A killer shift...

After a relatively quiet first half of the shift on console, I retired to the back room prepared for the quietness to continue.

Not so.

Got hit with an into-Russian translation and had three times the usual amount of "fun," because the document kept getting revised. When you factor in the fact that my into-Russian skills are much weaker than my into-English skills, it's easy to see we're talking a major time-hole, here.

After that document was beaten into submission and finally sent, another into-Russian message was tossed my way for translation, and as I reported that one completed, a message arrived from Moscow that needed to be translated into English.

Did that one, too.

And as I finished that one, RIO tells me there's yet another message in my "to be translated" directory.

This one is not trivial, as it summarizes some discussions among various folks earlier in the evening/night/morning, and it's into Russian to boot. Fortunately, the oncoming shift has arrived, and this document now belongs to them.

Anyway, that's enough of that for a while (i.e., until 8 pm tomorrow night); it's time to get ready to go home. Ciao.

Cheers...

Lethargy Is Good...

While I don't feel sleepy right now - having become accustomed to this dreary, brain-damaging graveyard shift - I don't exactly feel really gung-ho-up-and-at-'em either, at the immediate moment.

It seemed that, before I could blink today, it was already 6 pm and time to put away thoughts of doing anything that did not directly further the goal of getting my carcass to JSC in time for the start of my shift.

I can't really say I had fun, but I felt sufficiently overwhelmed by the clutter in the house to retreat to the bedroom and finish reading Sue Grafton's latest book, P is for Peril.

It was a good read. I find Grafton's writing gets better and better as she works her way through the alphabet, and the plot kept the reader hanging until the very end... almost to the very last paragraph.

<digression>
It reminds me of a story - perhaps apocryphal - told by Mickey Spillane, to the effect that he once bet someone that he would write a book whose entire plot, sense, and structure would revolve upon the use of one word. He did this to defend the idea that words count, and moreover, that vast seas of meaning could be influenced by one word. That word appeared at the end of one of his Mike Hammer novels, if memory serves, and it should come as no surprise to find out Spillane won the bet.
</digression>

The general style of the Grafton book parallels, in my mind, the style Robert B. Parker employs in his Spenser books, though neither the authors nor characters copy each other (though there are an interesting number of similarities). Perhaps it's part of the contemporary mystery format, I don't know.

Whereas Raymond Chandler, when he felt his creative juices flagging, would have someone come bursting through a door with a gun in their hand, there is generally little gunplay in books by Parker and Grafton, certainly when compared to the obscene pyrotechnics staged in most entertainment intended for the small or large screen.

In Parker's recent Potshot, Spenser sets about enlisting the help of all the tough hombres he's ever run into to help defend a small Arizona town from a bunch of bullies (in the spirit, I suppose, of The Magnificent Seven), but when push comes to shove, the author does not offer a panoramic, plow-by-blow description of the final confrontation, but only a small part of it, later adding in details as to what else happened as they become pertinent.

In P is for Peril, Grafton's heroine ends up witnessing one gunshot in the course of the book, and one other gunshot that is unseen and unheard by the reader lurks in the wings until nearly the end of the book.

I liked P... a lot. On the other hand, although Potshot was a reasonable read, it was not Parker's best, in my opinion.

Clearly, I'm babbling. Work to the rescue...

Cheers...