If I could I would

This week has been quite boring, sorry.

And my last entry, I must apologise, was a really boring rendition of what was a cool trip to Melbourne.

Can't say much. Hit the ground running at work and haven't stopped, not even for the weekend. And here I am Monday wondering when I'll get a break from this merry-go-round. I would leave my job, if only I knew what I wanted to do next.

I have imposed a midnight ruling on myself though, that I need to be in bed or on my way to bed by midnight. This is so I get enough sleep, particularly as I'll be giving blood on Saturday and the last thing I want to do is faint.

The highlight of my week was going to see 'A Streetcar Named Desire' at the Sydney Theatre, starring Cate Blanchett and Joel Edgerton with his shirt off. It was quite good, well worth seeing, although there were some parts that I thought the actors could have pushed harder to create more conflict. I've never read the play or seen the movie so it was brand new to me; not sure what theatre veterans thought.

The lowlight was dealing with KatBear. KatBear is a co-worker who works as editor on another client publication and as a writer for one of my publications. The problem is she's not a very good writer so I spend as much time and effort editing her work as I would writing it myself.

Anyway, so on Thursday she texts my editor to say she's working from home to finish off an article for me (it was due on Aug 31, mind). Now, we don't just decide to work from home at our workplace, we ask in advance and there has to be a good reason for it too (ie you have to wait for the plumber or something). So that put my ed offside.

She emails me the article at the close of business. I tackle it the next day; it's a regurgitated mess, with sources taken from god-knows-where and large swathes not even touching the brief I gave her. I had to redress the situation so I had a discussion with my ed about what to do and ended up recommissioning her, pointing out where she needed more original info.

Today she asks me for one of my source's email addresses. 'Why?' I ask. Apparently the source I referred her to had sent her a whole bunch of info and mentioned this other guy. She complained it was a lot of stuff. I asked why she would want to talk to the other source if what she had was more than enough.

My boss and I exchanged an email over it: What is with doing interviews and getting information by email? Granted, I'm of the school that centres on good quality oral interviews (face-to-face being the best method) but surely it's much easier to pick up the phone and ask three pertinent questions and speak to someone for 10 minutes instead of reading reams of impersonal, publicly available reports? (And still coming up with pap, mind. You shit what you eat etc).

I'm trying to figure out whether she's incompetent, too shy to do an interview or just plain lazy. I mean, I'm quite lazy but not lazy to the point where I can't even string together an original article.

Did I mention she's turning 37 next week? She should know better.