Category: Pharmaceuticals

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What It Is: 10/12/09

What I’m reading: Moby Dick, George, Being George, Crumb’s Book of Genesis, and a whole ton of Planetary comics (while I was home sick) in anticipation of the final issue. Which turned out to be a non-event.

What I’m listening to: Not a lot. My head’s been so stuffed up, most music sounds kinda muffled.

What I’m watching: American Splendor, in honor of Harvey Pekar’s 70th birthday last week, the Yankees’ playoff games, and a pretty humorous Parks & Recreation.

What I’m drinking: NyQuil. I’ve been wiped out by a chest cold since Monday, and figured that booze would just zap my poor immune system even further. Reading the label, I discovered that one is not supposed to take more than four 30ml doses of NyQuil in one 24-hour period. If you’re the sort of person who would even consider four doses of this stuff in a day, you probably aren’t going to be deterred by that warning. Wowza.

What Rufus is up to: Packing his things for a 3-night stay with his pal Tut.

Where I’m going: To Cincinnati, to visit Amy’s pals Ken & Denise for a long weekend.

What I’m happy about: Seeing a lot of old pals at my 20-year high school reunion on Saturday.

What I’m sad about: Not getting to talk to everybody I wanted to talk to at the reunion. But at least some of those people are local(ish), so we can try to get together sometime this fall.

What I’m worried about: The fact that two old classmates independently asked me if I’d gone into politics, while two others asked if I was now a lawyer.

What I’m pondering: Writing a post about my annual movie-traditions.

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What It Is: 10/5/09

What I’m reading: Early issues of my magazine, as I wrapped up the 10th anniversary ish. Boy, was that depressing. I also read the first 20 pages of George, Being George, which I’ll give some more time into this fall.

What I’m listening to: The bad new Zero 7 record, and the much better new Bebel Gilberto record.

What I’m watching: Charade, American Gangster, a little of Silent Movie, and a bunch of football.

What I’m drinking: Plymouth & tonic

What Rufus is up to: Being an Ambassadog at Warwick’s Applefest town fair (with pix by my beloved wife). He got to meet a bunch of greys, but one of the owners kept trying to convince us to adopt Dollar, one of the hounds they were fostering. One of the other owners sympathized with my take on why we’ve held off on grey #2: what if he or she isn’t as awesome as Rufus (as in, can’t handle 9 hours without a bathroom break, or likes to chew on stuff, or gives Ru bad ideas and the two of them spend all day smoking weed and goofing around on Playstation)?

Where I’m going: The 20-year reunion for the high school I left after my junior year. In November, I’ll go to the 20-year reunion for the high school from which I actually graduated. Don’t tell.

What I’m happy about: My pal Ian stopped in for a visit on Friday, giving us an excuse to go to Cafe Matisse for another fantastic meal.

What I’m sad about: 10 years spent on this magazine, 20 years since I graduated high school, and, um, 30 years since I saw The Fish that Saved Pittsburgh. The calendar really does kick you in the nuts.

What I’m worried about: That I’m forgetting something.

What I’m pondering: What I’ve learned in the past decade about the pharma/biopharma industry and the contract services sector.

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What It Is: 7/13/09

What I’m reading: Killshot, by Elmore Leonard, and Asterios Polyp, by David Mazzucchelli.

What I’m listening to: LP by Discovery, which was okay, but a little too deliberately like a poor man’s Postal Service.

What I’m watching: Just The Tall Guy (one of my favorite movies back in college, but one I haven’t watched in at least a decade), and this week’s Deadliest Catch. Amy had a pretty late work-week, and I tend not to watch a lot of stuff by myself.

What I’m drinking: Plymouth & Q Tonic.

What Rufus is up to: Making his first foray into a lake.

Where I’m going: Back to the office! Eek!

What I’m happy about: That I managed to reduce my daily caffeine intake by more than 50% during this vacation! (Also, that I managed to clear around 225 square feet of my backyard by pulling up rampant forsythia, cleaned out my garage, took care of a ton of other items on my to-do list, and still got to spend time with my brother & his family.)

What I’m sad about: That the downstairs freezer and the washing machine both crapped out last week. We got a new washer on Sunday and have a repair guy coming next week for the freezer.

What I’m worried about: Getting back into the rhythm of working at my office, as opposed to working at home.

What I’m pondering: How much of my Top Companies issue will be out of date by the time it sees print.

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Last day!

The production schedule read, “Final Materials to Printer – July 2,” and I’m gonna get those final materials to the printer by July 2! Just a couple hundred words more about Pfizer and a brief writeup about Abbott Laboratories, and this year’s Top 20 Pharma / Top 10 Biopharma ish will be finished!

So don’t expect any more posts today.

In other news, it looks like the constant dreariness and rainfall of June has had at least one positive effect: the deer have had enough to eat in the woods and have (mostly) left my tigerlilies alone!

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“Anything but . . . work in a paper box factory!”

A “Key Figure” from sanofi-aventis’ annual report:

boxy

The title of this post is from one of my favorite Woody Allen movies. Relax: I don’t expect any of you to get that one.

(UPDATE: Summamabitch! sanofi got revenge on me! I was about 80% of the way through its profile, for an issue that goes to press early next week, when I got a pharma e-newsletter with a link to the following item:

Sanofi-Aventis Plans Job Cuts

M2 Europharma – Jun. 22, 2009

22 June 2009 -French pharmaceutical group Sanofi-Aventis (EPA: SAN) may further cut jobs after the 927 lay-offs in 2008, business daily Les Echos reported on Monday (22 June), quoting trade union sources.

Sanofi-Aventis management is expected to announce the plans for major restructuring at an extraordinary works council next week. Employees are particularly concerned over positions in the research divisions.

The drug maker has been affected by the launch of generic versions of some of its key medicines. Within the coming months the generic version of its anti-cancer drug Eloxatin should …

Of course, the full announcement’s only going to come after the company’s profile is off at the printer! Grr!)

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What It Is: 6/8/09

What I’m reading: Plutarch’s life of Coriolanus, which makes me wonder how good Shakespeare’s play is. There’s a neat passage in this bio that I’ll transcribe and post a little later, about the role of the gods in human action.

What I’m listening to: Joe Jackson’s Night and Day.

What I’m watching: You Don’t Mess With The Zohan, 8 1/2 and M*A*S*H. Yes, I’m all over the place.

What I’m drinking: Plymouth & Q Tonic.

What Rufus is up to: Getting his leg stitched up last Tuesday, having a great folllowup on Friday, making weekend appearances at our local farmers market and our greyhound hike, and inspiring a Philadelphia-based work-related pal to adopt a greyhound! It’s been a busy week!

Where I’m going: Nowhere. See above.

What I’m happy about: Seeing my first Fellini flick and reveling in the gorgeous compositions and the gorgeouser women.

What I’m sad about: That Amy was away this weekend, visiting her family. I wasn’t sad that she was visiting the family, but my anxiety level over taking care of Rufus solo — especially now that he’s going bandageless and I have to pay that much more attention to make sure he doesn’t try to chew his wounds and break his stitches — left me pretty debilitated by Saturday night. And taking him along to Newark Airport to pick up Amy on Sunday wasn’t exactly a picnic, but I couldn’t really leave him alone for 2 hours, even with a muzzle, BiteNot collar, hip-wader, etc. I’d have spent the entire time worried that I’d be coming home to a dog who’d managed to tear up all the hard work the vets have done. Oy. I know this isn’t as stressful as having responsibility for a kid, but it’s still pretty exhausting.

What I’m worried about: Getting my Top Companies profiles written for the July/August ish.

What I’m pondering: Whether any man his age has hair that rivals that of Bjorn Borg.