Being back in the office after three days of jury duty, telecommuting, and campus visit was a little weird. Not in a bad way, though.
Even weirder, though? I think tomorrow is already Friday!
work
Wednesday
I spent a good bit of the day at Hofstra University, which those of you outside of New York (or its alumni) might know as the site of one of this year’s U.S. Presidential debates. That’s not it in the photograph above. I was meeting with four professors across different departments about the books they’re using, the challenges they’re facing, that sort of thing. I wanted to talk to more, but it’s the week right before finals, so that and the bookstore manager I spoke to over the phone last week will have to do.
I came home at lunchtime, which is quite an unusual experience for me. Even when I worked at Penn State and lived in nearby Toftrees, I rarely made the trip home. (Though I did, on occasion, have lunch at a local restaurant I liked.) Today I was just doing my part to keep the development team under budget. Okay, I joke, but I had no expenses today. (I doubt I’ll even worry about getting reimbursed for mileage. (It’s less than 5 each way.)
Tomorrow, I actually have to go back to the office. I’ve almost forgotten what that’s like.
Tuesday
Another day of uncharacteristically warm weather and not going into the office.
Of course, today I worked from home and didn’t get out and about into the warm weather except to take the dog for a walk around noon. I feel slightly (weirdly) angry at the late-spring-like temperatures. If it’s going to be winter, be winter. I’ve already gone to the trouble of digging out the coats and the sweaters. Don’t make me start contemplating digging out shorts. It’s supposed to get colder later in the week — though not below forty — so at least I don’t have to completely rethink my wardrobe each morning.
Oh well. No jury duty tomorrow, so it looks like I’ll be headed over to Hofstra for a few meetings with professors. I’m close to getting done all the things I absolutely had to get done before the end of the year, which will soon leave me with all the things I probably should get done before the end of the year…but will actually get done sometime in early January.
When, presumably, the weather will be in the low ’80s.
Sunday
Sunday just sort of disappeared out from under me.
It turns out, I do have jury duty starting Monday, not just telephone standby but actually showing up to the courthouse in Brooklyn. There’s no way of knowing yet if anything will come of it, if I’ll actually wind up on a jury, or just sit there all day. I’ll definitely be bringing a book. I can’t bring my computer, obviously, or even a cell phone, so there’s that. We’ll see. I’m not upset by the jury duty itself — even if it’s all the way in Brooklyn, not the much closer Mineola — so much as the timing of it.
The rest of the day…I dunno. I slept late, if not well, and did but didn’t finish the crossword puzzle. I did some editing for the next issue of Kaleidotrope, which amazingly is only one month away. When the heck did it get to be December?
Wedthursday
Last night, I went to this:
It was part of Selected Shorts, one of three I’m attending in the next few months. The stories were quite entertaining, and Baldwin — who apparently almost didn’t make it, thanks to filming across town — was quite good, as were all the other performers/readers.
I got home around 11 o’clock, quite tired, and allowed myself to oversleep and catch a slightly later train this morning.
I was also still weirdly shaken, almost certainly more than I should have been, by a phone call that had gone exceptionally poorly earlier in the day. I’ve been trying to set up campus visits, this time closer to home than Maryland, and it’s been tough. One instructor agreed to talk over the phone with me yesterday…and then almost immediately asked that we terminate the call. “Yeah, I think I’m going to hang up,” he said. “I really don’t want to go through all the courses I teach.” Which, you know, fair enough, especially at this busy time of year. But that’s the only reason that I called, and what I hoped I’d made clear in my original e-mail. I want to know the courses you’re teaching and the books you’re using and the challenges you and your students face. I have no hard feelings toward this particular instructor, who e-mailed after to apologize, but I’m also not at all happy about how things went. Those phone calls are awkward enough without the other party being openly antagonistic or non-communicative. I’m a pretty shy person to begin with, so I just hope for someone who’s eager to talk about the hows and whys that they teach.
I didn’t lose any sleep over it, though. (I may have mentioned, I slept in a little.)
Today, was just a lot more work. I have another phone call lined up for tomorrow, although I’m hoping that will go a little better, based on the e-mails I’ve already exchanged. And then next week…provided I don’t actually have to go on jury duty*, I’ll actually meet a few instructors in person.
I could use a weekend, though, I really could.
* Yeah, I forgot this summons was for next week. It’s a telephone standby one, which means I might not actually have to show up, but I won’t know until the night before, for about a week, starting Sunday. When I first responded to the summons, and filled out the form, I didn’t realize that now would be the single worst time ever for me to be on jury duty.