I missed posting last night for the first time in over a month. Our business plan presentation to the directors was yesterday morning at eight a.m., and I was so paranoid about being late (since I often am a few minutes late to my first meeting of the day, which is just like being a few minutes late to every other meeting of the day, which is completely common, except that people know with the first meeting that you're just late because you're late, not because you were held up in another meeting) that I woke up at 5:30am and was at work by 7:15am. Forty-five minutes early was totally excessive, but it turns out that if you leave at 6:30, the trip takes 45 minutes, and if you leave at 7:00, it can take an hour to an hour and a half.
The presentation went exceedingly well, but I as the flood of adrenaline subsided, my energy burned out over the course of the day, and by the time I got home, all I wanted to do was sit on the couch and stare at the wall. I did that for awhile, ate dinner, and then reread 'The Blue Sword' before going to bed -- silly to reread a young adult book that I practically know by heart, but it did a v. good job of breaking me out of my corporate prison and grounding me back into my life.
Today, I pursued a path of productive hermitage -- I did fifteen loads of laundry, which took most of the afternoon. I'm happy that it's finally done, though; I have multiple sets of sheets, towels, etc. and plenty of clothes so that I don't have to do laundry very often, but when I let it pile up this badly, it's rather annoying. I also hung the painting that I got in South Africa, which has been wrapped in bubble wrap under my bed since I moved in. I intended to hang a couple of other pictures, but discovered that the picture hooks I have don't work with the frames -- and so I hung up my Stanford diploma instead. It's temporary, since it looks silly in that location and perhaps pretentious anyway -- but since my brother gave me a gorgeous frame for my diploma for Christmas one year, it looks awesome even if I feel ridiculous about having it up.
I spent the rest of the evening taking a bubble bath and reading The Devil You Know by Mike Carey. If you like hard-boiled first-person detective stories with a paranormal twist, you will *love* this book. It takes place in London, roughly the present day, although in the protagonist's London, the dead arose in waves shortly before the turn of the millennium, opening up an opportunity for him to make his career as an exorcist. The book has many of my favorite things -- it's set in a document archive, the protagonist (Felix Castor) reminds me of many of Murakami's protagonists in the amount that he drinks, there is a strong theme of justice and retribution, and the book is populated by Russians, demons, mobsters, the undead, and many other strange and interesting characters. The metaphors are almost too good and in some places feel a litle over the top, but in general the writing style is engaging, hilarious, and filled with word plays and twisted meanings. Highly recommended -- I'll have to order the next books in the series now that I've validated this one.
Tomorrow I'm having dim sum, and then intend to spend the rest of the day working on the website for my romance novel. Then it's back to the corporate grind, where I need to come to grips with my shocking failures on the work/life balance front over the last three weeks and figure out what I can do about it. But that's a worry for another day; right now, it's time for bed!
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