BBC America ate my homework
This is one of two "busy seasons" for the interview business. Basically, the book publishing industry does two big marketing pushes each year -- for Christmas and for "graduation season" -- which means that there are a zillion authors doing book tours right now. And I'm trying to lunch with as many of them as possible, sort of stockpiling lunches for the summer, when it's hard to schedule people for interviews because they're all on vacation.
Having "Lunch With . . ." two or three times a week doesn't exactly sound like hard work, I know. So I generally try to avoid complaining about how busy I am because people are (righfully) incredibly unsympathetic about it: "Oh, gee, you had to go to three great restaurants and chat with three famous people this week . . . poor thing."
But, believe it or not, there is some other work that goes into the whole lunch gig. Like research and scheduling and, in the case of authors, reading their books.
So I've started to fall behind.
I figured I could catch up last night, since R. was going to be away on a business trip. I stayed at the office until I was too hungry and cold (the air conditioning vent above my cube is the bane of my existence) to stand it a minute longer. I packed up my stuff and figured I'd finish what I was writing from the comfort of my home office.
Unfortunately, while eating my single-person dinner (bagel chips and salmon pate), I happened to turn on BBC America. I got completely sucked in to back-to-back episodes of What Not to Wear.
By 10 o'clock, I'd slid into the classic college freshman mistake of deciding that I'd get a good night's sleep, wake up early, and write in the morning.
Um, yeah.
Now, as I'm about to head into the office, I've backed myself into a deadline corner of having to write two columns in a day. And I'm such a nerd that I feel like if I beg for mercy, I'm just going to end up blurting out a confession about the tv-watching.
If Friday's column features lots of letters from readers, you'll know it's because I didn't have time to write anything myself.
