weekend: sleepover, tour, food, bowling / screw-up at work / thanks

[supercheesegirl]

Weekend, though off to a shaky start, turned out very good. Saturday I mostly laid around all day, but I still managed to do a veritable assload of laundry (including the dress pants that Jorn wore to Rhett's wedding back in *June* that have been sitting in the hamper ever since) and I bought new sneakers. New sneakers!! I'll post a pic as soon as photobucket stops being an asshole. Then I went to Kris's sleepover. It was really, really fun. And maybe I'll feel comfortable enough to actually talk at the next one... (not that I don't feel comfortable. I just can be reserved until I know people well, and although I know a plethora of fun things about your sex lives I don't know you very well yet. I do hope you know that I like you all a heck of a lot even if I don't say much.) Sunday morning we got brunch and ran into darxus, which was entertaining, then I had to dash off (with no time to shower!) to Otis House to meet up with the 2:00 walking tour. I really want to learn the walking tour so I can give it to people, but you know, I'm never going to learn it if these freakin' French tourists don't stop getting in my way. In case any of you are planning on going on a large group tour of *anything*, I hope you realize and remember that it's one thing to hang back to take a picture or a closer look at something, but it's entirely different to hang back so far that the tour leader can't see you and has to stop the tour to wait for you. This is rude. What's also rude is, when you're the ones hanging back holding up the tour for everyone else anyway, to *stop in a convenience store to buy water*, thus holding everyone up even further. It means you get to see less stuff and hear less info about what you do see, and it also royally pisses off your tour leader, who can't even speak your language to ask you not to do that and therefore will probably say very mean things about you in private in her own language. Argh.

After the insane old French people, I met up with Jorno and we went out to Packard's Corner to a little restaurant called First Bite, where they make Fat Willards. This is an insane sandwich. It's on a large sub roll of garlic bread, and it consists of chicken tenders, mozzarella sticks, seasoned fries, and marinara sauce. It was really good but also pretty overwhelming. Wow. Then Jorn and I got mushed into a ton of people on the green line on the way home. We learned what a frotteur is. Good new word. I implore you all to use it all the time, because Jorn's demonstration of what a frotteur does totally cracks me up. And then I went out candlepin bowling with Jorn, DannBrown, Dylan, Farbs, Miles, Miles's new girlfriend Anna (!!!), EE, and Dyl's friend Brian. It was really fun. I bowled a 69 and I think a 78. And then we played DDR. By the time I got home, though, I was totally wiped out, maybe because I only got maybe 4-5 hours sleep the night before. I'm still pretty tired today.

Maybe it's because I'm tired that I royally screwed up something at work today. I'm the managing editor for an academic journal that sends its submissions out to referees. The authors aren't supposed to know who's reviewing their work, it's supposed to be anonymous so the referee can feel free to write what he really thinks of the paper. Well, this morning I get an email question from an author and I forward it to the Kipster, asking "This is in reference to X paper, which is out with referee Name, should I ask him?" Except that I didn't forward it to the Kipster, I replied it to the author. So the author totally saw who his referee is. Big ol' problem. This is really one of my first major screwups, though (other than the time when I skipped the HTML class the Kipster was paying for, but he was okay with it and even said he'd just pay for it again since he's got the money in his account). And I will never ever do it again. Arrrghggh.

(One more thing: thank you to everyone who offered advice and love and hugs. I'm feeling tons better now. If you don't know what I'm talking about, then believe me when I say that you don't want to know.)

Comments

[dominanefret.livejournal.com]

I want to go to a sleep over!

I have some things in the bottom of my hampers at home that have been in there forever. I think it's come to the point where I probably should just get rid of that stuff... because if I don't care enough to clean it I probablyl shoudln't own it.

I'm blabbering.

[supercheesegirl.livejournal.com]

You would have liked this sleepover, believe me. :)

We got to the point when our hamper was *full* of non-priority stuff and all the normal laundry was sitting on the floor. We just had a ton of things like the dress pants and pajamas and towels and things. It was bad. But now it's better! I triumphed over the laundry!

[myras-girls.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a very full weekend. Which is... good?

I tried to go on the walking tour in Boston and I was hit by a car driving in reverse down a one way street. WTF? I wasn't seriously injured or anything as they were driving pretty slow but the fucker didn't even stop! :\

[supercheesegirl.livejournal.com]

OMG! That's horrible. I would think he'd at least stop, but Boston drivers are notoriously awful. That's why I try not to drive around here. But I have gotten pretty good at car dodging and darting across streets.

Full weekend was... mostly good. Just busy, especially on Sunday, which was a little stressful because I hadn't showered and felt gross and also because I didn't know how long things would take and where I'd be. I like having a Plan for a day. But overall it was a very good weekend, yes. :)

[amedia.livejournal.com]

So the author totally saw who his referee is. Big ol' problem.

Ooh, sympathy vibes here. Will you feel better if I share a gaffe?

I was an editor for an academic journal for a while. The editor-in-chief sent me an article submitted by a Big Name Author - not an academic - that would have been Tres Sexy for us to publish. The problem was, it wasn't deep enough. I wrote back to the editor-in-chief explaining that this didn't meet the criteria for the journal, didn't interrogate the issue in an original or sophisticated way, didn't make any reference to critical works already in the field, etc., etc., and wrapped it up by saying that the article was written at about the level of a clever undergraduate paper.

Which would have been fine. Except that the editor-in-chief, who had many fine qualities but the social graces of a doorknob, didn't write to the author and explain that the work wasn't quite what we were looking for. Instead, she forwarded my comments. Verbatim.

I still cringe when I think about it. After that, I never said *anything* in writing to the editor-in-chief that I wouldn't want the author to hear - bit of a chilling effect on frankness, to be sure.

[supercheesegirl.livejournal.com]

Ouch! I guess It's always good to hear someone else's terrible editorial stories. :) My predecessor in this position basically lost the job because a page from his novel got mixed into the copy that was getting sent to *everyone on the Editorial Board*, and it looked really bad. So I swore I'd never do anything so stupid, and this isn't near as bad but it's still decidedly not good. Well, we're dealing, and we'll be getting the paper out to a new referee in the next few days hopefully, so it shouldn't slow things down too much. Sigh...

[velvetwaltz.livejournal.com]

please dont let jorn (or yourself) eat any more of those bad-for-you-in-so-many-ways "fat willard" sandwiches. god. how did your bodies respond to that abuse?!

[supercheesegirl.livejournal.com]

Didn't have any adverse reactions to the Fat Willard, surprisingly enough. I think this was mostly just a one-time thing, though, and it won't be a regular occurrence--more just to see what it was like.

But it's funny, I always get sick when I eat at Johnny's--you know, the diner place near Harvard Square? Their grease makes me ill. But not the Fat Willard.