Happy days

Yesterday was A Good Day.

Work was in many ways very rubbish - it was already becoming apparent that I have too much to do to deliver something of the quality I'd be happy with by my end-of-the-month deadline (assuming I continue my endeavours to keep myself healthy through eating and sleeping and training), then following a meeting I'd prompted, it transpired that a colleague is in near dire need of a lot of support to get him through to the end of Thursday if the large workshop we're holding is not to appear a badly-organised amateurish affair (which would be A Very Bad Thing). Luckily this takes priority - not getting this right by Thursday will be embarrassing and damage our reputation, whereas my delivery of draft material will be a minor inconvenience. It thus will take some of the sting out of my late/draft delivery (if and only if we get Thursday right). Organising workshops being neither one of my core competencies nor a task in which I have much (any?) experience, it makes for an interesting change. I still have a lot of work on for the customer, but with Thursday's event and an exciting away day coming up the following week, the slog through to the end of the month seems tractable.

Meanwhile, The Mother Ship (aka my employer) continues to provide a steady stream of overhead and administrative work which has been keeping me busy in the evenings. This should taper off towards the end of the month and last night I'd crossed enough off my To-Do list to make my current batch of work look tractable and (dare I suggest such a thing?) on target.

By 8pm (and for a 12 hour working day) the day was going so surprizingly well that things really couldn't get much better. I took the time to check my email and found the training schedule for the week had winged its way to my inbox. It convinced me to down tools for the day and head to the gym for a long erg. On the way, I passed one of my crewmates heading home from her session. We exchanged a few words - it transpired another crewmate was pleased to have beaten my score from last week. This was motivation enough to persuade me that a serious sweating was called for.

45 minutes of erging later, I'd stuck just over 400 metres on my score from last week, and in the process notched up a best for the season (and drenched myself in thoroughly justified sweat). This was turning into an unlikely but Very Good Day. When I take another three seconds off my steady state 500m split time or, equivalently, add another 362m to my 45 min distance, I might have a beer to celebrate. (Incidentally, I think the last time I had a beer was the "Did I ever tell you" night. Evidently the occasion was sufficiently traumatic to persuade me that repeat performances were not called for. (Postscript: I am of course talking rubbish. My last beer was of course on the Circle line. Just another beer forgotten in the alcoholic haze of time...)

I wandered home in a state of extreme post-erg brain-mush, taking in the stillness of the river, the reflection of Hammersmith Bridge on its glass-like surface, and the last of the fading light to the west.

I wonder what today will bring?