Oh, look, another week has gone by and I’m still in this hole. It’s a very nice, comfortable hole, with many fine features to recommend it, but it remains a hole. I keep digging, which is probably not the best way to get out. For every deadline I get through, two more get closer and more pressing. There’s a ladder, but it just leads to another hole.
One of the people I work with — a senior partner who’s been out of law school twice as long as I have — says that working at a big law firm is like being in a pie eating contest where the grand prize is more pie.
All of this pissing and moaning is by way of excuse, again, for my failure to blog all week, and my inability to comment on your blogs in at least that long. Rest assured, I’ve been talking about you on Twitter and Facebook, which I manage to keep up with on my phone.
Also, I was sick on Tuesday night and Wednesday. And then I had insomnia on Wednesday night. And Thursday night was Unfocused Girl’s science fair.
So let’s just go to my pathetic stats, shall we?
On Writing: I started the week getting a few pages edited, but that was it; I was at 311 last Sunday, now I’m at 320. I hit Write or Die once this past week, 233 words on a little short story that probably isn’t going anywhere, but it’s been fun. That’s it, though.
I also accepted an invitation to write a chapter for a book in my area of practice, with the first draft due in July. It’s a great opportunity, professionally speaking, but I’m going to have to work hard to make progress on my fiction-writing around the research and writing for the chapter, since that will all have to be done outside of work as well.
On Running: Before today, the only running I did this week was to catch my train. The Shamrock Shuffle-on-ice wore me out, and then I got sick. It was just a little cold, but it left me completely screwed up — I got too much sleep on Tuesday night and then had a nap on Wednesday, then too much coffee to restart after the nap, then insomnia Wednesday night. All in all, I didn’t have much leftover for running. I ran 8.88 miles this morning in 1:15:00, all at home on the treadmill because it was hailing, for crying out loud; as I write this, it’s snowing. I did watch the first 2/3 of The Dark Knight, finally. So far, so good, I think; I loved the car chase on Lower Wacker Drive. If you’re stuck on a treadmill, I heartily recommend watching action movies with car chases and explosions — these are especially good for interval training.
On the iPod will not appear this Sunday. I’m planning to make this part of a mid-week post, or maybe a stand-alone item. It doesn’t really fit with the Sunday stats, and getting all the links right takes too long after I’ve written a 600-800 word post.
Random moment with the kids: Junior and Unfocused Girl woke up a little early this morning, surprising considering we were out pretty late last night at a wine tasting party (all parents and affiliated children from Unfocused Girl’s new school). The kids have both been on astronaut kicks lately, since their visit to the Soref Planetarium in Milwaukee over spring break, and Unfocused Girl has been saying she wants to go to Mars and look for alien bacteria. When I went into their room this morning, Junior, who is interested in somewhat more complex forms of alien life, was explaining to Unfocused Girl that Martian astronauts actually come to Earth in the night looking for alien life here. I asked him what alien life the Martians find here, and he said, “Us! Human beings are the aliens to the Martians!” This was like one of those moments when you can see your kid growing up before your eyes; he’s starting to understand how different people, or tentacled things, can have different points of view.
Then at breakfast he said the word “poop,” or variations thereof, so many times that I had to order him to keep the poop away from meals.
The Unfocused Life 