I’m not sure what it was yesterday, but I just collapsed. It was a fairly intense work day — had a podcast recording for two hours in the morning to start, with Fred Berman, the audiobook narrator for my co-host Benjamin Rosenbaum‘s _The Unravelling_.
The audiobook drops in two weeks, and we thought it’d be interesting to give people a behind-the-scenes look into some of what goes into that job. Fun conversation (and incidentally, he also plays Timon in The Lion King on Broadway!), but also an intense start to the day. Recording podcasts is performing, which is always fun but a little draining.
Then went straight into teaching from 12 – 3, ditto fun but draining, and in the midst of all that, was dealing with a stressful personal crisis of a friend. Much more stressful for the friend than for me, but still, it was upsetting and worrying. I think it’s all okay now, though, fingers crossed.
I did have one delightful surprise, a fairly large story check that I wasn’t expecting (had forgotten I hadn’t already been paid for that one). $900 (for a Wild Cards story, “Tasty,” in _Deuces Down_), so I promptly swung by the garden store and picked up a few plants for $100 of it, which felt insanely indulgent. It is lovely to replace a few of the plants that did not survive our housesitter’s and my family’s erratic watering while I was travelling. The rest of the funds will go into the business account to pay my staff.
After the garden store, I swung by and picked up Kavi from the library (how much do I love that the library is just a few blocks from the school, and is her go-to place for after-school???), we got Wendy’s for dinner because apparently everyone in the family wanted fried chicken (nuggets for the kids, spicy chicken sandwiches for me and Kev), I watched an episode of Gilmore Girls with Kavi, and then I think I just kind of zoned out for a while? Oh, right, I played Don’t Starve for two hours, because I needed to turn off my brain for a bit. Video games are great for that.
Then an episode of The Witcher with Kevin, then bath and an episode of Foyle’s War for me (very good — murder mystery + WWII, highly recommended), and then sleep. So a weird combination of an intense thinking day + media day.
Today, today we do laundry.
But first I have a collaboration meeting with the SLF & Plurality University, in five minutes. That should be interesting. But first, more tea.
If I ever have a rallying cry for my troops, I suspect it will be “More tea!” (Moar tea?) Maybe I should put it on mugs. 
Aryabhata has decided my office is nice and toasty for sleeping in while I teach my Zoom classes. My students approve.
