deadlines

...are not my favourite entity, but they DO motivate one. Just rushing together the documentation for a benefit claim -- Con Ed -- that I could have made any time in the last 2.5 YEARS, but I am dilatory about these things. Until the Supreme Signer of all such pleas is 36 hours away from departure from the diocese, oops. Hoping that sense of humour is in the ascendant, downtown, this afternoon.
I've already fired off two texts to the editor of the parish newsletter -- I believe this morning he's somewhere between New Delhi and Dar es Salaam, though I may be mistaken about that. I cannot begin to imagine what technology allows him to edit and format our newsletter "on the fly," as he's doing, keeping in mind what day it is at both ends of the process, so we can get it photocopied in time for distribution on Sunday. Just phenomenal...and I'm VERY grateful.
It remains COLD. -25 C again this morning outside our house in the outer ring of the inner 'burbs of Prairie Metropolis. Not so bad--as long as the car starts, but it's only +15C in my office (that would be yer 60 degrees Fahrenheit, there)...bearable with heavy sweater on, and a micro-waved wheat-bag in the small of my back, but if it gets any colder I'll have to light a candle and put on some Bob Cratchit gloves, I think. We have 25-year-old boilers, very inefficient, and a kind of jury-rigged system of controls, partly pneumatic and partly electronic and ALL finicky.
I have two more slightly less-urgent letters to write this afternoon -- some calls to make -- and then tea with a friend, home for supper, and -- God is very good -- an early bedtime for once.