Book report

Well, I am just now printing out the full and final draft of the book manuscript...

(As per the thoughts of a commenter below, it is strange the extent to which no activity other than book-finishing produces such aches in the muscles, such awful bleariness of the eyes and such an acute sense of general physical malaise! But I am not complaining, I chose to write it, I've got to suck it up when it comes to finishing it...)

I'm not done, not really--I've got to check this version against the marked-up one I just typed in corrections from, for one thing, and I've still got to do the bibliography and front matter. Minimum of six more hours work, I'm guessing, more likely eight. (Hmmm, and a couple dodgy pages where I did too much last-minute rewriting...)

But I will go to bed now, and I will have an hour's workout with M. first thing in the morning, and then I will spend the day finishing up the last bits and have every chance of e-mailing it all out and dropping the original off at the xerox shop by around six.

That would be good.

There is no doubt I have had several spells over the course of the weekend of what Brent, in his Ironman Arizona race report from last spring, memorably calls "quite noticeable negative feelings."

(Good phrase, eh?!? Devastating in its accuracy and understatement--book finishing is like a very long endurance race--the other phrase I sometimes use is "pronounced negative thoughts"!)

I am guessing I will have a couple more brief spells of such things tomorrow, at least one of them related to some kind of unanticipated but horrible printer-related disaster. Fortitude will doubtless be required!