A series of meetings punctuated the beginning of my work day. Check in with a colleague about the big upcoming journalism awards submissions that must go out tomorrow. Check in with my department chair for the regular this and that. Check in with another professor to make sure we’re on the same page about a class session later this week. There’s another professor with whom we must organize the awards submissions.

Then I ran into someone else I needed to speak with, and so we had a brief meeting at the top of a stairwell.

Make sure everything is graded for this afternoon’s class, nurse the printer through another round of printing things. I’ve been pointing out the eventual demise of this machine for a few years now. One day it’ll day, or they’ll replace it. Until now, CMND-P, which stands for Pray.

Staple all of those things which just got printed. Go to class where students are writing things that need writing.

And then to the Crimson, where the student-journalists are busy putting out another paper.

After a while, I went out for dinner. Stopped by the bookstore to look for a particular magazine for research. There was a book signing, featuring some science fiction writer I don’t know and his new book of which I am not aware. Not really my reading genre. The place was jammed, with little hope of walking or browsing.

So dinner, then. Stopped at Jason’s Deli in the mall where I met a couple who’d been at the book signing. Said he was a nice guy, who stopped and talked to his readers and signed all of his books, not just the new one. The restaurant employees, experts on book signing dynamics since the chain often has them, said a crowd that size would be there until midnight, easy.

Thought, then, I would go up the street to the other bookstore to look for the magazine we need. This was the scene:

Shame, really. This Books-A-Million always had great sale racks. Though, like every Books-A-Million, the tome you wanted was inevitably the 1,000,001st book. Never seemed to have the thing you’d want. Still, there were a lot of things in there. The entire back wall was magazines. I read an important newspaper in there one day. Another day I found myself making an important decision in the local section. I liked that bookstore.

They closed in September, the sign on the door said. Now, there’s only this:

As I mentioned this summer while in Portland, there’s really no need to buy anything in bookstores anymore. But still, this is a sad turn. And, yes, I appreciate all the many contradictions in this paragraph, but there is something useful about browsing a bookstore. There is a great deal of charm in spending part of a lazy afternoon aimlessly looking through the books. Now you’ll just have to do it somewhere else.

And now back in the office. The student-journalists are working on their paper in the newsroom. I’m working on the journalism awards submissions. This will require more work tomorrow. I’d bet we spend about three full days on this when all is said and done.

And that will be tomorrow, when the things have to be postmarked and shipped to the judges.