I got carried away...

3,515 / 29,642 (11.9%)

It took me the better part of 2-1/2 hours to nail about 1020 words, but that time involved a lot of research turning up actual document names (as in: "International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea"), plus there's likely going to be a learning curve on this document (gas carriers, LNG, ice conditions, and so on). I expect things to start speeding up tomorrow morning.

So, here's The Master Plan™, in all of its unpolished glory:

Finish 10,600 source words between tomorrow and Saturday, including an overall check of the entire document.

Translate about 5,000 source words per day on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. Spend an hour or two each day checking finished documents.

Check the last documents in time for Wednesday AM delivery.

Veg out for the rest of the yearWednesday.

It is after midnight. I'm pretty sure I'm going to miss the ham breakfast tomorrow morning.

Cheers...

Update...

Okay, after a couple of phone calls, it turned out the items breathing down my neck for next Wednesday have a couple of extra days in their schedule, and thus, are beyond my immediate work horizon. In exchange, I agreed to translate another 2300 source words for Monday, making my total due for Monday 16468 words.

I don't see much use in posting another thermometer graphic, as they don't do much for me. Suffice it to say I've done about 1/3 of the job up to now, but only 1/9 (ugh!) of the job today.

So far. (Hey, it's only 4 pm!)

Despite my confident tone, I don't quite understand what's been keeping my speed down in this document.

At any rate, I've just gotten a glossary file from the client, so it's actually sort of good that I haven't made much progress, as I've already noted some discrepancies between my wording and that in the glossary. It'll probably take me about 30 minutes to beat the Word file into the shape it needs to be so that Wordfast can use it, so I ought to get on it.

Then again, if I want to give myself the semi-illusion of progress, I can always do the item I accepted today, which is something for the ISS program. Those always go relatively quickly.

Cheers...

Playing catch-up...

By the time 6 pm had rolled around, it was clear to me that there were two main reasons I was failing to progress with the current document (the first 57 pages of a specification for a ship). First, the terminology isn't very familiar (and it turns out quite a bit is not in my online or paper dictionaries), and second - perhaps even more important - the style of writing is hard to grasp (it seems I spend about half my time rewriting sentences that I've translated).

In any event, I bagged a little over 2500 source words of that document today, and at around 6:20 pm, Galina came home and wanted to know why I wasn't ready to go to the kids' place for dinner (and the semiweekly shower... the water is still not flowing at our house, which is bad news, nor is it flowing through our meter, which is good news).

A minute or so before Galina came up the driveway, I had started on the aerospace item, and it looked do-able before I went to sleep tonight. To tell the truth, after learning that we were expected elsewhere for dinner, I didn't think I'd get very far with the new document, but I stopped what I was doing because I needed to eat, I needed a shower, and I wanted to hang out with the kids (most certainly not in that order).

It turns out Shannon is still feeling under the weather (she's called in sick to work these past two days), so we didn't see much of her during our visit, but we did share a pot of spaghetti, talked, and watched a few minutes of the opening ceremonies in Torino. Then it was time to go home.

Of course, once I got home, I immediately sat down to take up where I left off. Fortunately, the translation was very straightforward, with even a little boilerplate thrown in for good measure. Thus, I am happy to report that I have able to finish the aerospace item since coming home, which places my bag for the day at just about exactly 4800 words.

Without getting bogged down with details, the important thing to keep my eye on is the fact that somewhere between 7200 and 8500 source words are left to do this weekend (the uncertainty has to do with my having started translating the specification with the introduction on page 10 and not with the very first page (title, TOC, abbreviations, etc.), and technically, I might be able to eke out a half day of work on Monday, too, if it comes down to it.

Enough about work! There'll be plent of it left to do tomorrow and Sunday.

Cheers...

In other news...

A curious thing happened on the way back from the kids' place tonight.

As we drove up the hill toward the entrance to our driveway, Galina slowed down because she saw something on the road, off to the right side. It looked like, perhaps, an animal that had been hit by a car.

As we got closer, it became apparent to me that it was a bobcat - a feline almost twice the size of your typical house cat. It was unharmed, and in fact, it seemed to be in pretty good condition. It was sitting on its haunches, its body perpendicular to the axis of the road, and it was motionless. Galina stopped the car, and I reached for my camera as I hit the button to lower the window.

For several seconds, the cat remained just on the edge of our car's headlights, coiled as tight as a spring and concentrating with everything it's got, eyes locked on something off to the right in the darkness, about to pounce on something. I am trying to figure out how it is that some part of the cat's brain isn't screaming "Hey, did you just see what just drove up, shining bright lights all over the place? Didn't you hear it? Run-n-n-n!!!"

Anyway, I point my camera out the window, say "Ks-s-s-s-sss!" and wait until the cat turns its head before depressing the shutter.

Remind me not to wait next time. The cat turned its head and took off like the proverbial bat, getting probably halfway to Mineral County before the flash went off. I was left with a nice shot of the road next to the car.

* * *I've just finished reading a fascinating book titled How Proust Can Change Your Life, by Alain de Botton. I really enjoyed it, but unfortunately, I read it without underlining anything or taking any notes, which is frustrating, because although this tome is far from being some kind of How to Win Friends and Influence People, it nonetheless does try to draw some conclusions about life that might be of use from time to time.

One thing is for sure: reading this book has awakened a desire to read Proust. I only despair of finding the time to do so (perhaps during the launch campaign?), because it took an act of will to find the time to read this book.

After making my previous observation, about how I tend to "dip" into books these days instead of reading them the way I used to when I had (or seemed to have) all the time in the world - in one or two long sittings, for it is easy to hold my attention with a story - I have started to pay attention and look around and it seems almost every book I see is a "dipper," which is to say it's not exactly the kind of book that's amenable to a front-to-back reading (case in point: UNIX Power Tools).

Time to go to bed and get some shuteye.

Cheers...