Archives - Weekly Update

This week, we updated all the desktops and the server in our office for the first time in about five years; we were way, way overdue. At the same time, we also changed email servers, which meant that the 40,000 pieces of email that I had logged needed to migrate from one server to the next. One reason I delayed this project was because it’s such a big production since there are so many details to keep in mind. I LOVED the company we worked with on this as they clearly grasped all the details.

Spring has arrived, or so says the calendar! Maybe the snow today means that summer will last longer when it has its turn. We can hope, right?

It’s been a lovely book-filled week. Greg and I went to see Erik Larson at the Roosevelt House on Monday night (see the photo above), where he spoke before a standing room only audience and answered reader questions for more than an hour. We learned that when Larson first started thinking about the Lusitania, he was not sure it was a story he wanted to write. He thought the ship’s sinking was "a fact to memorize in history class." What else was there to tell? It seemed to have no “barriers to entry,” which is what intrigues him when writing a book. It is about finding the right details to enlighten the reader and putting these details together to tell as good a story as possible, and he had to see if that would work with the Lusitania as a subject.

I felt jet-lagged all week with the loss of just one hour last weekend! Instead of pretending that I now live on Caribbean time, which has nice thoughts associated with it, I was wide-eyed each evening and cocooning every morning. Traffic was really bad every day, thus I think that I am not the only one on a sloooooooooow delay pattern. I needed an escape as I drove and found myself listening to the audiobook of THE GIRLS OF MISCHIEF BAY by Susan Mallery, a title that we recently featured on the site. It takes place in Southern California, and I can feel summer coming as I read.

Are you ready for the clocks to change on Sunday? While the whole staff is excited about the extra hour of daylight in the evening, I am mourning the loss of an hour on Sunday. I guess I am too shortsighted, or I know I am dreading next week when everyone drags a bit at the beginning before catching up on lost sleep. After snow this past Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday, I am ready to see green grass and flowers again.