{"id":3682,"date":"2010-01-07T22:20:21","date_gmt":"2010-01-08T03:20:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=3682"},"modified":"2010-01-07T22:20:21","modified_gmt":"2010-01-08T03:20:21","slug":"its-already-the-second-week-of-january","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=3682","title":{"rendered":"It’s already the second week of January?"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

When you get right down to it, Arthur Dent was right about Thursdays. They really are impossible to get a hang of.<\/p>\n

Beyond my mild shock that the work week is almost over, there’s not a whole lot to report. Last night, right before bed, I read a short story by Dan Chaon called “The Bees.” I seem to think I’d read it once before, but it’s a masterful piece of work and an incredibly disquieting ghost story. Which, you know, maybe isn’t<\/i> the best thing to read late at night.
\nIt’s collected, among other places, in the Peter Straub-edited Poe’s Children: The New Horror<\/a>, if you’re interested in tempting nightmares yourself.<\/p>\n

I somehow managed to get a pretty good night’s sleep, despite that, and I caught the earlier train into Manhattan this morning. On my walk from Penn Station, I started listening to this This American Life show<\/a> about the problems with alcohol at Penn State. It’s hard not to feel a little sad for the place I went to school, and where I worked for several years, and it’s hard not see the fraternities as a big part of the problem. The amount of alcohol a lot of these college kids consider “not a big deal” and a common, every-night occurrence, is maybe more than I’ve ever had to drink in my entire life. Honestly, three drinks over several hours is about as crazy as I ever get, and I was 21 long before I had anything more than a sip of alcohol.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, one of my co-workers was being shadowed all day by a student from his own alma mater who’s interested in publishing, and I spoke with her for a few minutes about what I do as a developmental editor. I always worry, when I explain my job to fresh-faced hopefuls like this, that I’m making it sound boring. But it’s always nice to discover that I do in fact genuinely like what I do. It really is satisfying to take a good book and, with the author, make it better.<\/p>\n

And hey, we got word about our end-of-2009 bonuses and (small but still appreciated) raises today, so that’s something, right?!<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When you get right down to it, Arthur Dent was right about Thursdays. They really are impossible to get a hang of. Beyond my mild shock that the work week is almost over, there’s not a whole lot to report. Last night, right before bed, I read a short story by Dan Chaon called “The … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[60,46,28,62,52],"class_list":["post-3682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-money","tag-penn-state","tag-personal","tag-radio","tag-work"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3682"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3682"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3682\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}