the drained dean

Some things, like playing with your almost 20-month-old daughter, running from an angry mob or eating very hot soup, are best done when you are not exhausted. The past several days, I’m sorry to say, have been enough to want me to curl up in a dark and cool corner and simply shut down.

If you have ever been given the task of getting one picture of one person exactly right, then you know that it isn’t a matter of having a camera and asking the person to smile (some people are afraid to smile, in the same way that some snakes don’t bite or certain pens simply refuse to write on the most normal of paper). There is the matter of the location, the light, the background and props, the makeup, the styling and grooming, and where the art director can buy a fresh pack of cigarettes. Multiply all that by an inordinately large number of people (even if they are beautiful) over the course of three days and you’ll understand the meaning of 15-hour workdays.

I’m not complaining though (I’m absolutely certain that someone somewhere has real troubles, enough to make my little fatigue as inconsequential as a black ant is to a red ant). I enjoyed the work but did not relish being barely awake when I got home every night, unable to spend more than a few waking moments with Sage (who waited up for me), before I helplessly fell asleep in my work clothes.

When everything was finished though, I zonked out over the weekend (a term which here means “slept until late afternoon, making people think I was set to decline dinner, breakfast and lunch forever”) and slowly recharged.

Hence, the delays on the updates here. That, and the lack of an extension of the new landline for our room where the computers are, and the fact that I was swept into the series of unfortunate events that plague the poor Baudeliare orphans (hence the tone of this entry, wink wink) and lusted over the Mirrodin set from Magic: The Gathering.

But now, now work calls again and I must be off.