November 15, 1999
Well, I'm back. I apologize for not updating for so long, but work was kicking my ass last week and I didn't even have time to make coffee, much less update my journal. I probably could have done it once I got home, but I just didn't feel up to it. Did you all miss me?
Anyway, like I said, work sucks lately. We're into our production cycle, which means that every week for six weeks we have a book deadline to meet. Jean (my immediate supervisor) and I were here until 8pm on Friday night. I actually wanted to stay even later to get everything done then, but Jean was starting to drag, and I figured it wouldn't hurt to get home and get to actually DO something, so we let it go and came in on Saturday morning.
I hate working Saturdays. It just feels so wrong, somehow, coming into work on the weekends. I'd rather be sleeping in or surfing the Web or watching cartoons. Of course, the upside is that I make time-and-a-half, there's hardly anybody else here to interrupt me, and I can play the radio as loud as I want. I guess maybe it's not all that bad. Besides, I only have to do it during the update cycle.
In turkey-related news. Our friends John and Bibi threw their annual Thanksgiving dinner this weekend. They normally do it the weekend before Thanksgiving, but this year they're going out of town that weekend, so we had it on Saturday instead. It was tons o' fun. Keith and I brought ears of corn, since Keith somewhere picked up the idea that you can't have a traditional Thanksgiving dinner without ears of corn. I guess it's a Pilgrim thing. I indulged him, which wasn't difficult because corn is about the easiest thing to cook in the world.
The dinner was great, I met some new people, and had fun talking with the old ones. Also, I love these functions because afterward I can interrogate Keith for all the dirt. "So, she's on her FOURTH husband? Wow! ... and you say that HE used to live with HER but they broke up and they hardly ever go to social functions together? ...OK, and why didn't SHE show up? Because I know she was home earlier." Keith generally obliges me and fills in all the past history that I don't know, although I have a feeling he's not as interested in it all as I am. I'm just a big gossip at heart, I guess.
In Charles-related news.Charles got honorable mention in the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Contest. It's just about the most prestigious contest for new science fiction writers that there is, and he's pretty excited about getting honorable mention. "Honorable mention", in this case, means that the judges deemed his story to be in the top 2% of stories that were submitted this year. I think that's pretty damn cool. I read an earlier draft of the story that he sent, when he was working on it last year, and thought it was really good, so I'm glad the judges agreed with me. Someday Charles is going to be a Famous Author, and then I can claim to have known him back when he was sleeping on a futon mattress in a rundown student tenement duplex in Evanston, IL. Of course, I was doing the same thing, but I'm not going to be famous. Probably. Well, maybe infamous. We'll see.
Back to me-related news. I hope my bosses at work haven't caught on yet that I work on the Montgomery Scott Principle of Work, which is to say, I never tell them how long a project is REALLY going to take, and I never do work as fast as I'm really capable of doing it. If I tell them how long a project is really going to take, then they're going to expect it to be done then. If anything happens to delay it, or I run into snags, that means I'll be late. It's better to slightly inflate the time you think it will take, to give yourself a margin for error. And I REALLY don't want them to know how fast I can really work, because if they know that, they'll start giving me WAY more work to do, and I'll never get to update this journal again.
Oh, by the way, at the dinner on Saturday, I got a lot of compliments about my appearance, which made me feel really good about all the time I've been spending on myself lately. Of course, partly it was that girl thing where you're like "Oh, your shoes look fantastic! Where did you get them?" and then the other person says, "You like them? Thanks! And your hair is just great tonight", etc. etc. It still made me feel good, though.
In Keith-related news. So last night I was all snuggled into bed and the lights were off, and Keith was undressing and then I heard this huge CRASH! So I got all panicked and was like, "Keith? Keith?! Are you OK? What happened?" And then, I don't know why I asked this but it seemed reasonable at the time, "Where are you??"
So this plaintive voice comes from the floor, "Um, I'm in the closet?"
Then I started laughing hysterically while Keith tried to explain that he'd put his arm out to support himself on the wall, except the wall wasn't there because he was standing next to the closet, and...
Then he gave up because I was just laughing too much. I mean, seriously, how could I not? He fell into the closet while he was taking his pants off, he probably deserves some kind of award or something for that.
Ah, domestic tranquility.