I bet there's an online club for Bartleby-the-Scriveners where they get together

They're not online, they exchange handwritten letters.

I had a dream that the characters from Empire were on the Great British Bake-off.

Amazing.

I feel I should note this banner day: I wore a wool coat and regular boots to work for the first time! Not the puffy coat and snow boots!

I am wearing short sleeves in the office (I took off my cardigan) and not a turtleneck, a dress AND a cardigan!

I did wear my puffy coat, though, because I left my wool coat at the theater. It was really hot.

I kind of like Bartleby the Scrivener. I think he is a good role model for rabid people pleasers like me- it kind of evens out to normal. But if you already have Bartleby-like tendancies, I think it could go to far.

The clocks hanging on the walls here at the office have not sprung forward. It's disorienting. Dark drive in, but at least the moon was fullish. Three quarter, maybe?

I had a dream that the characters from Empire were on the Great British Bake-off.

That sounds great. I haven't even watched the Great British Bake-off, but I would totaly watch that dream.

I want to do a pseudo-documentrary about Scriveners--you know, how modern smart-phone technology is changing the job of the Scrivener, for example.

Like how there's an iOS app called "Prefernottogether" where instead of trekking across town to get on-site so you can do your Scriveneroring, you can get matched up with the app with someone who's closer. That person sends you a picture of the doc, which you can then copy by hand onto paper in the usual fashion.

I bet there's an online club for Bartleby-the-Scriveners where they get together and discuss the Scrivenering they accomplish each day.

"Instead of making one note at the beginning of the document that they needed to change [blah] back to [foo], I added a note every single place [foo] was changed to [blah] in the document! I know that 50 notes will ensure a prompt response!"

(No, it is literally 50 notes telling me "In the field of [medical foo], we use the term [foo] instead of [blah]. Please keep [foo.]" FIFTY TIMES I HATE YOU SO HARD YOU SPECIAL SNOWFLAKE.)

(I wouldn't hate them so much if I didn't have a running list of at least 10 items where they object to our editing according to our style manual. In some instances, we let the whiny special snowflakes have their way, but in other instances, we *never* change [blah] to [foo], and have to explain that to the special snowflakes who have apparently never read an issue of the journal they want to be published in.)

(Haaaaaaaate.)

Oooh, and someone on FB is taking my love of DST as a personal affront and snarking about how "sure, people who can work from home and start whenever they want must love it!"

1. I don't "start whenever." It is an actual job, you ass.

2. Fuck off.

3. I've loved DST even when I worked in an office.

4. See #2.

5. I'm not actually loving DST *at you.* This is not a personal attack; it's just my preference.

6. Please see #s 2 and 4.

7. PS Are you my difficult author?

It was a full moon last Thursday. (In the public library world, we note these; they seem to correspond with higher than usual levels of crazy.)

As I am going over a chapter manuscript that I wrote to incorporate the volume editor's notes, I am in a position of great ambivalence wrt Teppy's lovely editorial screeds. I mean, yes, style, but WHY MUST YOUR HOUSE STYLE BE SO FIDDLY AND HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO REMEMBER IT. But, then, thank you for noting the mistakes in my citations, especially when you pointed to the place I should actually be citing, saving me a trip to another library to consult a 900-page book. (This editor is not the press editor - she's an academic assembling the book. So all the press editor stuff will go to her. But still I am trying to format my citations according to house style!) (Did I mention that this is a chapter based on my dissertation which I abandoned in 2001? And every single time I deal with it there's some type of agony?)

WHY MUST YOUR HOUSE STYLE BE SO FIDDLY AND HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO REMEMBER IT.

Oh, believe me, I think our style is fiddly as hell and kind of ridiculous. We are NEVER allowed to say something like "diabetic patients"; it always has to be "patients with diabetes." I get that the general reasoning is to not identify the patient AS their disease, but let me tell you, it gets REALLY unwieldy when I have to change "COPD patients" to "patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease."

And I have a really hard time remembering all of our weird fiddly style points, partly because they change all the time. No joke -- we get about 3-5 emails a month telling us "We may no longer use [foo], but must use [blah]." Super annoying.

Happy to report I missed nothing at the office despite being out last Thursday and Friday thanks to our 20° angle skating rink of a parking lot. At least this icefall was considerate enough to come when work was absolutely quiet.