personal

Wednesday

Today wasn’t Monday, I’ll say that much for it.

I’ve pretty much finalized the contents for Kaleidotrope #10 and hope to post them soon. If I’m having trouble believing that the week is half over, and that the month is half over, just imagine how much trouble I’m having with the idea that I’ve actually done ten issues of my zine. Ten? Egad.

And I’ve got at least two or three more issues already pretty full up. The mind, it’s doing that boggling thing again.

Otherwise, not much to report. I wrote a little more tonight, and am now watching Season 4 of The Office. Oh, and my father has bronchitis. He seems to think he was sick before he went to England, so these aren’t worldly European germs or anything, and he’s on antibiotics. Hopefully he’ll be feeling better in a few days.

Tuesday

No big announcements today at work. A few more details about the big move — planned for late winter or early spring — but otherwise just an average Tuesday.

I wrote some again tonight, working on a story I need to have done by November if I hope to submit it where I want to. And that rare and wonderful thing happened while I was writing: I completely lost track of time.

Admittedly, only for about twenty minutes, but still.

It’s hard to believe September’s almost half over already.

Back to work, wherever that might be

So it was back to work with me after a little more than a week of vacation, almost all of it spent with just me on my own. (There were a couple of days in there when I don’t think I talked to anybody but the dog, and I went out to dinner one night largely just so I could be around other people for awhile.)

It was kind of a weird day back, thanks to an announcement this morning that our offices will be moving in the spring. Our lease is up, and…well, our offices have never been all that remarkable. We’ll be moving a few blocks closer to Grand Central, maybe a ten-minute walk from where we are now, and these will apparently be a lot more modern, impressive, and moreover built to our company’s specs.

I’m not so keen on the open-plan layout they’re promising — I miss having an office; now I may not even have a cubicle — or of the added distance I’ll have to travel every day. It’s easily twenty minutes to half an hour by foot from Penn Station, which is doable but screws royally with my preferred work schedule. In the afternoon, I leave at 4:30 and get a 4:54 train. That could get tough.

The subway isn’t too much help, despite the office’s proximity to Grand Central. East Side Access, connecting the Long Island Railroad to Grand Central, isn’t expected to be operational until 2016. There’s just no good trains, and none that don’t involve at least one transfer, to get me from point A to point B. And even the bad choices are going to cost me money in Metrocards.

Maybe I really should think about moving. If I lived in Queens, I could take the subway directly in.

That’s a whole other kettle of fish, of course.

So endeth my vacation

Just a quiet day at home, hurting my brain with the New York Times crossword puzzle. (Maybe it’s just me, with my on-vacation brain, but it seemed kind of hard this week.)

I think my parents brought the rainy weather with them from England, since this is the first rain we’ve had all week, and the weather is starting to cool. Then again, it is already mid-September, so I guess we were due.

Went to my writing group again. This week, this is what forty minutes of free-writing produced:

One hour later, it still didn’t work.

“You might as well give up,” Samuel told her. “After nightfall, the incantations aren’t going to work, even if you do chance upon the right one. We really should start looking for shelter.”

“The temple is shelter,” Tabitha said. “I just need to — ” she glanced at the weathered spell book in her hands — “‘pierce the obsidian veil of…’ It has to be on one of these pages.”

“For all we know, Amos was a fraud,” said Samuel. “He said he was part of the Order, but that didn’t save his life at the pass. And if we’re still out here when it gets dark, we’re risking our own lives.”

Tabitha sighed. “That’s just an old wives’ tale,” she said. “Nightwalkers, moonwraiths…”

“Trust me,” said Samuel, “they’re real. And nothing in that book is going to protect us from them if they decide to attack.”

“There’s nowhere else for miles,” she said. “These are the northern wastes. If we can’t unlock the temple, where do you suggest we go?”

He hefted his pack to his shoulder. “I spied some caves to the east. Maybe an hour’s hike. We should start moving.”

She held out the book. “I think that’s a mistake. We’re really close. And Amos die to protect this book. He died protecting us from — ”

“Amos died because he was an idiot. If he was a real sorcerer, he never would have been exiled. We never would have been saddled with him in the first place. We’d still be living in Bartertown. We’d still — ”

“They almost killed you in Bartertown.”

“Yeah, well, that was a misunderstanding. If you’d seen the magistrate’s wife, you’d have thought she was half orc, too.”

“Face it, Samuel, it’s the temple or nothing.”

“Then I’m afraid it must be nothing,” said a voice from behind her. A robed figure appeared from the side of the building, a pair of short swords sheathed at her hips. “The temple is cursed. None of the Order’s prayers will unlock the doors now.”

“And who are you supposed to be?” asked Samuel. “The Order’s last guardian, left behind to guard their outpost?”

“Not quite,” said the woman. “I’m the one who killed the last guardian. And I’m here to make sure the curse is never lifted.”

She smiled. “So,” she said, “which of you would like to die first?”

And that’s about it. It’s weird to think I have to go back to work tomorrow. I haven’t been there since the Friday before Labor Day, and even that was only a half day. I’m hoping I can get back into the swing of things pretty quickly, getting to work on the same train I was taking during summer hours, but being able to leave at 4:30 instead of 5:15 every day.

I haven’t glanced once at my work e-mail in all the time I was off. I wonder if that was a mistake…

We’ll see tomorrow.

Back at the old homestead

A quiet day at home, mostly finishing up a few chores and some cleaning, and watching more episodes of The Office. (I’m making good headway into Season 3.) I toyed with the idea of going to see The American, but didn’t, just hung around the house.

Nor did I go up the block to join the neighborhood block party. A few weeks ago, they sent around a somewhat passive-aggressive flier for the party, notifying us that because “some people” had disapproved, only the other end of the block would be closed off to traffic. I guess at this end, we’re just fun-hating spoilsports. Block parties around here have always been kind of an other-end-of-the-block thing anyway, and nowadays, with only a few exceptions, that’s where all the families with young children live.

I don’t know if they intentionally picked September 11 as the day of the party. It does seem a little weird. Though I also ran into a local “harvest festival” that had roads blocked today, and only one small gathering at the local flagpole commemorating the day. To be honest, aside from a few posts on Twitter, and the fact that they had some of the memorial services on TV at the deli when I went to buy lunch, I might not even have known today was September 11.

Actually, that’s not true. As Thud points out, those who most angrily declare that we’ve “forgotten 9/11” do so simply “because we don’t agree with them,” or because they’ve forgotten what actually happened that day, or learned the wrong lesson from it. (Like, oh, that all Islam is evil, or that burning Korans is a good idea.) I actually started this weblog a couple of days after the attacks. I have family and friends who were in Manhattan at the time, though thankfully no one who has hurt. Even as it’s become a day that, nine years later, I don’t dwell on for every moment, it’s also a day I’m not likely to forget.

Though it occurs to me now, a lot of the kids I saw up and down the block, headed to or from the block party? Plenty of them weren’t alive that day, or were too young to really remember it. That seems a little weird to me.

Anyway, after dinner this evening, I drove to the airport to pick up my parents. I may have mentioned, they were in London for the week. There was a little confusion about which terminal they were in — I was waiting around in Terminal 2 for about an hour, then I got a call saying they were waiting in Terminal 3 — but everybody’s home now safe. Our dog has already ripped up the stuffed Beefeater dog they bought him. Which is, of course, what he does to pretty much all his toys.

And that’s it. Tomorrow’s my last day off before heading back to work. On the one hand, I’m looking forward to it. On the other, I was just starting to get the hang of this “vacation” thing.

(Actually, I think the next time I take a vacation, I need to go somewhere.)