The good news is that I'm pretty much back translating at "normal" levels today.
The bad news is that I very nearly forgot about a job that I accepted Friday, for delivery on Wednesday.
For better or worse, I have developed a very head-down style of working. This sometimes works to the detriment of other things (such as getting stuff in the mail), and also to the detriment of other assignments. Making notes and to-do lists doesn't help too much because while in head-down mode, I don't refer to them.
That's gotta change, else one of these days, I'm going to realize that a job is due after the deadline has passed. Fortunately, I managed to finish the entire job a few minutes ago, along with the first pass of one of the documents in the 40K Job.
Galina and I took a little time off in the middle of the afternoon to go get some whole wheat flour. Originally, the plan was to go to the Whole Foods Market down in Hicksville, but halfway to town, we decided our shopping list was artificially long and the store was too far away, so we hung a right and bought the flour at the local health food store.
Afterward, we drove to Glen Cove and had coffee and shared a pumkin spice muffin at a place called Henry's, where Natalie and I had brunch once back in October, if memory serves.
Henry's has been around since 1929 and has the kind of architecture that makes you think of the early days of rock 'n roll. There are sentimental Coke ads up high on the wall. Lower down are neatly hand-lettered signs describing various specialties of the house using an orgiastic panoply of adjectives (they don't serve "cole slaw," daddy-o, it's "creamy cole slaw" and all their tomatoes are "luscious," dig it?).
When we walked in, we were met by a small army of chocolate rabbits - Easter leftovers - arranged in orderly rows on the counter, marked down for quick sale.
Which reminds me of a interpretation story.
Back before the International Space Station, there was the Shuttle-Mir program. It consisted of a number of Shuttle flights to the Mir space station for the purpose of delivering and returning hardware and station crewmembers, notably US crewmembers.
On Saturday night, March 23, 1996, Orbiter Atlantis docked with the Mir, and at about 11 pm that night, the hatch between the Shuttle and the Mir was opened and after hugs all around, the crews exchanged gifts during a short welcoming ceremony. I remember this because I provided simultaneous interpretation for NASA during the event, together with one of the other interpreters from the office.
It was traditional for the arriving Shuttle crew to bring flowers and chocolate, and in light of Easter being not far off, the Americans aboard STS-76 came bearing chocolate Easter bunnies. All very nice, and here's where my story really begins.
The next morning, the combined crews were scheduled to have a conversation over the radio with Dan Goldin, who was the NASA Administrator at the time. I was assigned to interpret for this event as well, together with Olga P., a thorough professional and a very nice person, who as it turned out had arrived in town the night before. The way interpretation was arranged, it was my job to interpret simultaneously from Russian into English, and it was Olga's job to do the same from English into Russian. We were all set, or so we thought.
The first sentence out of Goldin's mouth was "So, how did you like the bunnies?"
I turned toward Olga only to see her eyes widen slightly. I could tell what was going through her mind (He said what?) as I whispered "chocolate" to her, whereupon you could almost hear the "click" inside her head as understanding kicked in and she said "So, how was the chocolate?"
The rest of the event passed without any more excitement, and I think we both came away with another buffing of experience. But I can never see a chocolate Easter rabbit without thinking of that assignment.
Cheers...
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