Monday, March 26, 2007

Long Day

I arrived at work at 7:45 this morning, well aware of the tedious workload I was facing. You see, I spent my day working on a file that was done by people who do not know English very well. They do not know that Oz is a fictional place, that the New York Ballet is a company, not a dance name, that it's Rodgers and Hammerstein, not Rogers and Hammerstein.

Essentially, I spent my day fixing other people's work.

And I titled song after song after song (a dance montage project).

After almost 11 hours of staring at my screen, I went home. My eyes were bloodshot and I was slightly jittery (my healthy lunch gone by 11am, I resorted to caffeine and Smarties to get me through the rest of the day).

I decided to meander home and take an extra-long route. This may not make sense to most people, who, after a really long day, want nothing more than dinner and their couch. I, however, saw myself as having two options: I could be computer-screen tired or fresh-air tired. So I walked for about 45 minutes, checking out the local architecture (I love looking at houses), and zig-zagging my way up and down the streets near my place. Then I ate a lot of vegetables. To compensate for the earlier sugar.

Then I checked my work email. This is never a good idea. Ever. LA emailed me (not literally the city; a guy from the LA office). He decided that my musical montage project didn't need the songs titled. My hundreds of subtitles were deleted with the stroke of one button, leaving only the narration of aging dancers. "The lyrics weren't plot-pertinent." I wonder what would happen if I told him that he is not plot-pertinent.

So now I'm heading to bed. After reading some Truman Capote. And a monologue about hallucinations and Keanu Reeves.

And I will wake up at 6 and do it all over again. At least tomorrow is musical-free.

3 comments:

michael lewis said...

That sucks!

But don't worry, you're not alone.

We've all spent hours and hours working on some project or other, only to have the whole thing tossed by some negligent boss or supervisor.

It's happened to me on several occasions. And the worst one was when one department manager asked for something, I did it (took literally weeks to get it done), then the other manager hated the idea and wanted to know why I did this thing. I pointed him back to the first manager, who denied he even asked me to do anything.

ARRRRGHGGGH!

~drea said...

ouch... I spent my whole day marking speaking tests.. and correcting kids pronunciations on meaningless words like.. handkerchief .. there are other words but i'm drawing a blank.. i just kept thinking in an age of tissue, when does anyone ever use handkerchiefs anymore.. and i really think that handkerchiefs should be spelled with a 'ves' at the end of it.. much like the word kni'ves' .. alas the world is downside up and inside down and i've got insomnia so i should try and go to sleep..

A.

oncoffee said...

I am a handkerchief user