work

“I just really like talking about Farscape.”

I spent the day building book records in our system, running profit and loss calculations and researching competing products, doing a lot of data entry for some new proposals, with an eye towards contracting a couple of these books before the year is out. Or at least sending the contracts to the authors before I shut down my computer and put up an away message for the last two weeks of December. If you’re imagining the glamorous life of a book editor, chances are, this isn’t what you’re picturing.

But it’s Friday, which is always nice. The week went by weirdly fast, especially for a week that started off really slow. I guess it’s that whole “time is relative” and “eye of the beholder” thing again, but I had to stop a couple of times during the day and just confirm that it was indeed, truly the end of the week. Even now, I’m a little unsure. Am I going to wake up tomorrow only to discover I was supposed to go to work after all?

Well, until then, I’m acting under the assumption that it is, in fact, the weekend. I can always claim delusion afterward if I’m proven wrong.

I don’t have any real plans for the weekend, beyond maybe getting a haircut. I’d like to do some more writing, which I’ve been slacking off from recently, and there are a few things I’d like to read. Right now, I’m a little more than midway through Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Years of Rice and Salt, which I’m really enjoying a whole lot. But it is a long book, and it seems to be taking me quite a while to get through it. I’m only at 39 books for the year, and that’s including some novellas and graphic novels. I try to aim for at least 50, and I’m worried with only a few more weeks left, I’m not going to hit that target. And while you’d think two weeks off from work would leave me plenty of time to read, it also leaves me plenty of time to slack off and not get any reading done, which I am all too prone to. But I’m going to try.

This evening, though, I mostly just watched last night’s episode of Community, which may have been my favorite ever, and certainly one of the sweetest the show’s ever done. My geek brain nearly exploded when Abed started talking to guest star Paul F. Tompkins about Farscape.

‘Tis the season

No big presentations to attend today, though we did have a quick team meeting — ostensibly to review the titles under contract and in production, but mostly just to plan the date for our group’s holiday lunch and photo.

Every year we go out to lunch as a group, separate from the office-wide holiday party, and every year we take a group photo that we send as a holiday card to our authors. It’s interesting to look back at those photos and see just how much our lineup has changed since I came on board in 2006, with people leaving for other jobs, going back to school, moving across country, et cetera. Last year, we branched out beyond the Christmas tree in reception and took the photo in front of the New York Public Library. This year, we’re going all-out New Yorker and heading to Rockefeller Center for the photo. That’s not exactly far, though it’s not one block away like the Library, and I wonder if we’re not underestimating the distance in what’s very quickly become a very cold city. (Sure, low 30’s and 40’s are nothing to some of you, but I really sort of wished I’d worn a hat to work today.) And while there was maybe some concern that taking a holiday photo on December 13th was too soon, considering how early Hanukkah is this year — tonight’s the second night — we’re probably safely splitting the difference between that and Christmas, Kwanzaa, et al. And considering that most of us are going to be out the entire last week of December — and a couple, myself included, the entire last two weeks — we didn’t have a lot of other days to choose from.

I have to admit, I skipped the tree lighting in the reception area, despite the lure of eggnog and homemade cookies, and despite the fact that our team meeting ended in plenty of time to attend. I’m not a grinch, not by any means. I’ve gone on record to say I think it’s way too soon for houses decked out in lights and nothing but an endless cycle of carols on the radio — to say nothing of the electrical cost of the former, or the real mediocrity of a lot of the latter. And I definitely think it was too early right after — or before Thanksgiving. But I like Christmas decorations, and Christmas songs, and I like holidays in general. I just like celebrating them, you know, around the holiday season. But I mostly didn’t attend the tree lighting (or, rather, switching-on) because it crams about a hundred or more people into a space that maybe comfortably holds ten.

Maybe next year, when we’ve moved into our shiny new offices. I hear the cookies were really quite good.

It can’t be December yet, can it?

It rained almost all day here and in Manhattan, which is probably just as well. Thanks to a pair of presentations that I’d signed up for but had entirely forgotten until about an hour before they started — and can I just say, it’s already December 1? — I wound up with maybe half an hour for lunch. Which translated into about fifteen minutes, after I had to double-back for my wallet, and after the new guy at the place on the corner screwed up my initial pizza order. (I think he maybe gave my slice to someone else. Then again, he may have also under-charged me, so I guess we’re all good.) The rest of the day, when I wasn’t learning about e-books and library sales and customer service — and both presentations were reasonably informative — I spent locked in some kind of horrible death-match with the system we use to create book records, among other things. I don’t have cause to use it as much as I used to, back when I was an editorial assistant and created new records all the time, and every time I go into it, something’s changed, or there’s some weird new error message. I think it’s just angry I don’t spend much time with it anymore, and it’s acting out in spite. I’m hopeful we can get the problem I’m having with it now resolved, and soon, since there are three books I’d like to move ahead with before the end of the year.

And, for me, the year more or less ends on December 17. (Which is itself like a half-day, thanks to our company holiday party.)

So, y’know, fingers crossed.

End of a long weekend

It’s the end of the long Thanksgiving weekend, and while I’ll be sad to see it go, it will probably be good to get back to work and a regular schedule. That doesn’t mean, however, that I’m not still taking the last two weeks of December off from work, or that I’m not suddenly thinking three weeks is a long time to wait until then. Because I am, on both counts. But at the same time, there’s something to be sad for orderly routine. Days off from it wouldn’t seem as nice without.

Not much happened here today, beyond Chloe, my sister’s dog, deciding to run all over the neighborhood for about twenty minutes right before it was time for her to head back home to Maryland. It took the three of us — me, my sister, and my father — along with a very helpful, hot-dog-wielding neighbor to wrangle her back home. And, when we did, it was more her getting tired and returning than anything, running back into the garage as if nothing had ever happened.

My own day wasn’t half as exciting. I didn’t even finish doing the Sunday crossword.