... well, over the Atlantic (again). Have decided to write down my thoughts on the passing of time:
It's SO SLOW..
I've just looked at my watch, having written 6 decision letters, and there's still SEVEN hours of flight to go. I'm exhausted. No amount of coffee or United Airlines goodwill is going to get me through the next 7 hours. The guy sitting next to me has a very clever screen protector on his PC which means that he can see what's on his screen (and mine, I suppose, if he cared to look), but I cannot see what's on his from this angle. The fact that he has to insert a plastic passkey into the machine to use it makes me think that whatever it is, it must be really interesting, and just the kind of thing that, were I to read it, would make those 6 hours and 58 minutes pass all the quicker...
6 hours and 47 minutes to go... and time isn't speeding up. My eyelids are definitely heavier than they were before. The guy in the seat next to me is doing gymnastic exercises in his seat... Am curious about his screen... what's he got to hide?
6 hours and 32 minutes to go... I can't go on like this. Some turbulence would be good, just to break up the monotony of working on the journal uninterrupted. I have important decisions to make as I read through manuscripts and reviewers' comments: Should I keep listening to Chopin (soporific value: High; intellectual value: High) or switch to Sting (soporific value: Low; intellectual value: Medium; Carbon emissions: Excellent)? It's not easy being an editor... but I do feel I need to change the music, as the chap next to me is now doing some silent, headphoned version of the jitterbug... what's HE listening to??
5 hours and 17 minutes left... Finally! Some excitement: Mr. Jitterbug went to the toilet, so being the curious person that I am, I took the opportunity to surreptitiously open up his laptop (passkey still inserted) and take a look at what he'd been writing. Evidently, he's a civil servant of some kind (it was that boring..). And I think he could do with a bit of help with his grammar... OH COME ON.. do you really think I'd open up his laptop when he wasn't looking, let alone advertise that fact on my blog? Honestly.... what do you take me for? Get real - it was a PC, and as a Mac evangelist I wouldn't touch a PC with a barge-pole....
4 hours and 10 minutes left... current rejection rate on this flight, for 1st submissions sent out to reviewers: 70%. Which sounds like it's a little short of the journal's average rejection rate of 85% - but 15-20% of submissions didn't even get sent to review, so under one interpretation of these numbers, I'm rejecting about the right number of papers.
2 hours and 30 minutes to go.. I have a streaming cold. Tissues are insufficient defense against the floodwaters emanating from my nostrils. I guess you neither needed, nor wanted, to know that. Chap in the next seat has now graduated from gymnastics to a form of ballet. Very impressive, really... either that or he's just trying to avoid the nasal torrent...
Landed.
