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Just an average Tuesday

Today was the quintessential Tuesday, if such a thing can be said to exist.

It turns out those stock photos I worried hadn’t been downloaded before they became unavailable…hadn’t been downloaded, and are no longer available. But I managed to track down one of them at another stock photo website, where we also have account, and a replacement for the other from the same artist. And, wonder of wonders, the author who needed to approve the replacement pretty quickly replied to my e-mail — almost immediately, in fact — so that headache appears to have been cleared up. I’m still a little annoyed that this was a headache, however temporarily, since it really should not have been, but what’s done is done, and a solution has been found.

Otherwise, just a normal day.

Back to work we me

I went back to work today. I was away from the office long enough that it felt a little weird being back, but not long enough that anything really weird had happened while I was out. And, overall, it was really just a normal day at work. There’s a little panic that a couple of the stock photos we thought we’d licensed for a book right before I left for the holidays were not, in fact, purchased, and the images are no longer available. And of course this happens when the authors are unavailable, incommunicado for at least a couple more weeks. And with photos that were particularly tough to select the first time around. I’m hoping it will just turn out to be a mistake, that we have the files licensed but they weren’t uploaded by the art department with the rest.

Beyond that, though, just a typical Monday.

Here endeth the vacation

I go back to work tomorrow. On the one hand, it seems much too soon; on the other, though, I suppose I have been away for two whole weeks. I’m not entirely sure what I did over those weeks — I know a couple of holidays were thrown in, but otherwise? It’s all kind of a blur. So maybe it’s just as well that I’m going back to the regular grind in the morning.

That’s what I’m going to keep telling myself, anyway.

Today, I helped my father take down the Christmas lights, and then I joined friends for our weekly writing group. (We didn’t meet last week, thanks to the holiday and the already very melted snow.) And that’s really about it. I read a little, didn’t quite finish the Sunday crossword — though I got the theme answers — and hung about the house on a cold and rainy day.

Party hearty

Today was our New York office’s annual holiday party, which meant lots of silly games throughout the day — a pair of scavenger hunts and a trivia contest, none of which I had the time or inclination to participate in — and an early close to the work day. The party ran from two o’clock to four at a club a few blocks further uptown, and it was a lot of fun. There was decent hors d’Å“uvre, some music, and an open bar — which some people obviously partook of more liberally than others. A group of us were planning on heading to another bar afterward, since it was still pretty early, but we somehow got split up, and the two of us who hadn’t squeezed into the same cab didn’t know where they were headed. We had neither cell phone numbers nor the address nor even any certainty about the name of the place.

So instead we walked to Penn Station and caught our respective trains home. Which, in hindsight, is maybe just as well, given how much I had to drink myself this evening. I don’t drink much, or often — the last time I even had a drink might have been the last holiday party — so a glass of champagne, a couple of whiskey sours, and a bottle of beer can start to catch up with me, especially over the short span of two hours on a relatively empty stomach. I wasn’t really drunk — I don’t think I’ve ever been really drunk, quite honestly — I was just buzzed enough to recognize that I’d probably start getting annoying, and a little too loud, if I got any more buzzed. Which, in my experience, is usually the right time to stop drinking.

Otherwise the day was pretty uneventful. I managed to get pretty much everything I wanted to get done this week finished and off my desk, and anything else can wait until I go back in 2011. Because between now and then, for the next sixteen days, I am on vacation. Which I plan to enjoy thoroughly by not doing much of anything at all, though I’m sure I’ll think of something to pass the time, what with Christmas and New Years and everything.

Duck season

Today was our group’s holiday lunch at the office — not to be confused with tomorrow’s office-wide holiday party — and so we trekked down a few blocks to Brasserie Les Halles, perhaps best known as the setting for Anthony Bourdain’s cooking memoir Kitchen Confidential. We’ve been going there for a few years now, and the food’s usually pretty good, even if we’ve never seen Bourdain in the flesh. (He’s apparently still “honorary Chef-at-Large,” whatever that means, although he hasn’t manned the kitchen in quite some time, and I’d be surprised if he’s often there.) I had a very tasty plate of duck confit, and there was a bottle of wine for the table. All in all, not a bad way to spend a couple of hours on a work day.

I spent the rest of the day thinking I might just get everything I need done this week finally done, before I’m off on my two-week vacation…and that’s a dangerous feeling, I have no doubt, just inviting something to go wrong at the final hour. Most of it’s just waiting for information to come in, so I can authorize something else, and get this thing finalized before I leave. It won’t be the end of the world if it waits until January — and I could probably even check my e-mail from home next week — but it would be really nice to get it off my plate.

Not an early Christmas miracle or anything, but a nice way to cap 2010 at the job.