Another interview set up Friday, for HMH.

Decided that I'm dropping Alt Book Pub after reading the actual course desc: basically an overview of smaller, independent publishers and how they don't go bankrupt. Info I can more easily absorb from a good book than, say, pub biz.

My neighbors dumped a bench in the hallway, sans legs, with a "Free!" sign. I adopted it, measured it, and decided it'd make a great headboard. Layers of foam, batting, and fabric later, I have a headboard and a sore hand from stapling. I spent more than I anticipated (who knew foam was so fucking expensive?) but it still works out cheaper than ordering a headboard and paying shipping costs.

If I keep up this pace with all these crafty projects, I just might beg someone to buy me a sewing machine so I can finally hem my damn curtains and maybe make a table runner and matching napkins and throw pillows and...omg.

Hand really f'n hurts.

Can't think of anything else to report.

I hope I know what I'm doing.

I sent out 4.5 apps:

• one to the publicity dept of the trade division of HMH
• one to a mid-sized agency
• one to an uber agency
• "one" to MIT begging for either a position in editorial or acquisitions

HMH replied with a "Thanks, we'll be in touch after the deadline".

Mid-sized agency called me an "extremely strong candidate" and I meet with them Tuesday.

Uber agency replied with a curt "Thanks, but taken", which I half-expected since the posting to which I was replying was a month old. A fucking opportunity I was tangentially aware of, but failed to actually do something about it thanks to brain parasites.

MIT requested an interview, and so I meet with them Wednesday.

So far, so good.

Meanwhile, I still haven't decided which class I'm dropping. Currently, I'm enrolled in

• Book Editing
• Business of Publishing
• Alternative Publishing

Book Editing, while offered every semester, I'm scared to drop since I have the "personable" of the two professors who teach it. And I seriously don't want to be cornered into taking it with Emblidge, who strikes me as a self-satisfied asshole. Anecdotes from trustworthy sources confirm what my gut told me within nanoseconds.

Biz of Publishing is, I presume, a more numbersy type course. I took it because I thought it'd help me get a head start on understanding the necessary evil of P&Ls, and the like.

Alternative Publishing is...I have no idea. I can't remember, and I can't find a course guide. I'm assuming it's about how publishing is trying to monetize digital media, but I could be way off. It's so awesome that Emerson doesn't have up to date course descriptions on the website.

Oh well, I emailed my adviser for a new copy.

I'm feeling super industrious and productive...though it's slightly maddening that so much of my work is delayed because Europe is humane and gives its workers some 25+ days of vacation a year.

Nevertheless, I'm feeling a bit more comfortable about the people for whom I work, and I have a better sense of what to expect, and what not to. =P

I should go to bed.

...as I take home work from HBP. =P

To be fair, it's nothing required. I just wanted to play with typography and page layouts for the FBF rights guide since I found my template lacking. Plus I need to re-educate myself on how to design shit in Word. Fucking christ do I ever hate that program.

It's every intern's goal to leave a legacy, and if nothing else, I'll leave behind a gorgeous rights guide. Well, I'll think it's gorgeous anyway, much in the same way a mother might love her child that's been sodomized with the ugly stick.

I've discovered within myself a wellspring of willpower. Why, I exercise it every week when I resolve to quit drinking coke. Oh coke, you sonuvawhoreson bitch! I wish I knew how to quit you...for good.

Tomorrow is payday. Tomorrow is also D-Day, of sorts: gotta spit out my last internship apps and really dig into my fucking RP project.

The speed at which I drop topics is a sign I'm tired, and yet I'm too hot to go to bed. Nevermind that I'm savoring this delicious, delicious cherry coke...

Performed some much needed Feng Shui on my email inboxes.

My two "professional" inboxes are tidy (quite unlike this apartment).

My catch-all inbox is a work in progress: went from 2200 emails to about 1100. Not bad, but I'm still holding onto shit from 2004, 2005, shit like my original "Welcome to Emerson!" emails. I find it difficult to let those go.

After bemoaning my boredom at work, FBF preparation crash-landed on my fucking head. I've skipped lunch hours the past few days, I've been so busy, and though I'm tired and ache by the end of the day, I'm happier knowing that I'm earning that many more hours of pay. My illness knows no bounds.

Today I was preparing pre-meeting notes, stuff to give my boss cues on how to approach each publisher she's meeting. I keep wishing, quite irrationally, that I be asked to attend FBF, if only, as I described to my friends, to hover near my boss's shoulder and feed her factual nuggets.

Too bad there's no possible way I can just up and leave school for a week to cavort in Germany, asskiss pub execs with expense accounts, and participate in all manner of illegal activities, like jaywalking.

What am I saying? Of course I can! Too bad they don't need me.

*sigh*

All this week, I've managed to cross off, one by one, little tasks I've jotted down for myself. In addition to the librarification of my den, I've prepared and sent off apps for fall internships. Because I have clearly learned my lesson from last semester. *headdesk*

PO hellishness notwithstanding, I think I can manage and retain sanity. It's pretty impossible for me to take home work as I was with PO, and that right there was the problem.

If I were to be fair to myself, I'd say I'm in a great position like I was last spring, with my one publishing job lined up for the semester. But having PB thrust into my lap—and surviving!—has given me the courage to commit to another semester while carrying two jobs. No, the real challenge will be juggling those two jobs with not one but two classes.

I have a contingency plan, but I think I'll be ok.

All of this is assuming, of course, that other people even accept me.

And who knows what my chances are, what with me writing cover letters addressed to a girl I'm quite certain was once a classmate at grad school and has just finished her MA this spring. Awkwaaaaaaaard...

Well, I've settled into my job at HBP. I'm pretty lonely, esp. since my boss had abruptly left town for a week, funneling assignments via blackberry every now and then. Most of the time, I'm bored.

Bored, bored, bored, bored, bored.

Don't get me wrong, the work is as interesting as I expected. I get to feel important for about 10 minutes by talking to an agent over in China.

The problem is I rarely have work.

Meanwhile, RP came back and dumped some more on me, and the editor neglected to include all the little tidbits I need to know in order to actually, you know, clear permissions. Awesome.

Generally, my mood has been as dark as the Boston sky. I'm stressing money, as I not only have a giant credit card bill to pay, I also owe my mother money for fall tuition. The real bitch of it is that everytime I talk to her on the phone, she waxes materialistic bitch and rambles about the new crown molding, the new paint, the new carpets, the new bedroom, dining, family, and living room furniture. The pisser being that all of it is paid for by my father.

James took Friday off and planned an outing to Newport, RI for us.

I collected some Atlantic sand in empty Sbux frappuccino bottles (a tradition I started when I collected Pacific sand in San Diego), took pictures of mutant seagulls the size of fat housecats, and went ambling down Cliff Walk.

After that, we toured the Breakers, the Vanderbilt summer "cottage", and had some fabulous pizza from a dive inhabiting an old firestation on Thames Street (pronounced "thames" not "tims")

In other words, I was Elizabeth touring Derbyshire, but my Fitzwilliam was by my side, not diving into ponds and frolicking in a very wet, very white shirt.

And my Fitzy doesn't own one of those houses.

No matter. It was a nice day nonetheless. Of course, it's now Sunday, and I dread going to work and doing more nothing. My reprieve is going home and watching TV. Right now, James has me into the second season of Battlestar Galactica, which I will admit does not suck ass. On the contrary, it's actually good. I think it's the fact that it's easy to forget they're in outer space most of the time.

James is ubersmug that he's got me watching sci-fi; the triumph has restored whatever manhood he lost in admitting some appreciation for Sex and the City.

At any rate, when I'm not watching TV, I'm homemaking. I just finished cataloging my books, and I organized by genre, then author. I even put together a "Box of Shame" to contain James's Cussler, Clancy, and Crichton novels (artifacts from the many plane trips in his lifetime) and my collection of slightly unwelcome gifts (namely, Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife, which is every bit the bodice-ripper you'd imagine it to be). I haven't decided what to do with Dan Brown. Burning him gives him too much credit, but does he really deserve to occupy space beside the Bronte sisters, as overrated as they both may be?

I hope work picks up. I need the money, but I also need some sort of mental stimulation.

Is there such a thing as a book club that doesn't suck?

Body and mind feeling rather run-down this week. I'm not certain whether it's the miserably damp and misty weather, the lack of substantive work at my dayjob (worsened by my boss's absence the rest of the week), the lack of feedback at my freelance job, the fact my body continues to bleed and bleed and bleed despite triple dosages of hormones, or all of the above.

On the bright side, it occurred to me that I have a very awesome and very strong ally at PB. After weeks of reschedules, I finally managed to stop by for lunch and whatnot. We started off talking business, since she's the driving force in RP hiring me for copyright research, and, having done that, I feel much, much better.

She pretty much confirmed that my invoice is very reasonable, and that, yes, the editor with whom I work is—how shall I say?—flighty? inattentive? lazy? very, very busy? So in other words, after sitting for two, three weeks and waiting for feedback, my instinct to email an invoice and ask for guidance is both natural and a good one. And with my ally as my, well, ally...I know I won't get burned. Phew!

Had meant to join James in bed about an hour ago, but I got distracted at the computer.

The Editor at RP threw another small, but unbelievably complicated project at me. I dunno whether I'm happy or annoyed that I agreed to do it.

I also got an email response, after weeks mind you, un-confirming the proper contact for permissions on an article whose journal and publishing company ceased to exist, oh, 50 years ago. Gah.

I'll feel so much better once I mail off my invoices and divorce myself from RP. That's my major to-do tomorrow evening.

If I weren't an honest person, I'd try setting up several estates in the names of authors long dead. The way copyrights are(n't) tracked, I could probably bank by pretending to be the executor and recipient of royalties. =P

I didn't sleep at all Sunday night. Shortly after I ate dinner Monday evening, I passed out on the couch, my limbs precisely angled to be as uncomfortable as possible. Of course, I was too tired to recalculate, much less calibrate.

I had every intention of taking the bus to work, but feeling blah this morning, I opted to drive. The driving route is incredibly straight-forward, but I still somehow managed to miss a turn. With help (naturally) from James, I made it to the lobby at nine on the nose.

Everyone seems pretty friendly, so far. It's nice that I have talking points in my pocket, as many people (a) once worked at Perseus (b) knows someone who now works at Perseus (c) once worked at Pohly (d) knows someone who now works at Pohly and/or (e) once attended Emerson. Sucks, however, that I'm not feeling particularly witty. Hope a decent night's sleep helps.

The work itself is pretty mundane stuff. The only thing I truly look forward to embellishing on the resume is that I'll likely get to draft contracts. Of course, with boilerplates it's really not that difficult BUT it's a step closer to negotiation, I guess, which is useful. I imagine this will take me as close as I'll need to be for royalties, subrights, and contracts.

The building itself is sterile and quiet, and the surrounding complex, owned by Harvard but leased to a hodge podge of businesses, is neat, clean, and pretty. There's a Panera nearby, and I made use of the shaded benches to knock off a few more chapters of the Laurie book.

Despite the much-needed nap, I feel like a wad of dough. I ate a bowl of ice-cream when I should've stopped a half of a calzone ago. Desperate to flush my overindulgences out of my body, I drank an entire bottle of water. I feel like my food just absorbed the liquid and expanded in my stomach.

Curse you, water-pushers. You're dead to me.

As a dog-owner, I have developed three bizarre, but useful quirks.

The first is an immediate suspicion of lip-smacking. More often than not, it signifies that Ella is eating something she shouldn't be, like used Q-tips or floss, cough drops, or condoms.

The second is a hyper-awareness of the distension of my dog's anus. Just as her yips, whimpers, and barks let me know she needs to go outside, her anus tells me how soon. She's 100% trained now, but I'm likewise trained to be vigilant.

The third is a habit of lying down with my limbs spread. Ella loves to cuddle, even when it's fucking 98 degrees inside the apartment, and she's going to squeeze into a nook to sleep, whether I like it or not. I have since given up and given in by providing ample room for her to football herself inside the crook of my arm or turn my ass into a pillow.

You may wonder why we don't make her sleep elsewhere. The truth is, she's a ninja. Just as the cat steals donuts, pizza slices, and dumplings from inside sealed food containers, Ella surreptitiously marine-crawls onto the bed in the middle of the night such that we'll wake up in the morning with a dog crammed between us, under the covers, and her head wedged between the edges of our pillows.

The utterly amusing thing about all this is that 5 years ago, I would've never pegged myself for a dog owner.

I have new-found respect for assholes who inconvenience me by gabbing loudly into their phones on the train or voting for social conservatives: most of these doucherockets aren't murderers. It's hard to be philosophical about death when it's closer to home: maybe I'm crazy, but I find it challenging to rationalize that the death of a person you've actually met gives cosmic balance to rainbows and winning lottery tickets and the beautiful butterfly that lands on some kid's nose and makes him feel alive.

Such were my thoughts most of the day.

Closing in on 3AM, and my mouth is tired, though I've spoken no more than usual today. It occurred to me an hour or so ago that I've been silently rolling the word "Harvard" around my tongue. "Yes, I work for Harvard." "I work with subsidiary rights at Harvard Business School Press." "Oh yes, that Harvard." Such a foreign idea.

The crazy thing is that I'm not as excited as I am relieved. I'll be making money this summer and fall, and I will have fulfilled my personal goal of relevant publishing experience this semester. I'm behaving super pragmatic about all this, though fortunately not so much that I completely lose all joy in what I do.

I can't tell if I'm getting lost in the details.

I've been feeling especially nostalgic lately, and events today have just enhanced the ache.