Apologies for not blogging last night; I was in the midst of a truly annoying project and was falling asleep over my keyboard when I finally decided to throw in the towel, and I couldn't bear to stay awake any longer and blog. But yesterday was mostly lovely; I spent the day attempting to write and finally figured out what was wrong with the scene I had been struggling with, so that is good news. Then I went to my old neighborhood (yes, I realize I have like fourteen old neighborhoods; this one is where I used to live with Adit) to have dinner with John, Jess, and Emily, who is in town from Berlin. It was great to catch up with all of them, of course, if slightly surreal to see them in the same place and consider how we're all getting old.
But I couldn't hang out all night; I had to come home and start on this stupid thing I got roped into. As I mentioned in my Sunday night blog post, I had finished judging the 8 entries I was assigned for my chapter's writing contest, but some other judge claimed she had never gotten hers and then refused to do any of the ones she was assigned. We asked for volunteers, but only a couple of people helped out - and since it had to get done immediately and I am a total sucker, I ended up with sixteen entries to judge. That basically took two hours last night and seven hours or so today - each entry is 15pgs, which doesn't take forever to read, but the stupid f'ing scoring sheet requires scoring 20 different attributes on a 1-5 scale and writing a comment for any score equal to or less than a three. Ugh ugh ugh. But I'm done, and some of the entries were really good, so at least there's that.
So, you can guess that I spent all day judging entries today. I took a break to make myself a knock-off of the bayou omelette I had in New Haven a couple of weeks ago - andouille sausage, shrimp, peppers and onions, cheddar cheese, tomatoes, and sour cream. I made a scramble instead of an omelette, and I think I messed up a few things: I used too many sundried tomatoes, too much olive oil, not enough pepper and onion, and my cheddar cheese was just slightly over the hill. Despite that would-be-catastrophic number of fuck-ups, it was still really good, and I'm prepared to try again someday.
Around three p.m., though, I realized I needed to get out of here and head to the south bay to beat traffic before dinner. So I went to a Starbucks down there and judged contest entries like a madwoman until it was time to meet Heather (aka dear respected madam) for a v. belated dinner to celebrate my birthday. We talked about all manner or topics, as per usual, and it was great to see her and catch up on all the latest in our respective lives. I also resisted the siren's call of margaritas (or, more accurately, the siren's call of the waiter who always tries to get me drunk; I had one margarita, which was about three too few in his view), so I was able to come home tonight and sleep in my own bed like a responsible adult. Ha. As soon as I got here, I had to finish inputting feedback on seven entries, but now I'm done, and I'm going to stop volunteering and stop seeing people and move into a cave on a mountain top where I, too, can claim that I can't possibly do stuff like this. Ha.
Okay, sleepytime beckons - goodnight!
No comments:
Post a Comment