personal

So that was Thursday

I helped out at our company’s exhibit booth at a local conference this morning (hence the tie in the above photo), which was a nice way to break up the work day and spend some time out of the office. And hey, I don’t usually get a chance to ride the subway to work. An author had very generously left a box of fresh pastries for us, and the conference organizers (or the hotel staff), in order to apologize that there wasn’t any of the usual free coffee, had given every booth a hefty Starbucks gift card the day before. So no complaints there. (Although the free water they did make available tasted a little like bitter coffee grounds, so clearly they were determined to use the same dispenser no matter what.)

After all that, it was back to the office with one of my coworkers, a quick lunch, and a little light editing on some PowerPoint slides. I know, the life of a developmental editor is a thrill a minute. Then it was time for home, a couple episodes of The Mighty Boosh — man, that’s an odd show — dinner, playing with the dog, and finishing reading Don DeLillo’s Falling Man, which I really liked — and about which, I suspect, more later.

All in all, a pretty decent day.

The Wednesdayness of it all

I didn’t know this until today, and I wish I hadn’t found it out under such terrible circumstances, but the Haitian Consul of New York is directly next to the building where I work. There were local news vans parked all down our stretch of Madison Avenue this evening, setting up shop, conducting interviews. My heart (and, if I could, more money) goes out to the survivors of yesterday’s terrible earthquake.

In other news…well, there isn’t much other news. I had alphabet soup for lunch this afternoon, which isn’t especially exciting or noteworthy, but I enjoyed it, and it was a coworker’s birthday, so we had cookies and cake later in the day. I’m attending a conference at the Waldorf Astoria tomorrow, which should at least break up some of the monotony. And that’s about it. It’s been a decent but very uneventful week for me.

Right now, I’m just watching an episode of Monty Python. I own the boxed set, so I’ve decided to go through and watch them all again. For somebody who calls himself a Python fan, I think there’s a significant handful I’ve actually never seen. (Truth be told, it was the records and then the movies where I first fell in love with the show, back in junior high. I never saw a single episode until college.) It seemed high time I remedied that.

So that’s Tuesday

Today was a little more Tuesday-ish than yesterday, but otherwise it was about the same.

I’ve started reading through slush again for Kaleidotrope and I’m starting to remember all the things I didn’t miss about it. Sometimes you come across a great story or poem — and the whole thing’s worth it just for that relatively small handful — but the great majority of submissions just don’t work, and often in the same predictable ways. Most are far for terrible; there’s just a lot of not-very-good stories being written. Still, as I noted on Twitter the other day, there are only two ways to get me to read your story all the way through: make it good, or make it really, really, really bad.

And yes, that means I don’t always read every story all the way through. I hope that doesn’t seem shocking or disrespectful. If it’s no good for the first four or five pages, who is going to read any further than that? I read a lot further than anyone subscribing to the zine would be expected to, given a story that doesn’t work, and I try to offer comments on when and how each one went wrong for me. I’ve rejected many stories I have read all the way through — some I’ve even re-read multiple times, and liked, but that for some reason just didn’t fit with the zine — but a lot of them lose me much earlier than that. I often start skimming. Sometimes that skimming convinces me to turn back, reconsider, look for ways to salvage the broken beginning. More often, though, it just crystallizes what’s broken about the entire thing. That’s just the reality of it, I’m afraid.

Of course, I’m also remembering all the things I missed about reading slush. Sturgeon’s Law isn’t really about the ninety percent of crud, after all. It’s about the ten percent that’s worth it.

Just another Monday

Honestly, this wasn’t a very exciting day, unexceptional even in its dullness. The hummus salad sandwich I bought for lunch was more exciting than this Monday. It was a perfectly ordinary, entirely average, nothing-to-write-home-about kind of day.

And y’know, I’m okay with that.

There ought to be clowns

This afternoon, I accompanied my parents to see a performance of A Little Night Music on Broadway. The tickets were my mother’s Christmas present to my father, and although I didn’t know she was buying three tickets at the time, I’m really glad she did. It was a thoroughly enjoyable show.

Afterward, we took the subway downtown, and had a really nice dinner around Union Square. Sure, we saw a couple of rats in the subway, but it’s not like they were on the platform or anything, just down on the tracks. So I guess that’s something. We just got home a little while ago, and I think I’m maybe going to watch a little TV and fail to finish the Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle.

Goodnight!