From sundown Friday until nightfall Saturday, I spent the majority of my time sleeping. At last.

I think the thing I keep getting hung up on is getting the blurbs for each book. How am I supposed to distill the description of each title into two or three short sentences, without getting boring, or misrepresenting it? I have to keep reminding myself that customers clicking on a link will be sent to the corresponding Amazon page anyway, and that they can look at the full description and reviews there, so this isn't worth getting hung up on.

But I, of course, am a perfectionist. It's a wonder I ever get anything done.

Anyway, I figure that's on the top of my list of responsibilities just now. It's also on the top of the list of responsibilities I'm actively trying to avoid just now. However, having admitted that on a page that I know Mary Anne reads, I shall now have no choice but to buckle down and update the thing. I hope.

• Read a bunch of arguments for and against the existence of God in my philosophy textbook, for class on Monday.
  
• Read a couple more photocopied chapters on "culture" and "ideology," and write a couple more journal entries, for class on Tuesday.
  
• Read "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" very closely, for class on Wednesday.
  
• Start figuring out how to represent the sounds, activity, and energy of a carnival with black-on-white construction paper without actually showing an illustration of anything real, for class on Thursday. (I'm letting my subconscious work on that for now. I'll check in on it on Tuesday or Wednesday, I think.)
• Twist a bunch of arms, in order to get enough material for my poetry section this week.
  

Did Beethoven play the piano?

(Well, no, not as such; the modern piano is a more recent development. But don't get technical. You know what I mean.)

I don't know how much he'll be able to pay for this, but I figure it can only help. Even if it means I have to make sure that the word "jism" continues to be misspelled as "gism" in the new edition. Actual copyediting is somebody else's problem on this one. :-)

In the meantime, one of the other editors overheard the conversation, and said that he knows somebody else who was looking for an editor, and would I be interested in doing that also?

Why not? So he'll be getting in touch with the other guy, and we'll see what happens. Although, in this case, I'll be insisting on a decent salary; how much will depend on what sort of editing is involved. But this may be the one area in which I'm confident as to my self-worth.

As for the favorite color thing... I won't argue that earth tones don't occasionally have their place. They're nice on trees, for instance; I can't imagine a dignified tree in blue and yellow stripes. But, in general, I prefer primary colors. And, in general, I don't care for green. It may be "the color of growing things," as she said, but it's also the color of toxic sludge, no?

Then again, my favorite stuffed animal is a green and yellow dragon. And hanging on the back door of my apartment is a "Forrest Green" poster, with Kermit the Frog sitting on a bench under the slogan "Green is as green does." So there are exceptions to every rule.

But green is also the color of my coat, which I detest. Alas, it was free, which is why I've had it for the past few years now. But that doesn't mean I have to like it. Every year, I look at the Land's End catalog and simply drool over their "Really, Really, Really Warm Coat With Gore-Tex and Thinsulate and Goose Down and Everything, so You're Hotter than a Furnace Even When it's Sixty Below Outside." In navy blue.

(Okay, that might not be the exact title, but that's the general idea. For somebody who hates cold weather, some of the descriptions in that catalog are downright pornographic.)

Someday, when I win the lottery, I'm buying one of those coats.