I am now the proud possessor of:
— a coffee-stained copy of Mary Oliver’s Upstream.
Oh, and a cool tote from the Wallingford Library.
The library itself is now the proud possessor of a check from me for a brand-new copy of Mary Oliver’s Upstream. And a tote.
Yep. There was a book, a cup of coffee, a slightly rickety table in the woods, and my elbow. All four met in unfortunate circumstance. I have to blame the elbow; there’s just no other explanation.
I bought the tote because I felt that the library was not charging me enough for replacing the book. I wanted to give them more money, to assuage my vast guilt.
On the upside, I now own the book. Plus: hey, tote!
In other news:
Now that the third floor is nearly as deserted in the day as it is at night, I’ve taken to pacing the hall as I think. Last night, as I paced past the conference room, I once again admired their gigantic dry-erase whiteboard. And by “admired” I mean “seethed with envy over.”
In my own office, I’ve tacked up huge sheets of dry-erase-style contact paper, to allow me to scrawl deep thoughts and work through twisty structural problems in multiple colors. At least, in theory that’s why it’s there. But alas, the contact paper does not work as well as an actual whiteboard.  While it’s true that I can write on it, and erase it, I can only dry-erase in a 10-second window. After that, I have to spray on an ammonia-based solvent and use a sponge. This puts a crimp in one’s spontaneity.
And as I grumbled to myself, pacing back toward my office, it suddenly hit me:
I work at night. There’s nobody here!
So, I made a big pot of tea, grabbed my laptop and my dry-erase markers and:
As long as I erase before I leave, I’m cool.
The billboard company never technically had exclusive use of the conference room. But it was next to their offices, and they were often gathered in it. So, I simply got it in my head that I don’t use the conference room. Plus, there’s a whole fishbowl aspect to it, with one glass wall, and its location among all the offices of the sales force.
But now, they are gone. It’s just Dave and me. And that one programmer dude who’s never around.
Plus — I work at night. Mostly.
Strategically blurred to prevent spoilers.
That was the night of the crazy rain and wind.  There’s something particularly lovely about drinking strong tea after midnight, rain and wind banging on the windows, dreaming up crazy solutions to near-intractable problems, while scrawling wildly on 6 by 4 whiteboard.
Of course, lest I take myself too seriously, there was this guy:
Left over from one of their charity promotions… I do hope they find him a good home.
Hope you enjoyed your Hallowe’en! I did — although I never did make it to the town’s justifiably famous Trail of Terror. I’ve always wanted to try it just once… too late now.
Next up: More about the local library, about which not enough good things can be said.
