Don’t know how much longer I can keep up this pace. It seems like my obligations keep mounting, but I am trying to keep up and stay balanced.
Monday I discovered the chords for Ripple are also just G C D Am (a subset of the chords used in Uncle John’s Band). I sorted out the election results for the Alameda County Steering Committee for the local still-unnamed DFA chapter. Had to sort out some discrepancies with our election monitors, discovered a ballot that hadn’t been cc’d properly. (By Tuesday all the votes added up the same. I still have to announce the results today.)
Monday I also nailed down a time for coffee with Craig Newmark for my book, tried to reschedule lunch with Scot Hacker, reviewed a draft of my book’s title profile for my publisher, reorganized my sub to-do list of hard-to-land interviewees, did my laundry, and drove to Berkeley to make sure that the hotel for the Waterside conference is equipped to offer Boingo.net wireless service for our attendees.
I also ran through the Berkeley Bowl to get more steel-cut oats since I had spilled the last of our most recent batch all over the kitchen floor over the weekend.
Tuesday I had an 8 am sales meeting with my publisher’s sales staff (on conference call) all over the world, to discuss this book and the extraordinary efforts everyone is making to promote and sell it. The meeting was very exciting and inspiring. These sales folks have accounted for nearly half my income over the last 12 years. I owe them a lot.
Since I was in Alameda for the meeting, I went to pick up my restrung and action-lowered acoustic guitar (a Martin knock-off called, I kid you not, a “Carlos”) from The Thin Man String Co. I also got around to putting my notes from the book marketing meeting a week ago into VoodooPad format in anticipation of setting up a private wiki (whiteboard) for brainstorming.
Wednesday I ran late for my coffee with Craig, violating my new cardinal rule, “Thou shalt not waste anyone’s time.” I felt bad and was a little more motormouth-y than I often am (a real contrast to Craig’s quiet, considered speaking style), but Craig kept me on track, asking me as my interviewees often have to do, “What is the question?” As a whole, the interview went well and Craig expressed willingness to answer followup questions via email or phone as needed, so that’s cool.
I was unable to have lunch with my agent as planned, so we are now trying to reschedule for two weeks from now. I did sit in the sun in Cole Valley quietly strumming my uke outside the coffee shop for a while. That was fun.
At 4 pm I had a phone conference call for the NorCal-DFA (or whatever we’re going to be called) group, to discuss structure and governance. We had a lawyer on the call who very helpfully explained the rules surrounding PACs, 527s, and 501c(4) entities.
Then at 7 I dragged B to a meeting for PFA and CitizensVote. It was her first time meeting most of the old Dean grassroots campaigner and perhaps a strange introduction to the political work I’ve been doing since August, but it did get her thinking that maybe we should host an environmental-issue themed Party for America at our house this summer.
