Overload day

[womzilla]

I went to sleep stupidly late last night.


supergee and nellorat flew out today to Michigan to visit nigelpuggle and some of nellorat's human relatives as well for Thanksgiving. The flight was an early one, so we all had to get up early to get to the airport on time. Because I didn't have to pack, I got to sleep in later than they did, However, all of their clothes live in the bedroom. (My clothes live in a built-in shelving unit in my study, which was the master bedroom under previous owners.) We knew they would need the bedroom in the morning to pack, so it made sense for me to sleep in my study instead of on the mega-bed in the bedroom.

The guest bed in my study is terrifically comfortable. However, over the years, I have become annoyingly sensitive to light while trying to sleep, and, as I could have predicted, I woke up at around seven AM because someone thoughtlessly stuck a million-mile-wide nuclear furnace in the sky. The bedroom has heavy shades to block out this so-called "natural phenomeon". I dozed fitfully for the next two hours until it was time to get up and leave.

I was quite pleased that I ran through my short list of tasks in less than ten minutes and was ready to help them finish packing, and we got into the car pretty much on schedule. Unfortunately, I didn't register that supergee's tote bag hadn't made the trip to the car with us, and we didn't notice until we were halfway through the Bronx. Was anything important in it? Not really, except for supergee's inhaler. Which keeps him breathing, which is, you know, a good thing. Sigh. U-turn on E 177th Street, back to the house to get the bag. Half an hour shot.

But we're making good time. Until we hit the Whitestone Bridge. The toll plaza is backed up hugely, and traffic is creeping across the span. Oh, didn't any of the traffic reports note that one lane on the bridge is closed for construction and we really should have taken the Triboro instead? Why, no, they didn't. There's another fraught half-hour shot.

But we make it on time. The airport terminal is nearly deserted--I guess Tuesday morning of Thankgiving week just isn't a heavy travel period. So they make their flight. (nellorat called in the evening to confirm that they had not, in fact, died in a fiery crash which had somehow gone unreported on the news.)

Directly from the airport, I go off on one of my Secret Shopper shops. That was nice--a full meal, expenses paid. It wasn't Morimoto, but it was fun.

Then home for my weekly AIM-based conference chat for Unplugged, Inc. News is good--two of our (traditional) games went live this week, and you can actually play the game I designed last year. Yay us! (My game is Qube.) I need to get Windows 2000 or XP installed on my spare Intel box so that I can run the games at home. (The software emulator for BREW, the application environment our initial games run in, only runs under 2000 or XP, for no good reason.) I can't run them on my phone because my phone model is over three years old, and I also don't subscribe to the carriers who are promoting our games, though those will both probably change now that the FCC is mandating phone number portability.

Rush off to the post office to mail a game I just sold, the bank to deposit some checks, and the library to return an overdue book. I note that I could have done all three of these in a single block in the North Bronx--there's a charming Irish neighborhood with a small branch of the New York Public Library next to a Fleet bank and across the street from a post office. But what really unites all of these in my mind is the degree to which I access all of them online. I make tremendous use of Fleet's free online banking system; as a result, I write fewer than ten checks a month, even though almost all of the bills of our house flow through my account. Through LEO, the online catalog of the NYPL branch libraries, I can reserve books to be delivered for my convenience. And the new Click-N-Ship system lets me post packages that I can drop off at the Post Orifice without having to wait in the stupid line resulting from the imbecilic "all packages over one pound must go through a clerk" rule.

Anyway. Hurried back home to take Apollo to the vet's for his weekly shot of antibiotic to fight the lung infection he's had most of his life. Incremental progress. Also picked up some antibiotic for Pluto, who is also fighting off a lung infection, which he seems to be winning against. Talked briefly with the vet about more suggestions for how to combat the mites which have infested our upstairs crew--the oral insecticide is working but not completely. She suggests kitten flea powder and serious vacuuming. Of the house, not the rats.

Drop off Apollo at home, set up some TV taping--24 and a new Powerpuff Girls. Stop for a short phone call with our old friend who also manages supergee's investment account. Then it's off to the city. Find a parking space on the Upper West Side moderately easily--I guess some people have started leaving for the holiday. The damn Metrocard machines won't accept my credit card, so I have to pay cash, grumble bitch.

First stop: Tor. To my tremendous pleasant surprise, I run into lydy, as well as Cory "Boing Boing" Doctrow and the more expected Patrick and Teresa. Teresa is working on an amazing piece for Making Light which I am now not-even-subtly encouraging her to finish. We talked about fish and man-hours and Queen Victoria's underwear. I had to break off to do actual work, in the form of picking up two heavy manuscripts that I need to read that I might compose cover copy so that people will fall in love with them and buy them. And talk with the editor about another heavy manuscript for which I just performed that selfsame task. Nice perq: I got to see the cover flat for the forthcoming Gene Wolfe short-story collection, Innocents Aboard. Magritte. Lovely.

Hauled the two stupidly heavy manuscripts from the Flatiron Building to my next appointment, to meet John McCallion and Robin King, the boardgame editors of Games Magazine, for our (nearly) weekly session. Played three games--Nobody But Us Chickens, a simple simultaneous-play bluffing game; Vanished Planet, a slightly over-complex but very engaging multi-player cooperative game with a lot of similarities to Starfarers of Catan; and Balancing Aliens, a disturbingly entertaining game where the objects to be balanced are little bowling pins painted with "Communion Alien" eyes. We also tried, and failed, to figure out another game, which omits at least one key rule. I just checked; the web site was no help, and was in fact nearly content-free.

That's another rant for another time, but I'm growing quite unfond of game publishers who don't recognize the power of the web to push their games by giving players detailed looks at the games. Another time.

Rush home, hauling the manuscripts which have mysteriously transformed into lead. Make it home in time to swap both VCRs over to other taping--Bravo's West Wing rerun and a new episode of Gary the Rat.

Determine after some testing that the sound of running water in the basement is actually natural gas whistling in its pipes. No emergency. Took the opportunity to turn off the water to the outside spigots for the winter.

Fed the rats. Medicated the rats. Fifteen non-stop hours later, I'm done with the day. So, to Livejournal and....


And now I'm stupidly late to bed. riverrun past eve and adam....