I had to rush like mad, I didn’t have to run for the train or anything.

Sometimes it pays to live only a couple of minutes from the train station.

The rest of the day was pretty much business as usual. I spent most of it weeding through stock photo sites, which I’m still doing, looking for replacements for figures that appeared in the first edition. This is proving a little tougher than finding regular stock photos, since these others are more medical and scientific in nature. I know I’m just asking for trouble plugging keywords like “glands” into my image searches, but that’s sort of what it’s come to. The previous edition was published by a competitor, and I think they had an illustrator or two on hand, which seems just wholly unfair.

Other than that, I scheduled a follow-up appointment with my spine doctor for next Tuesday. It was probably asking too much that I be able to get a Friday appointment, and thereby use a day I was already taking off for vacation. But I rescheduled my day off, for next Tuesday, and it’s not too shabby getting the initial visit, MRI, and follow-up all taken care of it less than two weeks. Hopefully the MRI — bright and early this Saturday — will suggest a plan of action.

And this evening, when I came home, there was a helicopter circling this and the surrounding blocks for twenty or thirty minutes. Also, maybe unconnected, a police car pulling into the parking lot at the train station a few minutes before that. I wonder if they were chasing a fugitive or something. I’ve seen nothing about it on the news, or online, but that helicopter seemed to be making quite a few passes overhead.

Oh, and I would be remiss if I didn’t enjoin you all to vote for Heather in the Canadian Blog Awards. Hers is my favorite Canadian blog, which I’m sure you’re all reading anyway, but I thought I’d pass the word along.

Tomorrow, they tell me, is Wednesday.

Six years of Mondays

Today marked my six-year anniversary at work, although the day itself was just like any other Monday. I’ve actually got a pretty busy week planned, at least near the end of it, and this evening I managed to schedule my MRI. It’s this Saturday at 7 a.m. Luckily, the radiology place is right nearby, and the woman on the phone assured me that I’ll be in and out pretty quick, since I’m definitely the first appointment of the day. I still need to call my spine doctor to confirm they squared the insurance authorization — as well as to schedule a follow-up with him to discuss the MRI results — but it’s nice to have a plan of action worked out for the week.

Still, I remain wholly unconvinced that six whole years have gone by since I moved back home from Pennsylvania. On the one hand, I’m glad. I had some friends in Pennsylvania, although fewer as the years went by and more graduated, and I absolutely didn’t hate working for the university. But New York was the only place I was going to get an entry-level job in publishing, if only because this is where ninety-something percent of all publishing jobs are located. Moving back home was not at all a mistake. And yet, the thought of buying a home (or rather apartment or condo) and settling down…I still really don’t know how I feel about that. I like my job and the people I work with, and I do want to move out on my own again, but is New York really where I want to stay?

It should be noted I am not the most decisive of individuals. That’s sort of how six year go by just like that.

Such was Sunday

Another quiet day, spent mostly like any other Sunday: working on the New York Times crossword, and later working on a short story. I didn’t manage to finish the puzzle — and I sort of disliked the theme once I learned what it was — but I did somehow manage to get another 500 more words down on the page. The story is still a little directionless, but I’m hoping I can pull it together before the end of the month, in time for a particular submission deadline.

Back to work tomorrow. Where did the weekend go?

True Gritterday

A quiet Saturday. I bought some books, I did some writing, I went for a walk. And this evening I watched True Grit, which, while maybe a little dated at times, has John Wayne at his best and most John Wayney. I particularly liked this exchange:

“When’s the last time you saw Ned Pepper?”
“I don’t remember any Ned Pepper.”
“Short feisty fella, nervous and quick, got a messed-up lower lip.”
“That don’t bring nobody to mind. A funny lip?”
“Wasn’t always like that, I shot him in it.”
“In the lower lip? What was you aiming at?”
“His upper lip.”

I’m interested to see what the Coen Brothers do in their upcoming version.

Dungow-dash

Today was kind of a bust as a vacation day, and pretty much what I expected from my doctor’s appointment. It went well enough, and it’s always good to get a medical opinion that isn’t a faceless internet site, but not much has changed except their office reception area.

I have a scrip for a new MRI — and won’t that be fun? — which, after a little light insurance authorization at their end, I should be able to schedule early next week. Hopefully that means I can get back to my spine doctor, to figure out if it’s the disc or he wants to send me to someone else, before the end of October. I should be more than fine until then; it’s less dealing with the mild (if persistent) discomfort that bothers me, and more the uncertainty and possible need to take more days off.

We’ll see. Nothing I can do about it until Monday.

The Forgotten English word for today is “dungow-dash,” meaning:

When the clouds threaten hail or rain it is said, “There is a deal of dungow-dash to come down.” From dung, filth.

That according to an 1826 Glossary of Some Words Used in Cheshire — and if that’s not an authoritative source, I don’t know what is. It rained a little here today, though hardly enough to start resorting to nineteenth-century Cheshire slang. (Although I understand that in some wilds of the world it actually snowed!) It was chill and windy here more than anything — windy enough to knock out the power, first at the doctor’s office for a moment, and then again while I was on my way home. Which meant that when I got home — with a few groceries in tow, I should add — I couldn’t get in the house. I only had keys for the side door, which is inside the garage, whose door is electrically operated. I walked around the house for ten or fifteen minutes, contemplating both melting ice cream and breaking windows, and accidentally making enough noise to bother the dog, who was safe inside the kitchen I couldn’t get to. Luckily the power came back on before long, and none of the groceries were ruined beyond salvage. And I didn’t have to wait several hours for one of my parents to return home…or go about the clumsy process of breaking into my own house.

Anyway, that was Friday. Not a particularly exciting day — I slept pretty late, had a chicken sandwich for lunch, went to the doctor — but at least not a filth-falling-from-the-sky kind of day.