Random bullets of here, there, and everywhere

• While I haven't gone to a fancy place like Barcelona like Profacero or Blargistan like Notorious, and I'm not moving to a new place like Flavia or Heu Mihi, or even returning from an exciting fellowship like Historiann, or getting invited to do all-college lectures like Fie, this has been a summer with a lot of travel. I'm ready to put the suitcase away for a good long while and ready to stop being on a 3-hour time difference that has me automatically waking up at 3:50 a.m. as though it were 6:50 a.m.
• The details of this stage of the book (illustrations, permissions, etc.)  are like planning a wedding or remodeling a room.  All the details that never entered your head before are now things that are apparently vitally important, and you'll be asked to decide things where you didn't even know there was a decision possible. I don't remember being consulted this extensively on my first book.
• In its eternal quest for more and better clickbait, the New York Times turned its serious investigative chops from rich women getting stylists to do their hair and makeup immediately after giving birth (this is significant how, exactly?) to whether the air conditioning is turned down too low in offices in the summer.  A group of extremely thin 20-something white women in sundresses who complained about having to wear sweaters say yes in the article, so yup, it's officially too cold for everyone. People of other genders, ages, races, and weight categories don't count and weren't consulted.  I have always liked colder rooms, especially to teach in, because heat is much harder to deal with.  But my preferences aside, doesn't the Gray Lady have something better to do, like report on the economy?  
• Although I have a number of projects to finish, I keep thinking "I could write X book next" or "I ought to write a biography of Y" or "Since there's a trend now toward novelized versions of real-life biographies (The Paris Wife, Circling the Sun, Vanessa and Her Sister), maybe I could write one of those."