Things Are Looking Up

This week has not been a good one. But it's almost over, and things are seeming a bit rosier as the day goes on.

After a 3 month process of procrastination, I sat down with a colleague today over a 2-beer lunch to get our book chapter going. It's just a 10 page case study write up based on information we've already organized and presented, but both of us treated it like the plague. When I tried to back out of it with a no-excuses-we-just-couldn't-possibly-get-to-it-until-the-end-of-July approach, the editor's response was "Great -- we just switched publishers and the whole project is delayed. We can wait on you". Not the response we had hoped for, since we were both having visceral reactions to sitting down in front of the computer. But, thanks to the outrageous hospitality (and Blue Moon on tap) at Busboys and Poets, where it looks like you have to have a lap top to get in the place, we'll have it wrapped up in no time. Whew.

My colleague and star of this week's episode of Speech is going away for the weekend with her ailing husband to watch their daughter play in an Ultimate Frisbee Tournament.

The weather for Saturday is supposed to be 94 with a 10% chance of late afternoon showers -- the perfect day for the 3rd annual Dinner Club aboard The Viking, a floating deck with a small outboard motor for tooling around the man-made lake at A.'s parents' house (more on that later). Needless to say, it is always a very, very good time.

Project Runway is back.

My apartment is actually kind of clean.

At the time of this writing, my cat is doing the thing where she runs between the bedroom and the living room at top speed while growling, stopping only to hop up on the kitchen table to check on the people in the pictures on the wall (I'm convinced she thinks they are windows -- she puts a paw up and peers over the edge of the frame). I love it when she's like this. Once while visiting my mom and the cat-cousins, for no reason that humans could be aware of she ran past my family seated around the dinner table at top speed carrying my mom's bath mat in her teeth.

And, finally, just 26 hours until my ticketed viewing time for The Dark Night.

The picture is from a courtyard in Siena, Italy and is from here.