work

Thursdaying along

Another busy day at work, although I at least seem to be making some small headway into the half dozen different projects I’ve got juggling now. Of course, I’d much rather be writing, all things being equal.

To say nothing of the many, many stories for Kaleidotrope that, it occurred to me this morning, I still need to edit and squeeze into some kind of layout. The last (print) issue might have to be “Fall 2011” instead of October, depending.

I weirdly feel like I’ve been ignoring the zine, despite having just put out an issue in July. That issue, though, was a little different than the norm, being just the single novella and and a long-form poem rather than the usual assortment. There’s never been a flood of reviews for the zine — though some nice write-ups on occasion by people like Gavin Grant or Rich Horton — but SFRevu has some kind things to say, if you’re curious.

Back to the garden party

I had this idea, in the back of my head, that I would get up early this morning to write. But, honestly, it’s an idea I’ve had many times before, and it almost never seems to win out over going back to sleep for another hour.

I suppose there’s always tomorrow to try it again. I’ve been reading Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird : Some Instructions on Writing and Life, which so far is full of a lot of simple but really good practical advice for writers. It makes a little sad for not having encountered the book except by name before this…but it also makes me want to write, so that’s good.

This afternoon, at work, we had one of our semi-regular “brown bag lunches,” where they invite in a speaker and give everybody shows up to hear the speaker a free lunch. It can be hit or miss sometimes, but today’s talk by NY DJ and author Pete Fornatale was actually pretty entertaining and informative. He talked more about Woodstock than his experience in radio — he’s got a new book on the former — and the presentation maybe got a little away from him near the end — he showed this video in its entirety; Chris Bliss is an impressive juggler, but even if I hadn’t seen the video before, it strayed a little from the topics at hand. But, overall, it was one of the better talks we’ve had.

And hey, free lunch.

Still grinding along

I’ll say this much for going away for a week and a half: it certainly leaves you with plenty of work to do when you return.

It feels like it’s going to be a long week, although not necessarily a bad one. We had cupcakes and ice cream cake for a co-worker’s birthday today, so how bad could it be? And I finished reading Scott Westerfeld’s Leviathan, which, if not exactly brilliant, is good fun, smart and entertaining YA steampunk.

I just feel like I haven’t quite adjusted to being back. Part of that’s the change in the weather, not really yet fall but definitely starting to cool down. Though it was at least this cool, if not occasionally cooler, in Canada, it still feels strange to have left New York and found that time has actually continued to move on in my absence. And I still miss a lot about Banff. Admittedly, it’s hard not to miss a lot about it — setting my own schedule, responsible for nothing more than enjoying the scenery and trying to write — but I still haven’t quite shaken the weird disconnect of being back.

I suppose I will, at some point.

The daily grind and back to it

I overslept a little this morning, which maybe I should have known would happen. I didn’t get to work too much later than expected, but it still wasn’t exactly how I wanted to start the week off.

It felt very odd being back in the office. On the one hand, the week in Canada flew by very quickly, I also feel like I’ve been gone a lot longer than a week. I found myself wading through e-mails, trying to remember where I’d left certain projects at the end of August, trying to piece together where other projects stood based on what had come in since I’d been gone.

It was a perfectly fine day, beyond the oversleeping and a little unexpected (and I think possibly IT-imposed) aggravation with my desktop background. But, all things being equal, I think I’d rather still be in Banff.

Putter there

Today was our company outing to Randalls Island, just across the bridge from Manhattan, and it was actually a lot of fun. I got to work around 8:30, answered a few e-mails — fewer than I would have liked — and then I set my away message and headed downstairs to hop on the bus.

We arrived a little before ten and were left mostly to our own devices, with a driving range, batting cage, bean bag toss, and lots of other games available. There was also a short relay race — one leg a sack race, another a three-legged race, the third an egg-and-spoon race with lemons standing in for the eggs — and a dodgeball “tournament,” both of which I just watched. I played some miniature golf with my co-workers, enjoyed a decent lunch, and got to leave work early when we returned to the office around 3.

Meanwhile, much ado about Hurricane Irene, expected to hit us sometime tomorrow into Sunday. It’s unclear just how bad it’s going to get, but we should be safe, at worst losing power for a little while. We’re hoping even that doesn’t happen, though, and we’re far enough from the coast not to be in any of the evacuation areas. We’re also not dependent on public transportation over the weekend, so we won’t be impacted by NYC shutting that down until Monday, when everything should hopefully have returned to normal.

To think that in a week from now, I will be in the Canadian Rockies…