Turning point...

Yesterday was one of those days that turned what was beginning to look like a mediocre month into something a lot more reasonable, mostly because a lot of stuff I had been working on was finally getting to the point of completion, which meant - paraphrasing The Thing:

It's invoicing time!

Currently, there is one item on my plate, just under 2000 source words, due by the time I go to sleep tonight.

Yesterday, this place resembled Grand Central Station. We had carpenters, electricians, and floor refinishers in the house. Shiloh didn't know who to get excited about first.

Galina tells me that my office is next in line to be refinished, and that I need to jump on getting stuff out of here. Two things need to be accomplished as I do that: keep track of what gets put in what box, and segregate the stuff I need/want to take with me to Colorado.

I should probably turn to.

Cheers...

What was lost has been found...

Back during my senior year in high school, our English teacher was what was known in the business as a "permanent substitute." Mrs. Maney, which was her name, was teaching the class of the department's chairman, who was on sabbatical.

I was technically inclined in those days, albeit naively so. I thought, for example, that good grades and acing the Regents exam in physics somehow made me "good" at physics (a notion I was quickly disabused of about two weeks into freshman year in college). English I tolerated only because there was no way around it, although it wasn't as if I experienced any particular difficulty in the subject.

Still, Mrs. Maney - who limped around on a cane because she was on a long-term mend from a near-fatal car accident - managed to make stuff like "the Italian sonnet" interesting enough for me to take a crack at writing one, and she said nice things about it.

I remembered the vague outlines of what happened that year, but none of the specifics - such as my teacher's name or even the subject of the poem - until I ran across a yellowed piece of paper an hour or two ago that, frankly, was this close to being thrown out.

Anyway, what follows is the kind of stuff that got a "98" from Mrs. Maney back in the day:

Realization

The smell of rotting leaves offends one so,
Their sharp, contrasting colors blind one's eyes,
So high above the trees flies south the crow,
Flies south to some forsaken paradise.
'Tis autumn, all grows still, all fades, all dies.
One asks within oneself: "Dear God, why now?"
"Why take away this now?" And then one sighs...
And life seems dull... Then creases one one's brow.
"These leaves will help the farmer use his plow,
'Twill fertilize the soil; 'twill help the crop.
The birds, down south (I guess) are needed now.
It's just a temporary close of shop!"
   And in addition, one can say this thing --
"Well, fall is but a harbinger of spring!"

Cheers...

High as a kite...

Nowhere near, but I've developed splitting headache from the stuff drying on the floors in the bedrooms and living room (Galina and I have barricaded ourselves in my office with the door closed and the windows open).

I just sent off the last of what was on my plate. Earlier in the day, I had to say no to a 9,000 word assignment from a pretty good client, but there's no way I'll be able to handle it in the required time frame. Yesterday, I declined a job that was, um, excessively legal (meaning the language is that of legal analysis, as opposed to the contracts, patents, and the other kind of stuff that I've done quite a bit of). It was only 2400 words, but it would have required a lot of work to get the words right.

Tomorrow is going to be my last chance to get stuff done before I head off south.

Cheers...