How do you wait?

I’m very good at waiting, until a deadline goes past. Personally, I’m not keen on that whooshing sound (unless it’s a self-set vague deadline…)

Say you’ve submitted something, and they don’t get back in the time suggested? You know it’s probably something perfectly reasonable: the editor is ill, their internet is down, they got considerably more submissions than expected.

For me, the process goes something like this:

1) Have webmail or ThunderBird open constantly. Start this within twelve hours of original date/time stated.

2) Refresh whereever I’m expecting the update to appear obsessively. Preferably several times a day.

2.5) Ctrl+refresh, just in case it’s something to do with my cache. Try on multiple different computers, and clear all temporary internet files.

3) After doing the above for several days, see if editor has a public profile on facebook, or a public blog or journal.

4) Refresh that obsessively for several days.

5) After about a week, consider Friending to see if there are non-public updates.

6) After another week, send email query. (while constantly refreshing both blog and original website)

7) If there’s no response to email, Friend blog. Wait to be Friended back.

8 ) Get distracted by another submission I’ve not heard from, and repeat loop before ever finding out about the original.

Normally I’m quite good. Normally, editors are reasonably prompt about explaining late replies. But everyone now and then I start the loop. Aesthetica, for example. has been inundated both years I’ve entered, and have taken a month longer than originally expected to reply (I’m willing to mention them because I’m probably not going to enter again, unless they send me another half price entry thing…). And it’s perfectly reasonable and I understand completely and I’m more than capable of going away and doing something else, but somehow I’m still at it with ctrl+refresh ctrl+refresh ctrl+refresh…

So, what do you do? How do you cope with late responses?

(and on this note – is Three Crow Press still showing November’s issue for everyone else? I’m currently on stage 4!)