"Puppet wrangler? There weren't any puppets in this movie!" – Crow T. Robot
Well, the ground didn’t shake today, although there is possibly still a hurricane headed in our direction. We have a company outing planned for Friday, so let’s hope the rain passes us by for at least a little while. The rain date is September 1, and I’ll be well on my way to the wilds of Canada by then.
So apparently there was an earthquake today?
Everyone here is fine. It was reportedly a 5.8-magnitude earthquake, which, as many West Coast people were quick to point out over Twitter and elsewhere, is pretty much nothing, especially when you’re several miles and states over from the fault line. We definitely felt it in my office, up on the eighth floor, a weird vibration that caused a bunch of us to look up and say things like, “Did…did you feel something?”
Yeah, it was weirdly disconcerting, especially since I don’t think I’ve ever experienced an earthquake before, but it wasn’t exactly frightening. We’ve had freight trains go past our block — we’re right by the tracks, here at home — that have shaken me more. I wasn’t able to reach my sister, who works around the Washington, D.C., area (and therefore closer to the epicenter than New York), but only because the cell phone coverage went down. She wasn’t in any danger either. I have one co-worker who was outside, eating his lunch, who missed the quake altogether.
Other than that non-event of a quake — which nevertheless dominated conversation in the office most of the remaining afternoon — it was a pretty standard Tuesday. A conference call about a book in development was about as exciting as it otherwise got.
Except for a brief video conference with our new production manager in the UK, today was a pretty typical Monday. Lots of little annoyances, small fires that needed to be (and I think and hope were) put out, and things to get done. I’ll be out the first week, and then some, of September, headed to Canada, so getting some things squared away before then would be nice.
I managed to wake up early enough today to get into work early enough that I didn’t feel bad about leaving work early.
Yeah, I think makes sense, right?
No big plans for the weekend, beyond maybe some reading and some writing. I’ll probably pass on the arithmetic.
I seem to be feeling a lot better today. Not quite 100% — I’m still feeling the effects of allergies and, occasionally, I think, remnants of those allergy meds — but much better than I was last night, when I went to be around 10:30 with a box of tissues beside my head. (It was actually really annoying, knowing that I could make it all go away, the sneezing and sniffling and itchiness, with just one little pill, but the trade-off of vague but persistent unease just isn’t worth it.)
Other than the allergies, it was a pretty normal day. I got some things accomplished at work; I finished reading a really nice book. I may go to sleep a little early again tonight, but overall Tuesday was a lot better than Monday.