"Puppet wrangler? There weren't any puppets in this movie!" – Crow T. Robot
I was woken up early this morning by a barking dog, who admittedly did have to go outside…although maybe only because, as I learned this evening, last night he ate several peanuts, shells and all. My sympathy extends only so far.
I spent the rest of the day as one would spend any normal Friday, researching cognitive psychology textbooks until my own cognitive processes started to crumble into dust.
Why? How did you spend your Friday?
Working from home continues to be slightly weird, with its good and bad points. But certainly, one of the things in its favor? If I want to get to work by 8:30, I have to get up at least two hours earlier. On Tuesdays, if I want to get to work by 8:30…I just wake up at 8:30.
Beyond work, which wasn’t so terribly exciting today — although I do have three really interesting new textbooks I’ll be working on, two from the UK — there’s not much to report. I mean, do you want to hear about how, when I left the house briefly to grab some lunch, the place I went to had the drive-in window on the right-hand side of the car? Because that — leaning across the passenger seat — is about the level of excitement here today.
I won’t pretend I loved waking up around 5:30 this morning, in order to drive to Mineola, in order to catch an earlier train into Manhattan, in order to take a train from Manhattan to Connecticut, in order to spend the entire day walking around the campus of Western Connecticut State. But, all in all, it was actually a good and productive trip for me. My boss and I met with one of my authors, met with the staff of the campus bookstore, met with another psychology professor, and then finally with a professor in communications. Not a hugely busy agenda, but my main goal was meeting with the author and discussing the development on his book. And, by that measurement, the day was a big success.
I am, of course, quite tired, after the day on campus and the long train rides back and forth. And all I want to know is: why isn’t it the weekend again yet?
I woke up earlier than I might have liked — on a day when, because I’m working from home, I get to sleep in an extra hour or even two — because I’d scheduled a service appointment with a Verizon phone technician a week ago, and I was expecting them between the hours of eight and noon. I was, of course, foolish to expect this…and I probably should have expected that. The house phone has been dead for about a week and a half, and Verizon didn’t seem too eager to do anything about that. When I put in the repair ticket last Wednesday, I was told (by an automated system, not by a human being) that the earliest they could be out was this Monday. But since I would be home anyway on Tuesday…
Well, after a lot of waiting around (and a few calls on my cell phone to the Verizon service number), the repair tech showed up around 2:30. And while he was able to pinpoint roughly where the problem was coming from — or at least the radius in which to look — he didn’t know the area or have the right maps, and by the time he got back to the office and looked it up on the computer with the foreman, the day would be over. I didn’t mention that it was still not yet three o’clock, or that he was supposed to have been there at least three hours earlier. Honestly, he seemed nice enough and I have no reason to doubt him. I suspect the mix-up (which I didn’t mention) was at Verizon’s end. The tech said he’d come back tomorrow, and the problem’s outside, so I don’t have to be there.
Which is good, because I have an early start of it tomorrow, heading to Connecticut to meet an author and do some campus calling. (And while I think the dog knows what to do with burglars, and he will be here, he’s not especially tech-savvy or good and answering the front door.)
Well, that was Tuesday. This being the first of May and all, then, let me leave you with my April mix of new (or just new to me) music. A short, short mix this month, but I like everything on it:
An unexciting Thursday, spent mostly writing up my notes from yesterday’s meetings. I could have done with a little more sleep last night, and a little less cold and rain this afternoon, but all in all it was pretty much the normal weekday I was kind of hoping for.