Another last-minute Hugo scramble
I spent today mostly hanging out with family, which was great. Saw one niece in a production of Lion King Jr, had dinner with both nieces (and parents of one of them) at Sushirrito, showed folks Tiny Cars of Palo Alto (1-min video).
Came home, started the final leg of my Hugo-voting preparations—and fell asleep. Had a 90-minute nap, which would've been great if it hadn't cut drastically into my Hugo prep time. I ended up rushing to finish at the last minute, which anyone who knows me probably isn't surprised to hear. I feel like I got started on the reading a lot earlier than usual this year, and kept at it more steadily than usual, but still ended up not being done by the deadline. :( Maybe I'll try to work out a better system for next year. Like not falling asleep on the last evening. :)
The voting felt a little less urgent to me this year than the past few, given that the Rabid Puppy problem has been substantially fixed; a big relief. But I nonetheless would've liked to have gotten through everything sooner.
I think part of what happened this year is that I decided to start with the novels rather than starting with the short fiction. On the one hand, that resulted in my reading or skimming every one of the novels, and I thought they were all at least interesting; on the other hand, short fiction is still what I care most about, and I short-changed those categories this year due to running low on time. (And then I also ran out of time for carefully considering my ordering of the novels.) So maybe next year I should start with the novels but set myself a deadline for when to step away from the novels and start reading the short fiction. (And the graphic stories, and the magazine samples, and the fan writing, and the Campbell samples, etc.)
...Things would also have gone better if I hadn't spent several hours this past week playing computer games, of course. :)