A Week Off

So having updated my DragonDictate to the latest version, I'm anticipating that narrating my blog on this rather damp Sunday lunchtime will be easier than it has been of late. The percentage of accurate recognition by the software is rather brilliant, and the fact that I can sit here with a headset on just talking to my computer and have my words appear on the screen, is a delight for my type talentless fingers.

This has been a week off.

No work, but something that I was looking forward to with a chance to potter around at home and catch up with a few people.I think my body knew that as well because within 48 hours of my week of leisure starting, I had a runny nose. Within another 24 hours I had a full-blown blocked up  ache inducing  cold. In fact it's my somewhat nasal diction that seems to be the biggest  obstacle of total understanding between my new dictation software and myself.

 On these days off I'm rather missing having my book to work on. It went off to the publishers at the end of August and it's still there being edited. I had an email from them about 10 days ago telling me rather reassuringly that it hadn't fallen into a black hole and that they were enjoying it. Evidently it's a good read with just the right amount of conversational tone. I get a hard copy of it back with lots of blue suggested corrections on it that I might like to make, and that's evidently the next stage of the process. I'm rather hoping that that the hardcopy will arrive at some point in mid-November as at the moment my work calendar dries up on 20 November until early January.

During the writing process I greatly enjoyed the time that I spent at the computer  each day, hitting my word count, and formulating my ideas. Since then, what I laid out in the book has stayed in my head. Last Saturday I had the pleasure of spending the whole day at the actors Centre in  Covent Garden with Marianne O'Connor teaching corporate role-play skills.  The layout from the book was embedded in my head. Either the layout was correct, or my teaching is deeply suspect! I'm sure we'll find out which is the case very soon.

 So with no book to edit, my week had lots of lazy elements about it. Lunches with friends, a visit to the theatre (perked up a little by the threat of violence from a minor rom com star) and then lunch and a matinee with two old school friends.

Back to work for the next two weeks on corporate stuff, but not before and afternoon of designing our latest Christmas card and booking a holiday…all accompanied by sniffles and sneezes.

Achoo !