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I ended last week happy to have ended it, however, if I had realized I was trading in last week for this week, I might have thought again. It is early Thursday morning, so who knows what new and interesting issues await, but here is my week thus far:
Sunday (highpoint of the week): Laundry & house cleaning
Monday: Good thing-- had dinner with much missed friend Jason. Bad thing-- I spent four hours driving/stuck in traffic, and then almost two hours in the metro system trying to get back to the hotel when someone jumped in front of the train across the platform at the station where I was. As in, we were all sitting on the train while across the platform emergency services were scrambling around trying to figure out where, exactly, they might find the mangled body. They kept announcing that they were being held there, the train would move on in just a few minutes, but after twenty minutes they kicked everyone out of the station and we all had to walk past cops putting out crime scene tape. Shuttle buses hadn't started yet, and booth guy at McPherson said "just go to any metro station and tell them what happened and they'll let you in". So I walked over to Metro Center to grab the red to the yellow, where I had to argue for a long time with that booth guy about whether or not I should have to pay a second fare to get on.
Tuesday: Good thing-- had dinner with dear friend Rebecca. Bad thing-- started morning out with two hour trip to Reston that should have taken forty minutes when, two exits short of my destination, everything halts on the Dulles toll road because of a nine car pile up. So for the second day in a row, I get the sight of emergency services scrambling around to retrieve mangled bodies, this time surrounded by the twisted metal of nine cars. Spend my day bringing art to the children and attempt to rush back to hotel to dump car and metro over to board meeting. This should have worked, right? Board meeting at 6:30, I leave school at 4pm, I am driving reverse commute, Reston to Arlington. I gave up on making it to the board meeting when it was 6:25 and I was still sitting in front of the Pentagon. I could have walked to the hotel faster. I could have walked to the hotel and back to Arlington National Cemetery twice in the time it took me to get past the Pentagon. So, I ended up calling into the meeting, as usual.
Wednesday: Discover, much too late to do anything about it, that the latch on that turns the hotel shower into a shower is stuck. Am forced to wash hair by squatting in the tub and shoving my head under the faucet. How happy does this make me? Not very. Get to school fine. On departure, see yet another accident. Creep past, four miles an hour. By the time I get home, I have spent more hours in the car than I did in the school.
Rest of week: Mr. P's grandfather is gravely ill, so we are heading out tomorrow morning for an emergency trip to Tennessee.
Somehow I don't think I'm going to finish nanowrimo this year. Actually, I think I might just be happy to finish November.
This week has been insane. The month is pretty insane, really, but this week involved two major deadlines, work travel, and another project where multitasking was not possible, but which took up a dozen hours. In addition to the regular stuff-- work and home and nanowrimo and stuff. I had my last letterpress class today, and it's a class I've really enjoyed.
Here's to the last week of the month, when I won't be traveling and will have friends over for feasting!
Paper: done. Yeay! Nanowrimo: about a third done... could be worse. House: messy. Need to get on that. Work project: not started. Really need to get on that. Stuff for craft show tonight & tomorrow: as done as it's gonna be. Car packed for craft show: right. Gotta get on that now....
Why, yes, I have. My love, Mr. P, does get kissed quite often, but he got extras today for his service, and because I'm very very happy that he is not in Iraq anymore. I had the day off, which meant that I was at least somewhat productive-- I did get some sewing stuff done that had to get done, and finished the second edit on the paper and worked on additional accoutrements. The project for which those pieces have been made is due tomorrow, and I think now that I will be able to get it wrapped up-- yeay!
In the meantime, I took Mr. P out for a Veterans' Day lunch, wherein we stuffed ourselves so completely that neither of us is interested in dinner. Instead, we're going for an episode or two of old skool Star Trek. We are just wild and crazy, que no?
of the paper done! Yeay! Now for more editing, boooo. But at least the first draft is done. I have a couple more components to finish on this thing, plus editing, and then it will be wrapped, bow-tied, and sent off. Yeay!
Only seventy-eight more things on the list for November. Meanwhile, it's 5:45 AM and my bags are packed, so it must be time to bring art to the children.
I'm supposed to be writing this paper. Not my novel, this other thing. It's actually on something I'm quite interested in, it's just the timeline on it is kind of bad, so I'm not feeling super motivated to get the thing done.... when I really need to be very motivated, considering the deadline and all the other things that need doing in the same time. So I'm working on it, but not in the oooh, I've got to get this done so I'm plowing through it way I need to be. More of a peck peck, finally finished that paragraph I wonder what is going on in the New York Times sort of way.
It's the absolute worst kind of procrastination. See, I've got a long list of other things with imminent deadlines, but this one is the most imminent, so I am only doing that one rather than any of the others. Because if I actually moved on to those I would really be procrastinating, and this is the top of the list. So, instead of doing the paper, I'm writing a blog post while I pointedly do NOT write my nanowrimo, because the paper comes first. SIGH.Okay, back to the paper.
writing my Nanowrimo novel thingy. And also an article that I'm feeling a little half hearted about, but that needs to be done if it is going to get done, and soon. Maybe both of these at the same time not such a good idea. But all of the writing is distracting me from the rather disappointing election we had here. Because I love the idea of having a governor who thinks I'm half a person because I have interior rather than exterior plumbing.
In the meantime, I'm getting close to the 10K word mark on my novel, so pens up!
And also, because this cracks me the hell up every single time, I will share:
Mr. P and I were discussing this last night, and it is just the beauty of Eddie Izzard having encapsulated that moment that we have all had in which we find ourselves being defeated by relentless stupidity. Which is kind of how I feel about the election.
It is that time of year again! That's right, Nanowrimo time!
I've signed up again, and again I have way too much on my plate so I'm not sure that I'll be able to finish... but hope springs eternal, and I said the same thing last year, the year before, and the year before that, and still managed to finish anyway, so you never know...
So if you've ever had a hankering to write the great American novel, or a mystery, or a sci-fi novel, or whatever, go sign up!
This morning while trying to get ready for me to go to my Letterpress class (yes, I'm taking a six week course in learning how to do Old Skool printing. With little type blocks. And an electric press from the thirties. I'm making Christmas gifts for people. Because I have geeky literary friends who will really dig a hand set, printed on nice paper, paragraph from À la recherche du temps perdu. Which will, sadly, be in English because they do not have diacritics in their type sets. Sad clown), and while Mr. P was running around trying to load up the car to take his things to DC to be hung in the gallery for his opening next week, that some jack. bastard. tried to break into Mr. P's studio/the garage sometime in the last day and a half or so. The person in question did this by bashing the crap out of the doorknob, thereby bending the cylinder, and ensuring that the door will be frozen in place forever more. On the upside, I believe that this may have discouraged the asshat (likely some stoopid tweaker) from continuing his mission. On the downside, the door is now stuck in place and will necessitate a repair we cannot afford (unless, that is, Mr. P's show sells out. Do you hear this, universe? We need a sold out show). On the upside, the key for the lock was bent and very near breaking in half, so this was going to be on the repair agenda in any case at some point. On the downside, I'm very unhappy that some freaking tweaker was in our backyard, bashing the hell out of the doorknob to the garage, which is about fifteen feet from the backdoor of the house.
Needless to say, this is not in any way raising my somewhat anemic affection for our current home city. I lived in three different developing countries for almost five years, including one that had no rule of law, and the sum total of my encounters with crime were the loss of two cheap bicycles and a shirt stolen from a laundry line. Almost ten years in New York City and I once had someone take two subway tokens and two dollars out of the pocket of a jacket I'd left unattended on a couch at a club. Four years in Washington, D.C. and once someone broke into the building where I lived (but not my apartment) and stole cash from my landlady's purse. We've been in this house a year and a half and we've got tweakers in the backyard wielding 4x4s. Makes me long for those halcyon Phnom Penh days....
Last week I finished up a baby quilt for a friend who just had her first child...
I included some fabric with space aliens on it :)
In the meantime, just back from more work travel, and am ready to not travel anymore.... though there isn't a reprieve coming any time soon (like January, I think). That said, I'm pretty happy to have moved into late October without having caught swine flu at any of the schools I've thus far visited.....
