Thursday morning and my last day in the office for the week, which is kind of nice. I get to leave work early today, too. Usually I work too many hours on my clinic days, so I generally shave some time off my work-at-home day and my admin-in-the-office this week. Unfortunately, last Friday was a holiday where I can’t shave hours off, and I had to be in clinic on Monday so I had to stay all day. As I was doing my time sheet for the week, I realized I was going to have to leave early both yesterday and today.
There are worse problems to have, really.
I am more tired this morning than I have been all week, which is about par for the course, really. Because of the above, i get to leave early again today, and tomorrow I get to work at home. I think we have a department meeting in the morning. I’m not sure if I want to drive over to the office for it, or if I should join via the Internet. (My guess right now is I’ll join the meeting on-line so I don’t have to get up earlier; but we’ll see. It seems kind of silly to me to drive all the way down there a half-hour meeting…but I’ve done sillier things before.) I was very tired when I got home from work yesterday, despite leaving early, and I ran an errand on my way home. I did get some work done last night, and hope to get even more done tonight, so I can finish that project no later than Saturday. We also watched Somebody Somewhere, which is a very nice little show, and I am sorry this is its last season, to be honest. It’s very sweet and intimate and small, which is part of its charm, I think. I also spent some time reading The Demon of Unrest, which I hope to finish this weekend as well. It’s very strange, you know; Paul and I were talking last night about how horrible everything is going to be, and I basically said, “My plan is to enjoy myself as much as possible before the inauguration”, which we both agreed was the best plan. The weird thing about The Demon of Unrest is it is all set in the period between the 1860 election, through the transition, and then of course the attack on the fort. The entire country, it seemed, was holding its breath waiting to see what happened when Lincoln was sworn in (there was even concern about certifying the Electoral College vote1). South Carolina and the other deep Southern states (Mississippi, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, and Louisiana) have already seceded from the union–which of course made Fort Sumter a pressure point for both sides; in a way, Sumter was like Guantanamo Bay–federal American property in another country. I’m sure Guantanamo galls Cubans as much as Sumter galled South Carolinians after secession–and the big US flag flying over the fort, to them, was just another Yankee insult to them. So, I am reading a book where the entire country was holding its breath between an election and an inauguration, kind of like we’re experiencing right now. How bad will it be? Will it be a repeat of the last time, only stupider and crueler? Will MAGA prove just as unable (or worse) to govern as they did the last time?
I’m so glad the so-called “patriots” are so delighted to have our government and system undermined and/or destroyed; certainly damaged and broken more than they already are. I’m really looking forward to my first tank of $1.25 gas and 25 cent cartons of eggs. (Sarcasm, obviously we are all going to be looking back to the “horribly high” prices of this past year with a tragic yearning.)
With no football games to care about this weekend, I hope to get back to working on my own book as well as getting some reading done. It’s nice that the flood gates have opened and I am finding the joy in reading again, which is quite marvelous. It also gives me hope that the writing, once the dam breaks there, will be much the same. I started making a to-do list yesterday, which was an amazing step in the right direction. I am hesitant to say that I am going back to my pre-whatever self–old selves are sadly gone–but I’m hoping I’ll be able to get back on the writing horse in a new way. Maybe the days of three thousand words per day are gone, and I have to come up with a new system rather than the old tried and true one. Cha-cha-changes! I’m already noticing that I need to find a new editorial system to replace the old one, which I am finding to be a lot more problematic than it used to be, so I can’t go as quickly as I used to–which I need to remember when telling someone a timeline for when I can get something done by.
I kind of am feeling a bit on the lower energy side–it is Thursday, after all–but I get to go home early today, so I think I’ll be able to get the work stuff done that I want to–I can sit in my easy chair and edit with my lap desk–so I’m not worried about that aspect of today’s lethargy, and usually once I get started I get going with a very real determination to see the day’s workload through. All in all, after a very long break and a very short work-week last week, this return to a normal length work week hasn’t gone terribly, overall.
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. May your Thursday be as lovely as you, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back on the morrow.
- It has all happened before, as always. ↩︎
Queer and Loathing in America 