Touching base...

Last night was not a 100% night, from the point of view of how I felt, but it was better than the night before, so that's progress of a sort, at least.

The floodgates of work broke loose from their hinges this morning, and another floodgate - located further upstream (and this is doubtless another instance of metaphor abuse) - threatens to melt, thaw, and dissolve itself into a dew.

I got an inquiry yesterday morning (by phone at 4:15 am) from a Moscow client, asking for a quote to do a job at my standard speed. Once I got up, I reviewed the document, quoted a price, and then we got to haggling and came to an agreed number. The next thing I expected was a "notice to proceed" email, but it did not arrive. What did arrive was an email that appeared to continue our discussion of discounts, an essay on which is either overdue or needs repeating, but not here. Not now.

Today, I got an email stating that some unholy number of files were about to be sent for translation for project A (those are the ones behind my addle-brained upstream floodgate), but I've been in this racket long enough to know that assurances of work that arrive by email aren't worth the paper they're printed on. What's got my blood pumping through my creaking arteries is a 47-page ISS document due Friday at noon, which arrived within about 90 seconds of the go-ahead email from the Russian client to complete the manual by Sunday morning my time.

Vacation time is over. Time to get well real quick and "turn to."

Cheers...

My life as a hamster...

The 47-pager was put on hold, then canceled, which elicits no disappointment from me. The file that arrived was a PDF, and after taking a good, close look at it, I was not looking forward to working with it because only about 5,000 words actually appear as text, the rest showing up in about six gazillion labels in an endless progression of flow diagrams.

To make up for the disappointment, the client sent a 19-slide PowerPoint file whose originator felt the need to use graphics to depict the titles. The nasty, reptilian part of my brain fervently hopes the originator spent a lot of time carefully crafting his impressive-looking titles (which admittedly do look very nice... I particularly like the diffused 3-D shadow effect), because nobody among his American audience will see them - <cackle> - as I have replaced them with rather utilitarian text boxes.

As I write this, I have a handful of slides left to translate, after which I plan to decompress in front of the tube for an hour, after which I need to put a dent in the software manual I agreed to do for Sunday.

LJ Idol? What's that? <grin>

Cheers...

Unexpected news, unexpected reaction...

I just learned that Robert B. Parker died Monday, at the age of 77.

I very nearly broke out in tears, and I have no idea why.

I first began to pay attention to Parker's work some time after Spenser: For Hire hit the television screen in syndication. I'd never seen any of the episodes (very nearly intentionally, for no particular reason). Then I read an excerpt from Promised Land published in a short-lived thing called The New Black Mask Quarterly, which I picked up at a used book store not far from Atlanta during a business trip when we lived in Jacksonville, Florida.

I guess the excerpt - the one where readers are first introduced to Hawk - did a good job of "hooking" me, because I went on a Spenser binge that pretty much never stopped, and which expanded to include Sunny Randall, Jesse Stone, and even one of his westerns.

I am at a complete loss for words, now.

Cheers...