personal

“We gotta get off this rock, Chuck.”

This morning, I mailed out copies of Kaleidotrope to contributors and subscribers, which is a fun way to kill an hour and spend a couple hundred bucks. While I was at the post office, I picked up my thank-you gift from this year’s MaxFunDrive, which had arrived in the mail. It’s a flash drive, signed by Jonathan Coulton, containing his complete discography, which is really cool. I also got a Jordan, Jesse, Go! T-shirt and some cute stickers.

Then this evening, I watched Shutter Island, which isn’t a perfect movie, or even too surprising in its revelations, but it works really well. And it’s great too see Martin Scorcese, who at this point in his directing career has nothing to prove, continually trying new things. For all its excess, it’s clearly the product of man still in love with making movies and the possibilities the medium affords him. Scott Tobias describes the movie like this:

Shutter Island may initially seem like a nerve-jangling genre piece in the Cape Fear mold, but it’s more like Scorsese’s The Shining, a horror show where it’s sometimes hard to tell the haunted from those doing the haunting.

I’m sure I must have done something in between those two things — post office and movie — but it seems like mostly a blur of sitting around, watching some TV, reading, playing with the dog, and the usual Saturday stuff.

Friday on my mind

So today I finally got a chance to make use of the good part of these summer hours at work, namely leaving the office at one o’clock. Naturally, I was busier this morning than on any other day all week.

I don’t know if I’d characterize leaving early on Friday totally worth it, but on on a Sunday Friday afternoon, it as a lot of fun.

Meanwhile, my sister and her husband were woken up this morning by an earthquake of all things, which you don’t really expect in Maryland. The epicenter was right in her neighborhood. Supposedly a Canadian earthquake was felt in New York sometime last month, but nothing that woke anybody up at five in the morning. (No doubt it was too polite for anything like that.)

I didn’t do anything more exciting with my afternoon off than go buy some clothes, buy some groceries, and get caught up re-watching Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince on cable as I trimmed some steaks for dinner and sliced up some watermelon for afterward. But in a choice between that and a full day at the office…

And my back, while far from perfect, did feel better today. So there’s that.

Yeah, I remain unconvinced about these summer hours, but half days are very nice indeed.

This must be a Thursday.

Not much to report. The first week of summer hours, arriving early and working late, is at an end, with the half-day reward tomorrow. Already, I’m not entirely sure that it’s been worth it.

Meanwhile, I’ve been getting issues of Kaleidotrope ready for mail over the weekend — and, as I periodically do, thinking about going the online route with the zine. I love the process of layout and the physicality of a print zine, but going digital would open up some interesting possibilities — and, moreover, would free up some money that currently goes to printing and postage. It’s just a thought.

And, also meanwhile…well, my back hasn’t been so great lately, with the return of pain that had been pretty manageable (if not negligible) for quite some time. The pain is pretty minor, as these things go; I have friends who’ve been bed-ridden or had to visit the hospital because of back pain. I don’t have any trouble walking, or moving, or even bending — just increased discomfort when I do so. The most worrying has been some minor numbness and weakness in my right leg today. I’ve been starting up with the stretches again, which I’d been too lax about, and trying to lose some weight anyway. But if the pain and numbness keep up, I may have to revisit my spinal doctor and talk about options. It’s hard to tell if the steroid injections helped much the first time, though I think they did a little. I don’t even know if that’s something we can discuss trying again.

Something tells me I’d have to get another MRI, and man, I do not enjoy those.

Anyway, time for bed. I need to rest up so me and my back can get to work tomorrow. We’re not allowed to take vacation days and use the summer hours — if you’re off a day, you work a regular week the rest of it — but nobody’s said what happens if you’re unfortunately sick, especially at the end of the week. It would suck mightily to work those extra three hours all for naught. So, bed.

Wednesday, or so they tell me

The summer hours thing sure aren’t making this week go any faster, I can tell you that much. I have this weird fear that on Friday morning they’re going to tell us that it was all a hoax, or that they’ve decided to call it off, and we’ll have worked nine extra hours for nothing. Of course, our e-mail server has been pretty unreliable the past couple of days, so I guess I could always claim that I didn’t get that announcement. Either way, I’m looking forward to leaving early on Friday, but I’m definitely already feeling those extra forty-five minutes each day.

With the exception of conferences, I haven’t really worked any “overtime” in years. (And even conferences include a free trip somewhere.)

This evening, I took a different train out of Manhattan, to meet my parents at the eye doctor and drive them home. Which is about the extent of the excitement here for this Wednesday.

I did, however, finally decide to close Kaleidotrope down to submissions starting August 15. I’ll re-open on January 1. This will hopefully ease some of the pressure at my end, since I’m already at least two or three issues ahead; while the slush pile is pretty manageable, a break is always nice, as is being able to publish stories less than two or three years after acceptance.

A rainy, muggy Tuesday

We had another wake to attend this evening, sadly, this time for the grandmother of one of my sister’s friends (one of her bridesmaids, in fact). We didn’t know her well, and I didn’t really at all, but we wanted to go to pay our respects, if only because my sister is in Maryland and couldn’t. My father and I caught a train to East Williston, where we met my mother for dinner, and then we drove over to the funeral home nearby.

And that was pretty much Tuesday. Our e-mail was down at the office almost all day, meaning there were several projects I couldn’t get to at all, and I got a little soaked by the sudden, bucketing rainfall at lunchtime, when I went out to get both lunch and a new umbrella. (There used to be a drug store right next door, where they sold umbrellas, so close you could slip in without getting wet. But a few weeks ago, they moved to the corner. It’s a better and bigger location, more umbrellas to choose from, but there were very few awnings between me and it, between me and the pouring rain.) And, of course, there were random and often unexplained tests of the building fire alarms, without which a day at my office really wouldn’t be complete.

Onward to Wednesday.