Sunny Saturday

I got a new cell phone today. I was due, and my old one has had a crack down the front for the past week. (I’m not sure how that happened, but I suspect I threw the phone on my bed, then something else like my bag or a book, that accidentally landed on the phone. Some such clumsy physics.)

That’s about it. I tried reading a little Kaleidotrope slush in the backyard, the weather just gorgeous here today, and I read through a few stories. More, hopefully, tomorrow. My reading period ends on August 31. I’m thinking next year, I’ll end it even earlier, maybe January to June.

Working for the weekend

Another very busy day at work, though I did manage to get a lot done before the office closed at three o’clock, getting an early start on the three-day weekend.

I have no real plans for the weekend, beyond avoiding my work e-mail altogether and maybe doing some reading (slush and not) and writing. Maybe watch a movie, go for a walk, that kind of thing.

The weather has been lovely the past few days, with no sign of the rain we were supposed to be having. I suspect it’s all run north across the border to Canada.

Thoroughly Thursday

The sun actually came out for most of today, which was a shock. I ate my lunch in a little public park — basically just some benches in the courtyard next to a building — a couple of blocks from the office.

Beyond that, it was a pretty ordinary Thursday. I started reading Ursula K. Le Guin’s Tales from Earthsea. I got my business cards — a whole box, with no one, really, to give them to. And the not-quite-as-dreadful instant coffee flavors arrived today as well. That’s about the level of excitement we’re dealing with here, this particular Thursday.

Rainy Wednesday

To say it rained today would be an understatement. I mean, I’m lucky not to live on the banks of a flooding river, or directly in the path of the worst of the season’s tropical storms, but from all reports we won’t really see the sun again until the end of next week.

This morning I woke up rather early when my alarm clock, which is also my cell phone, fell underneath my bed. Or at least I thought it had, and by the time I discovered that it hadn’t — that it was, in fact, just on top of the bed, hidden underneath the covers — I was more or less fully awake. So, rather than reset my alarm and go back to bed for about an hour, which is my usual plan, I got up and caught an earlier train into Manhattan. I stopped for breakfast, again thankful that the subway cuts out the need to walk far in the rain, and arrived at the office at about ten after eight. I ate my breakfast (an egg-white veggie omelet) and read my book (Walter Mosley’s Devil in a Blue Dress), and then went to work.

We had a short presentation this morning about the “basics of estimating,” specifically as it relates to the profit and loss calculations for a particular book, the calculations we use to determine if a book will be profitable, given a certain print run, price, discount, production cost, etc. It wasn’t groundbreaking stuff, and I actually have less use for it than I used to when I was an editorial assistant and creating P&Ls all the time. But it’s good to know, and it revealed that I’ve probably been doing one not-unimportant thing wrong all this time.

Other than that? Mostly just your typical Wednesday.

Tuesday is as Tuesday does

Nothing much happened today. It rained until it stopped, and that’s about it. My first train this morning was late, and then the connecting train at Jamaica was flooded. Not exactly underwater, but it’s one of those double-decker trains, and I was on the bottom level. Luckily the seats themselves are elevated off the floor, because the floor itself was one giant puddle.

Oh, and it turns out I didn’t win the Geist Literary Postcard Story Contest. That’s too bad, as I really liked the piece I submitted. I definitely think I’m going to rework it a little, expand it just slightly from the contest’s (maddening) 500-word limit.

And, yep, that was pretty much my Tuesday.