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Every year during deadline season, the stress seems to manifest itself slightly differently. There’s been the insomnia; the strange sensation as if someone was gripping my stomach (the organ, not the bodily region) and periodically digging nails in; the pinched shoulder nerves; the tooth grinding. Forgetting to eat until I’m nearly falling over is a repeat visitor, as are vivid dreams and nightmares.

This year, apparently, it’s music: I find myself singing. Out loud. Songs I made up. Rather badly.

There was “We Are So Screwed,” sung to the tune of the theme song from “My Three Sons.” For variety, a very similar song to the tune of “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad.” And, of course, various obscenity-filled songs telling uncooperative and/or dictatorial authors to get over themselves and do anatomically unlikely things. Usually, I don’t realize I’m doing it until my voice has gotten loud enough for people standing in the hallway outside my door to hear me.

Apparently it’s carrying over into my free hours, as well. I realized after dinner that, sometime between about 9:00 last night and then, my cable needle had gone missing. It’s the small one, the only one that goes with my size 8 needles, and I cannot find the thing at all, even after spending quite a fair bit of time tearing through the nightstand drawer (in case it had fallen in) and the floor all around the futon. Obviously, Nigel has stolen the needle and is hiding it, filled with secret glee that I cannot make further progress on my cabled scarf:

It was only when I had given up that I realized I’d been singing “Where the Fuck Did the Cable Needle Go” to the tune of “Camptown Races.” Complete with “doo-dah”s. Evidently, I need help.

Instead of knitting tonight, I suppose I’ll just have to make do with watching the extras on my “Little Britain Live” DVD (from my kind and generous parents, who also provided me with “Little Britain Abroad” and the first series of “The Catherine Tate Show” [Am I bovvered? Apparently, yes.]).

It seems like it’s been forever since I had an entire weekend off — as I whined earlier, March is the height of deadline season, so it’s usually eaten up with gobs of frantic overtime. We’ve had our share of that this year, but somehow (possibly because there are quite a few chapters this time that are virtually unchanged since 2004?) we are currently less screwed than we’d expected, and thus I haven’t gone in to work at all this weekend. Shocking, I know.

That’s not to say that everything is perfect: there’s one chapter that’s just gone out in galleys, and it will probably come back to bite us — either the author will provide all the SI and proper camera-ready figures he should’ve provided months ago, in which case there will be a helluva lot of cleanup and fixing to do; or he’ll ignore us completely and we’ll try to figure out what to do at the last minute, which will also involve a lot of even more frantic last-minute work. Another author of the more persnickety persuasion is still looking over two chapters (one of which he’s seeing for the second time), and will quite possibly want to debate us endlessly over semantic preferences and style issues (”But people will expect to see the word permit here — they’ll get confused if it says allow instead!”). At least he cares enough to get back to us about his chapters, though.

Still, for the moment, there’s little productive we can do to get further ahead, so I’ve been luxuriating in an actual three-day weekend. I slept much of Friday, and have only slowly recovered enough that I could get around to doing stuff. For instance, I finally finished my second chemo cap for donation:

It’s a little more Cat-in-the-Hat than I’d thought it would be, but it works. The two caps need to be mailed tomorrow. I also started a cabled scarf in a metallic silver yarn, but unless I find three or four more balls of Louisa Harding “Glisten” in color #2, it’ll be a very short scarf indeed. (The yarn seems to be out of print, or otherwise really hard to find, which is odd because it’s so pretty.)

Not a whole lot else to report, actually. The vet decided that Nigel’s thyroid meds were revving his metabolism a bit too much (what probably tipped them off was his stay with them in January, in which he ate three weeks’ worth of food in one week, without gaining weight, and was still begging for more), so they’ve dropped him down to 0.6 mg of L-thyroxine a day; he now seems only ordinary-beagle-level interested in food, which is still quite a bit, but at least he’s stopped yelping uncontrollably when I eat my own dinner. (The routine is that he eats first while I’m preparing my own food, and then has a smaller “dessert” serving of kibble after I’m done, so it’s not as if he should be maddened with hunger as he watches me eat.) Unfortunately, though, he’s been having a lot of accidents inside — often within an hour of his last airing. Not sure whether the two are related, although thyroid hormones do seem to affect thirst, so maybe that’s what’s going on. I hope it’ll settle out soon, though, whatever it is.

I also finally got around to doing my taxes (refund! woo hoo!) and Sid the Beetle’s ad valorem (wah). I was going to bake some rolls today, but it’s slightly chilly and I have my doubts about how well the yeast would fare. At least I’ve got a batch of seitan going in the slow cooker, and might do either a Seitan o’ Greatness-type thing or a batch of chickpea cutlets for the upcoming week. (My weird work schedule and the horrible traffic commuting from our prison-like temporary office building means that I don’t get a chance to even start dinner before 7:00 during the week, so I’ve learned that, unless I intend to rely on Amy’s frozen food, planning ahead at least a bit on weekends is a must.) Going to try to get it in gear enough to do some muffins, too, if I can decide which type to make; all the ones that leap to mind at the moment are a little sweeter than what I’m craving.

Or maybe I’ll just take a nap, while the slow cooker bubbles gently away and the smell of seitan broth gradually osmoses through my little flat. That would be nice, too. Ahhh. . . .

A while ago, I found myself with some credit card reward points that needed to be used before they expired, so I used them for a Solio charger for Fenric the iPod and my mobile phone (which I haven’t yet named, oddly enough). After maybe a month of playing with it, I have come to the conclusion that it’s a neat little gadget, but I would have probably been somewhat irritated if I’d paid the hundred dollars or so for it retail.

I’d been warned that it required direct sunlight for charging; I wasn’t quite prepared for how persnickety it is about the exact angle and brightness, but whatever. I learned pretty quickly how to adjust it and move it around periodically as the sun arcs across the sky. It only reached a full charge today, though, mainly because, at my office and in my flat, I only have windows on one side and only get sunlight that’s direct enough for maybe one or two hours a day. A couple of people (Jodi, Mark) were nice enough to let me appropriate their office windows for additional charging, but I felt bad that I kept having to interrupt them to adjust the Solio’s angle and position, so I kind of knocked that off.

Still, I’d been forewarned about its slow (compared to, say, rechargeable batteries you plug into the wall) charging, and I can deal with that. A lot of days were too cloudy for me to get direct-enough sun, and then there were the days I forgot to bring it to the office for charging, so it probably took way longer for me to reach full charge than it would’ve ordinarily. Under my specific and sunlight-limited conditions, I would estimate I could get a full charge during the summer in less than a week, assuming cloudless conditions. (If I had access to south-facing windows or my flat’s windows didn’t look out on another building about 10 ft [3 m] away, it would probably be much closer to the 1 full day of direct sunlight estimated in the product literature.) So it’s a bit slower than plugging something into the wall, but one full Solio charge is supposed to be enough for two full chargings of a mobile, which is not bad at all. No big deal.

The problem, however, is that they don’t make an adapter tip for my phone. Sure, it comes with an LG connector, and my phone is an LG — but it’s a somewhat elderly LG by mobile phone standards, being about three and a half years old, and the LG tip that comes in the box is intended for newer models (the Chocolate line, etc.). It’s an itty little thing, and there’s no way it will mesh with my geriatric mobile.

Yes, I should’ve researched more when it said “LG tip included.” Yes, the Solio USB adapter should fit onto Fenric’s iPod charge cord, so the Solio is far from being useless. However, I recharge my phone a lot more than I recharge Fenric — in addition to communication, the phone also serves as alarm clock, backup calendar, portable solitaire game, and notepad. When it comes to my main charging needs, the mobile would be it, and there’s no way I can use the Solio for that.

Meh. My plan at the moment is to keep the Solio around for Fenric, and maybe lend it out to friends whose phones are compatible. Either that, or buy a new, compatible phone, recycle the old, and go from there. Hmm. If I can ever remember what our temporary office building’s address is (signature is required for delivery, which experience suggests is maddening to the extreme if I try having it delivered to my flat), I may try ordering a new phone.

Why do new purchases so frequently seem to require further purchases? Stupid non-open-source capitalist electronics people. Bleagh.

• ThinkGeek :: Phantom Keystroker
  Evil, but cool. Much better than messing with the autocorrect settings in MS Word to insert extra gibberish or typos when people type specific words.
  (tags: geek practicaljoke computer)
• BBC NEWS | Technology | Obituary: Sir Arthur C Clarke
  Damn it. These things come in threes: first Gygax, now ACC — who’s next? You people are expressly forbidden to keep dying like this without my permission.
  (tags: arthurcclarke scifi authors obits)

• BBC NEWS | Dungeons and Dragons creator dies
  Damn: first, Herbivore Magazine announces they’ll close at the end of the year, and now Gary Gygax dies. Completely sucky day.

(In which I totally and completely refrain from using real swear words. No, really. My mother will be so proud.)

You know, I used to like March. Although I tend to prefer autumn to spring, and anyhow spring goes by so quickly in Atlanta that you miss it if you blink, it’s still a pleasant enough season. The trees begin to bloom, but not so much yet that the pollen turns everything yellow; the weather tends toward the mild, and you can often rely on natural ventilation (i.e., open windows, which Nigel likes because he gets the sounds and smells of the outdoors from the comfort of his perch on the back of the futon); and then of course there’s my birthday at the end of the month. (That brings with it the ad valorem on Sid the Beetle, but, then, tax refund usually more than covers that, so it all works out.)

Of course, all that changed with my job. Deadline time is usually early to mid April, which means that the entirety of March — and usually much of February — just disappears in a blur because we’re pushing as hard as we can to get galley proofs out the door and chapters to the printer. I usually miss the spring blossoming completely, and birthday celebrations usually consist entirely of actually leaving on time that day instead of staying late. I get so busy that I forget to eat, and only realize it when I’m about to fall over.

Today, as the first official work day of this year’s March installment, did not promise anything better. I realized about 5:30 that the reason I was weaving slightly and the computer screen was wavering in front of me was probably the fact that I hadn’t consumed anything other than the flask of instant espresso I brought from home that morning (out of proper coffee; still am, for that matter, and likely to remain so for a while). One Bumble Bar seemed to help with that, so I was able to finish the chapter and, I hope, not screw anything up too badly. It gave me the energy to drive home safely, too.

Energy, yes. Car battery, no. Sid conked out on me, and sadly Bumble Bars don’t work on Beetles. Of course the car and battery places all were closed or technician-less by the time I discovered the unfortunate and untimely death. Virtually all coworkers were gone, too, though one of the few remaining was kindly willing and able to try to jump-start the battery. (Sid was too far gone for it to work.) I contemplated taking MARTA home, but, though I was less likely to fall over after my snack, I didn’t think I was up to the mental challenge of trying to navigate a clunky and unfamiliar transit system and all the gazillion necessary transfers. Finally, I wound up calling a taxi, and arrived home an hour later and $25 lighter in the walletish area.

On the good side, at least, Nigel seemed undistressed by my lateness. I, however, am consoling myself with a nutritious dinner of vitamin pill, leftover waffle fries, and red wine. (Fried potatoes and wine work wonders, I’ve been told.)

So now, on top of the usual deadline fun, I need to figure out how to get to work in the morning (scared of trying to cross the Druid Hills bridge over I-85 on my bike; probably I’ll take another taxi, and goodness knows how much that’ll cost in rush hour), how to get the comatose Sid to someone who can and will replace his battery, or starter, or whatever bits and bobs are wrong with him, and then how to collect him when he’s mended.

As an aside, how infuriating is it that car dealers always brightly offer to let you leave your car with them overnight, so they can look at it sometime the next day, when (1) the car blatantly refuses to move under its own power and is not currently in their lot, so how, pray tell, are you supposed to get it there, because there’s just no way you can push it several miles up Peachtree Industrial by your lonesome; and (2) even if you could somehow magic the car into their lot, you’d still be stuck sleeping there in the back seat unless you could somehow also magic yourself home — which, of course, begs the question of why you’re bothering to drive in the first place when you could just teleport or Apparate everywhere? Do VW keys have a Portkey-like function, of which I am unaware? Perhaps they assume everyone is in a two-car marriage, or knows their neighbors well enough to ask favors like that, or has friends who live close enough that it wouldn’t be a major, hour-out-of-their-way imposition. Huh.

As another aside, the taxi driver told me that I had a “very polite” accent. Not sure what that means, exactly, but he said it in a pleasant tone of voice, so I assume he wasn’t making fun.

As a third aside, I really must start keeping $30 or $40 in emergency cash on hand. This makes twice in three months that I’ve needed a taxi on absolutely no notice, and it’s embarrassing to keep having to make them stop at the cash machine.