battling overwhelm

DrBob had an article that needed proofreading, I got that done yesterday. 24 pages on self-fashioning via the Spanish colonial bureaucracy, urgh. He speaks um, somewhat disparagingly of historians these days, but I keep wishing he still was one. Then I might understand, oh, 10% of what I'm called on to proofread. Oh well, at least he's not a linguist. Speaking of which, I've got a linguist who wants some proofreading done. I'm still thinking about it.

And DrBob's just gone back to a website we translated awhile back and he found a few mistakes. So now he wants to go back over the whole thing, consisting of approximately one skillion jillion pages, which needs me. Um, isn't he supposed to be working on that book which must be done by July or "It's All Over" (whateverthehell "it" is)? Hellew, focus? Plus I've been here so long, doing this one specific thing - proofreading English texts written by Germans - I can't tell anymore what sounds like good English and what is bad English that I've just gotten used to.

My brother sent me some inheritance-related paperwork ages ago that I still haven't read. Apparently I have to deal with the IRS this year, because I had taxable income. Yay.

It's snowing again. I've had this cold for weeks, and am now being attacked by several months' worth of PMS, for no reason that I can think of.

Oh, I took Ignatz to Munich last Thursday! Exhausting, but productive. He went and started growing again, bizarrely - I think he was a size 128 for about three years - so he suddenly needed a buncha new shirts, right on the heels of my deciding that I'm not going to buy quick-disintegrating catalog crap anymore, which means going to an actual store. Of which - dig this - there aren't any in this town! Wah! Not one kids' clothing store, unless you count the used-stuff store, which apparently chooses their open hours via the dartboard method every day. Besides, as my readers with sons already know, between age 6 and 13 or so they totally trash their clothes, so nothing survives to be resold, and the used-stuff stores only have girl clothes in these sizes. So anyway. Due to a very annoying local tradition called Mad Thursday, Dorfener kids - and no other kids, anywhere in Germany - had the day off school. Woot! So that's done. Oh right, and we saw a movie too. Um, Zathura. A science fiction story about why you have to be nice to your little brother.

Training the intern at work has been um, wearing. She's nice, and she's smart, if a bit nervous, and she's not making any serious mistakes. But the job is so complicated that the only way to teach it is to have her do it while I watch over her shoulder and explain each new situation as it arises. Which, it turns out, is basically a recipe for a splitting headache that is now going into day 3 (yes I have taken something for it, lots of something. In fact, hot stock tip here: Advil).

Mrs Next Door wants to give up her English conversation class and asks if I would like to take over. Four students, one hour a week, €20 per class, so I would have to teach...er, about 35 classes, I think, to make up what I paid for the TESL course which I have never yet used. I should do it just for that, so the course will not have been a total waste. At the moment, though, I don't feel like it would be wise to take on yet another thing. If I got a pet rock, it would probably die of neglect in a day or two. I have a few days to decide whether I want to teach the class, and should probably not make the decision in my current, crappy mood.

I have lots of other things to be crabby about too, but this has gotten long enough. Even I find me tedious at this point.