Last week

Monday I invited some potential speakers for the upcoming Waterside conference this April, had lunch with Phil Wolff and interviewed him for my book, and then deal with a flat tire on Eve. I wasn’t carrying my insurance company’s roadside help card, so I called B (on Phil’s cell phone) and asked her to call AAA and meet me there on Lake Park. The guy from Ken Betts’ tow service asked me why I’m still wearing my Dean button. “That guy lost when he lost on TV, man,” he tells me.
On Tuesday I reviewed the general notes memo from my developmental editor about how to structure the chapters in my book. I also finally trimmed and posted my photos from the blogger / new media dinner in San Francisco a week before, including as many observations as I could recall. I also worked on Chapter 7
Wednesday I worked all day finishing the first draft of Chapter 7, uploading it via FTP before going to be around midnight.
Thursday morning I woke up early to make sure that the file had uploaded, then went back to sleep. Around 10:30 or 11 am I saw email from my editor saying that the file I had uploaded contained only a bunch of notes and quotations. I had uploaded the wrong working copy of the file. I uploaded the correct file and then went back to sleep. I spent the rest of the day dozing on the couch and later in bed, waking up every 15 or 20 minutes when the phone rang (it was usually Jerry Brown telling me to vote for Henry Chang or Barbara Lee telling me to vote for Measure A, and so on). Bottom line: I was burnt out and needed a day off. It was great.
Friday I put on my agent hat and made a bunch of calls to publishers, authors, and my agency’s mothership, to sort out some backlog of billings for one of my writers and to tdiscuss the production process for the second edition of the Phish Companion being published by Backbeat Books. I also finally remembered to tell the Mockingbird Foundation (the nonprofit that “writes” the Phish book collectively) about a show on the Princeton campus in 1985 in which Trey Anastasio and – I think – Jon (?) Fishman regaled a quad full of partying preppies with literally several hours of Grateful Dead songs, played and sung in two-part harmony arrangements with custom-made miniature guitars. I doubt anyone taped it and I’m sure memories are hazy but this seems like a key missing link between the east coast Dead Heads I grew up with and the whole Phish trip, so we’re going to try to get the anecdote into the book in some form.
At the end of the day I called in for part of an activist-techie conference call, but had to ring off (and later read the transcript) so I could drive across town to Picante in Berkeley to pick up tamales and enchiladas and agua fresca for our dinner. For the last two weeks B has been working nearly around the clock, attending evening and weekend meetings, sometimes staying up till 1 or later preparing comments and reports, and generally wrestling with deadlines every bit as grueling as my own, so I wanted to make sure dinner was a no brainer that night.
Saturday I did the grocery shopping that I usually try to do during the week. The Bowl is insane on Saturdays, so it took a while. I helped out with the vacuuming later that afternoon, and then remembered that we were out of coffee. B made a wonderful bouillebaise (how the hell do you spell that?) with snapper, mussels, and clams, but my stomach was a little upset, so I had a small bowl of it before going off tobed early.
Sunday I finally got around to cleaning the bathroom, reviewing the developmental editorial comments on Chapter 3, and revising and returning a pitch letter that my publisher’s genius intern drafted to query some of the more famous-y people I’m still trying to nail down interviews with for my book. Then I watched most of the academy awards and finally met Dan and Bill at the L’amyx tea bar on Piedmont Avenue for our weekly writing session.
Here are some of the things I meant to do during the week and never got around to: pay bills, interview Craig Newmark, resubmit Chapter 3, review Chapter 4 comments, catch up on organizing interviews, solicit someone to write the book’s foreword, set up three Princeton alumni interviews, follow up with Elsevier for an embedded systems book proposal, interview other contributors, resubmit Chapter 4.