and then the factory starts grinding

It feels good to be in the thick of things again. It helps to have, of course, people who are willing to help, like our librarian who suddenly found a higher calling in collating photocopied executive summaries and filing them in neat folders, euphemistically called participants’ kits. You painstakingly badger paper presenters for their respective papers’ summaries or Powerpoint presentations, reproduce them, compile them in a folder, and then distribute them to participants so they could have one more addition to their ever-expanding collection of unread photocopied thingies. Maybe we should put a large sign on the cover: “Note: this can also be read.”

Amid the flurry of calling up paper reactors and researchers, our most trusted clerk decided to file a two-week sex leave because her seaman boyfriend just docked here. Now he's docked somewhere deeper and danker. She didn’t leave me hanging, though. She made sure the nitty-gritty of clerical shit had already been ironed out before she darted toward the brine-drenched arms of her beau. Even the reclusive creature in our Data Bank, who is usually holed up in between musty shelves that irritatingly smell like stale sweat, got out and did some faxing and coordinating for me. She still required that the task be spelled out to her in detail, but what the heck, at least, she’s out of her burrow now, and made herself useful to the human race.

I paused to munch on my tuna sandwich and to chat with a visiting friend, Gail. In between bites, I managed to squeeze in a photo shoot featuring Adie’s barely-there boobs and butt. I wanted to do “before” and “after” shots but I needed to rush back to work. Only the “before” shots were taken. Besides, I don’t think Adie brought enough rolled up socks for the “after” pictures. They wouldn’t have fitted in her bra anyway.

Back to work. Phone call here. Document there. Lay-out design on Adobe Pagemaker. Last minute printing and photocopying of stuff. And we’re all set. The roundtable discussion will be held this afternoon. It will last for approximately five hours. Great. Five hours of sleep. That’s not bad at all.