work

Tomorrow afternoon, I fly to Boston for a conference.

Today…well, I didn’t.

I did, however, spend a lovely day listening, yet again, to tests of the fire alarms in the building at work, practically every ten minutes from 9 to 4. That’s one thing I definitely won’t miss when we move to the new building.

Yesterday, I fell asleep while reading — I know, I am so exciting, am I not? — before I could post much of anything here. What the little I did post was actually written at around one in the morning, shortly before I went back to sleep, for reals this time, and it only really hinted at how busy my day was.

But then again, I mostly just spent it in the tiresome and difficult, but critically necessary, task of compiling and consolidating manuscript reviews into something approaching a document the authors can use to make revisions, something we can use to judge the extent to which revisions are actually necessary, and something I felt it necessary to organize not just by chapter but by individual manuscript page. (Some of the reviewers were thorough — or sadistic, depending on your perspective — enough to provide full-on track changes for some of the chapters, rather than just overall comments, so I had those to wade through.) And you don’t want to hear about any of that.

You want to hear about how I started my morning off by tripping and falling in the parking lot next to my train station.

In all the snow we’ve had this winter, several of the blocks in the parking lot — those nameless concrete and rebar dividers that theoretically keep you from banging your car into a wall — had been kicked up, all in a single pile, knotted together if large concrete blocks can be said to be knotted. This is right at the corner, about half a block (or a building’s length) from the train station, and a car was pulling into the spot in front of me. I tried to maneuver…and obviously did not do so very deftly.

“I hurt mostly my pride,” I told the gentleman who asked me if I was okay. But, to quote They Might Be Giants, confidentially — I never had much pride. I’d actually banged my left knee pretty bad and scraped up the palm of my left hand. Bad enough that I decided to turn around and head home rather than run (or maybe limply stumble) to catch my train. The cuts weren’t so bad; I smeared on some Bacitracin, slapped a bandage on my knee, and was actually on the next train fifteen minutes later.

(Herein lies the benefit of living a five-minute walk from the station. Then again, if I’d missed that train, therein lies the disadvantage of living a five-minute walk from this particular station. The next next train wouldn’t be for another hour.)

Anyway, once I got to the office, I managed to find some bandages that fit (and would stay on, at least temporarily) for the palm of my hand, and I changed the dressing on my knee. I’m actually not as badly hurt as I could have been. The last time I slipped and fell, landing (I think) unfortunately on the same knee, I actually ruined a pair of pants, and walking on the leg afterward hurt more than it did for most of today. My hand is still pretty scratched up, and I’ll likely have a bump and/or bruise on my knee for the next few days, but all things considered? I’m fine.

And so is my iPod, which went flying out of my hands as I went plummeting to the gravel below.

I’m hoping for a much less eventful weekend, full of reading and writing and very little falling down, going boom.

Busy, busy day.

I spent the day working pretty much exclusively on two books, one on art therapy and the other on career counseling. And that was pretty much my Wednesday.

Next Wednesday I’ll be flying to Boston, though, so you have that vicarious semi-thrill to look forward to, I guess.

Today was almost certainly a Tuesday.

I started consolidating reviews on a career counseling textbook. There was a brief moment when a stress management text was, in fact, really stressing me out. I shared some comments on an animal-assisted therapy book we’ll soon move into production. But, honestly, the closest thing approaching excitement today? I bought a new pair of headphones.

It’s just these thrilling, day-to-day adventures that keep you coming back for more, I know!