Well it took me a long time but I've finally arrived at the stage where TIFF gives me a yellow/green highlighter to mark my choices with, instead of me scrambling around at 7:30 on Friday morning trying to find one at a dollar store that won't open for another three hours. So that's good news. I got my programme book today, my kit bag full of stupid shit (among the highlights this year: anti-wrinkle firming cream, a Starbucks gift certificate, and a can of Pepsi), and, of course, the pretty white envelope wherein I get to make 50 first-string picks and 50 backups. God-damn. I went over to Fran's and sat down, and started going through the book, making asterisks on any page that looked even remotely interesting. There's the usual paranoia about doing this thing so quickly - the fear that I'm going to make safer picks out of sheer hurriedness, when I should really be swinging for the fences on less obvious fare - but I think by Friday my choices will be brassy.

Work, meanwhile, bears all the signs of the week before a vacation, and can therefore be summed up in a single word: in-freaking-sane. I am literally living down to the fraction of a minute for the next five business days, including my evenings. Every hour and half hour, every five minute window leading into another larger window, is committed to something. My Outlook calendar at the office looks like a game of Backgammon being played by two blind retards on Venus. In the plus column, now when someone asks me to do something, I can legitimately reply "No, you'll have to wait until September 20th." I'm booking for the twentieth of frickin' September right now. Marvellous.

Just get me to the vacation. The rest will take care of itself.