The shortest rewrite in history, and other tales of the day

The edited draft of the new book was returned to me yesterday, for further work; my new new editor had extra quibbles.

Um, three of them. Which took me about ten minutes, total rework time. Hee.

So that's gone, and I am about to head off into town and try to write something new, see if I can remember how that's done. I seem to have been rewriting for ever, and I am bored with it. I do still have more to do (including a short story that is unaccustomedly and actually short, but has come back with more pages of notes than this whole damn novel ever did, and I haven't the least notion what to do about it), but I want to splash awhile in the freshet of new words.

Also, I have a physio appointment, where I am expecting to be scolded. I am, um, rather stiff today, and my hand is tingling badly. I may have overdone things these last two days, despite having Mark around for the heavy hauling. Trouble is, of course, while I'm busy and active I don't feel the hand so much, so...

Anyway. There it is. And here I am, in a semi-reconstituted office, still with bare shelves and full boxes. I am, as we have established in earlier conversations, a hoarder. As frumpo points out in a comment to yesterday's post, one of the things I apparently hoard is padded envelopes. I thought I just kept them for re-use, but I had not at all realised that I had quite this many; and it is true that the last year or two I have mostly been using new ones bought for the purpose, as being cleaner and easier and just nicer at both ends, both to send and to receive.

I could empty some boxes at a stroke, by disposing of all these accumulated Jiffies. But I don't want to just sling them away, when they are the definition of reusable. And there are no handy depots, where you can leave them for other people's use. I don't know what to do. Eep.

I shall go to town, where I won't have to think about it for a while.

ETA: just got another one. People send me things, y'know? In padded envelopes. And I am conditioned to open them with care, and...

And they can't even go into the recycling, mostly, because they're lined with bubble-wrap and even if I stripped that out the envelope is generally brown, and our recycling people take neither bubble-wrap nor brown envelopes. Sigh...

No good deed goes unpunished

So I went to town and wrote a virtupous thousand words, then scurried off for my physio appointment.

Where K hurt me rather less than I'd expected, but I came out feeling sore-but-better anyway, as I usually do, if a bit depressed (as I also usually do) and a little sleepy with it (as I always do: it's one of those acknowledgedly weird reactions to torture); and I went back to the Lit & Phil and wrote another thousand words.

And then walked up into town again to shop a little (ask me about dinner tonight, I dare you) - and saw a little girl let go of her balloon. And ran, and stretched, and seized it for I am long and angular like that; and gave it back to the little girl, and smiled, and waved away her parents' thankings for 'twas nothing but common humanity after all; and walked on with a growing distressful tingle in my hand, for I had totally yanked the nerve and probably undone all this morning's good work. *sobs*

Next balloon I see, I'm going to stamp on.

*sobs more, for effect*

Dinner

Since you asked:

Mark kindly brought me sea bream fillets from the fish quay. So I am going to marinate the fillets in saffron oil and flash-fry them; and then eat them with sweet-and-sour red peppers and brandade potato-cakes (that's mashed potato mixed with smoked haddock and the milk it was seethed in, then fried like a fishcake. In fact, come to think, it pretty much is a fishcake).

Om-nom.

[I need more foodie icons. 'Specially now I can't grow chillies any more. But my camera is missing: somewhere in the new chaos that has so recently replaced the old chaos in my office. I remember taking the camera off my desk and thinking "now where shall I - oh, I know!" And putting it somewhere. Yup.]

ETA: I was just putting the potatoes on, and I dropped a chunk on the floor. Whereupon it was seized and made away with, and om-nom-nommed. I cut my finger in surprise; and you may have seventeen guesses who it was who did the seizing and the making away, the om-nomming thereafter.

*adds raw potato to Mac's List*

I really wish he wouldn't do that

I have mentioned several times how big & heavy my printer is (it's one of these, since you ask). Robust would be another word for it, I reckon.

However. How many times will even the most robust of printers stand up to having a five-kilo weight fall upon it from a great height?

Even a furry five-kilo weight?

(It serves as a stepping-stone for Barry, on his way to and from the top of the shelves; and he's not exactly light-footed as he comes down, and I really, really wish he wouldn't, but, y'know. Cats.)

And now I should really stop noodling with LJ and, y'know, do something.

Don't wanna.