A 'lousy-mood' kind of a day...

A number of factors have come into play to make this an almost lethally miserable day. As much as I would like to walk around with a smile on my face - if for no other reason than I know it's healthier to do that than to walk around muttering under my breath, scowling at the world - it just ain't in me.

First, I really dislike having to work at the store when I have translation work deadlines leering at me from the murk of Tomorrow. The feeling is compounded - and I can't imagine why I feel this way - when the conditions of your work have still not been settled (I need new batteries for my Kreskin hat... no call came about my e-mail; I had to initiate the conversation this morning, and even then, I had to leave a message and the client did not call back until almost 1 pm).

Second, I was a little mad, I suppose, at myself for even accepting the work. Editing is hard work - every bit as hard as translation - but just about everyone in the industry expects to pay diddley for it. The response from the client was no exception. In the ensuing conversation, we struck a compromise: I'd accept less than my going rate for editing, but then chunks of new text in the job would be charged at my translation rate. More about that later.

Last, if seems all members of my family are in some sort of conspiracy to tick each other off. Everyone - myself included, probably - is walking around with a chip on his (or her) shoulder, both locally and long-distance.

Those are my observations... your mileage might vary.

I've got to improve my mood. I think I shall put on CD of Andrea Bocelli as a start.

Cheers...

Quick! Quick! S-l-o-w!

Galina and I went to our second dancing lesson this evening. We had fun, even if we don't dance all that well.

Perhaps the most difficult thing for me, at this point, is realizing that I've somehow got to telegraph the immediate future to Galina as we're dancing (the instructor says "Take your time. If you can't think of anything, just do another 'box'.") This is, after all, 'classical' social dancing, where the guy is supposed to "lead."

But as I said, we had fun. The next class is Wednesday night.

* * *I wish I could say the same about my current assignment.

It took me a full 3 hours and a half ream of printout to figure out what was where, as I compared the English to the Russian. I could not help but recall the Original Adventure game as I did this, and the part near the beginning where one is trapped in a maze of twisty little passages, then in a maze of little twisted passages, etc., is what I focused on. This document is made up of the same basic half dozen chunks of boilerplate that have variations woven into them. To be frank, I think I'd feel guilty charging the "new" material by the word, since all I have really done so far is cut-and-paste, followed by making a few changes.

In any event, I've done 28 of 100 pages thus far, in 8 hours. I'm going to have to do better than that if I want to finish this thing on Thursday.

Following the client's instructions strictly, I am not touching anything that even remotely looks right (I had wondered, how do I tell the difference between a change made by the Russians and something that was never translated correctly to begin with?).

* * *Those who were concerned that Wublya might somehow reverse the trend toward bigger and more intrusive government can rest easy (I mean, c'mon, was there ever any doubt?). In an apparent bid to be seen as "doing something," the President has proposed creating YACP (Yet Another Cabinet Post) to take care of Homeland Security.

This proposal really strikes the fear of God in me, to tell you the truth, since virtually every other Cabinet position created in the 20th century has done little more than siphon off more and more money in the form of taxes, for little visible return. Return? What am I talking about?

Education? Heck, after several decades of "action" by the Department of Education, SAT scores today are lower than they were in 1970, and if that wasn't bad enough, the tests were dumbed down just a couple of years ago to try to reverse the downward trend, without success.

Energy? Housing? Veteran's Affairs? Can anyone honestly say that things are better today in those areas because they are covered by a Cabinet-level department? Heck, the position of CIA Director is a cabinet-level position already (albeit without a department to go along with it). Is creating another huge bureaucracy going to solve the problem of Homeland Security, or exacerbate it?

Traditionally, government's answer is: give us the authority and the budget and we'll solve the problem. Practice has shown there to be little correlation between the former and the latter. Worse, practice has shown that with every failure, the proposed response is to give the people who failed more power, more authority, and more budget. It's bad enough when politicians do this with the education system; individuals can at least opt out and send their kids to private schools or do home schooling. I somehow get the feeling that with homeland security at stake, the eventual cost may just be too high.

Cheers...