If you thought I was busy before, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Actually, I heard a good new impromptu expression form Outlandish Josh the other day that I’m sure I’ll find myself repeating. I asked him if he was busy and he said yes, he was busy, but “flexible busy.”
A week ago Monday I handed in the introduction, frontmatter, and final chapter of my book (in crappy first-draft form). Representing a triumph over deadlines and earning a bonus.
Tuesday my flu was pretty much gone. It’s kind of weird that I got sick on the day of the Cal primary and got better the day after my deadline from hell. Also the sun came out in a big way and a lot of other things happened at once so I got so bubbly that my close friends started looking at me strangely.
I had a phone interview for a possible job that ran about an hour and a half and which I enjoyed immensely (I hope she did too). I got my haircut. I shaved my winter beard.
Wednesday I did some laundry, called the flacks of a bunch of famous people I’m trying to interview for my book and in a job-seeking mood, sent out about 10 copies of my newly updated resume.
Thursday I went grocery shop first-thing in the morning. For once there were beautiful unpicked-over chanterelles available. That evening I went to Howard Dean’s announcement of DFA version 2.0, but it was so crowded and insane in the hotel ballroom that I retreated to the hallway to snap photos and try to blog what I was seeing. I also realized that rallying is fun but what I was really looking forward to was the upcoming Northern California grassroots DFA summit, a working meeting.
Craig Newmark happened by and invited me to tag along with him as he addressed the SF Democratic Club, with folded perfectly into my need to talk with him about the 311 project through which San Francisco is trying to improve its “customer service” for my book.
I also got the OK that day to decloak the blog for my book.
Friday I saw my therapist, finally paid my bills (nothing scary was lurkingin there), and booked my plan flight to San Antonio for early next month (for the Dead caucus at the American Popular Culture Association conference where I will be presenting a paper on James Booker and Jerry Garcia, plus seeing my buddy Nicholas, and possibly syrup as well, and maybe now jonl, fresh from SXSW, may show up too. I gather that San Antone is only 73 miles or so from Austin.
Saturday I went up to Montclair in the morning and bought some chives and some grassfed beef to grill later (well, not the chives – they were for the baked potatoes). Then I went home a slept for a while. B finally got most of an afternoon off, and later Rich and Martha came by for dinner. B sauteed the chanterelles and also cooked some cauliflower with grated cheese that was ncredibly delicious. The grilled steaks came out great, especially with the mushrooms on top, and the potatoes were good as well, although for some weird reason I only baked three and when B tried to give me her over the centerpiece, I got kind of embarassed and barked at her, leaving her with the hot potato in her hand.
Sunday B went down to Palo Alto to celebrate her mom’s birthday. I wanted to go but couldn’t because I had this NorCal DFA summit from about 10 am when I picked some folks up at BART till well after 4 pm. If you’ve never been in a room with 50 battletested organizers (these are the doers, not the talkers) who have a broad consensus on what they want to do next and what they’re long term goals are, let me tell you: It’s very exciting. One of my mentors, whose first campaign was Youth for Wallace (Henry, not George!) reminisced with another longstanding activist that the only similar moment they could compare it too was the Roosevelt campaign. So much more to talk about but this isn’t the place for it.
Monday
I left a message with a city council chief of staff I met during the campaign and stlll would like to take out to lunch some time to learn more about how local politics work, and I don’t remember what else I got done that day, and it was just yesterday. I know I sent and received a lot of email and kept working on Chapter 4 but did not finish it.
Oh, one thing was that something clicked for me and I suddently realized that VoodooPad is the best thing for a writer) sinced sliced breaf. Maybe this is what TinderBox does (or less), but when I finally realized that I could just jot notes anywhere anad link them all up with all the bogus instantly static pseudo structure of all my previous organizational and productivity apps, well it was like a veil was lifted. Joe Bob says check it out.
(Then I blogged about my newfound enthusiasm and earned a friendly reprimand from the editor eagerly waiting for me to finish my chapter revision.)
Tuesday morning I finally finished Chapter 4 and sent it in, spoke to my editor to discuss priorities, revised Chapter 6 and sent that in and initiated or sent follow-up communications with all the people I still need to talk to about either of those two chapters.
Now I’m off to get my guitar restrung and get some new tires put on Eve.
In the still-not-done category, there’s get new tires for Bandx, nail down travel dates for the Dem convention in Boston, rent a car in San Antonio, try to get press credentials for the convention, and continue figuring out whether it’s worth $90 to replace the lost sunglass clipons from my spare pair of glasses.
