Drunken Owls and Other Delights

It's a cold midmorning here in SF in the mid-fifties and high humidity, so of course we're all hunkered down here in the home. I had yesterday and today off so I've been purposely taking it easy to make up for the exhaustion I'd been feeling the last few days. The kitties are alternating between tucking themselves into their cat beds or running around like fools. I've got the laundry going, and I don't have much else planned other than fiddling a bit with the files for the remastered The Persistence of Memories. Such is the way of late autumn/early winter blahs here in the Bay Area.

Other than that, I don't have much to report. Only that I don't always allow myself to fully enjoy calm and relaxing days with nothing hanging over my head, and these last couple of days have been quite healing. :)

Yes, I did not update on my usual Wednesday, and that was primarily because I wanted to focus on getting the Thursday-Friday blog entries ready before I headed to work that afternoon. [I had a dreaded midshift, but thankfully it was mostly uneventful. A few weirdos and the news that my favorite boss resigned (on a good note -- he's heading to a better paying job), but otherwise busy enough to keep me occupied.] Right now I'm looking forward to the week's vacation I'll be having in the first week of November. A has taken the same week off as well.

Do we have anything planned for that week? Other than catching up on sleep (hopefully), maybe the occasional day trip to a different part of town or up to Petaluma to visit the in-laws.

Meanwhile, I am FINALLY done with wrapping up the Trilogy Remaster for The Persistence of Memories! I'm still ahead of schedule (sort of, given that I started later in the year than I'd meant to), so at this point I just need to pick a go-live date, upload the new version and let everyone know. I'm thinking probably mid-November at this point. This of course means I'm going to need to devote a LOT of time for the remaster of The Balance of Light. While I'm proud of it, there's still a lot that needs fixing on that one.

Semi-related, I really need to start thinking about what project I'm going to work on next. Right now I'm thinking I'm going to make yet another attempt at writing the fourth Mendaihu Universe novel, with the possibility of a radical rethink of Theadia on the backburner. It being the end of the year when Real Life gets busy, I'm not going to force myself into exhaustion over it, however.

If it wasn't for the fact that we needed to do our shopping today, I'd have slept in a lot longer! I've just been feeling very tired lately and I think it's because of my work schedule. I still don't mind the 4am Friday/Saturday starts, and I'm even doing okay with just 32 hours a week which gives me an extra day of rest. However, it's that those other two work days have lately been midshifts of either 11:30-8 or 12:30 to 9, and those always drain me. I've been making it a habit of enforcing a "do not rush if you do not have to" rule (with a secondary rule of "If I'm not front end manager or person in charge, ask the person who is instead" that I've been pushing on my coworkers). I don't mind helping when it's needed, but I've always been one of those people-pleaser people and will invariably do far more than I really should and exhaust myself in the process.

In a way it's kind of funny because I keep thinking this is part of me getting older. 

Which, by the way: I received my very first Senior Discount at my shop the other day when it was announced that the first Wednesday of every month is 10% off the total (with exceptions) if you're 55+. Which I am. My first text to A that day was "I feel ancient now. Also, do we need anything at the store?" Heh.

Anyway -- yeah, I've been thinking a bit more about how I'm definitely getting older, and a bit slower as well. The usual aches and pains and not being as strong or as fast as I used to be. Mind you, I'm refusing to get all depressed or Midlife Crisis about it. Instead I'm embracing it as another life experience to learn from. First lesson: let's make sure I stay in decent health before it slips out from under me. Which means that while I can still snack, I REALLY need to cut down on buying the cakes and sugary stuff at work. I have more than enough snacky stuff here at home that I can bring in instead. Second lesson: let's get outside a bit more on my days off, even if it's just to walk up to the garden to water or down to Geary to pick up lunch. Third lesson: let's balance out the reading at night as well, because staring at an ereader for a few hours just before lights-out is keeping my brain awake. 

Whatever it takes to keep me up and running, yeah?

I'm not exactly complaining about all that time flitting by, just that this was a year that just flew by for me. I had a lot going on, between the fluctuating schedule for the Day Job, putting a writing project I'd been focusing on for a good few years on the backburner, returning to the Trilogy Remaster project, and everything else. I've been busy. It's been a good kind of busy, so I'm fine with that.

A lot of this year was spent dusting out the cobwebs hiding in the forgotten corners of my life. Revisiting some habits and points of view from the past that I think I could revive for positive reasons. Tidying up thought processes that had been haphazard and bassackwards for too long. Signing off on other things that I didn't need to worry or dwell on anymore. But it wasn't just about cleaning, it was about rediscovering things I'd forgotten that could still be useful.

This does of course mean that I've started thinking about what I'll be doing in the new year. [Working on The Balance of Light remaster, for starters.] But that's a post for another day...

I shouldn't feel this sleepy but I do. I so very rarely work on Sundays (the only time I do is when the head bookkeeper is off, and she takes one of my days in turn, such as this coming Friday) so doing three 4am opens in a row is doing a number on me. I'm also scheduled to a midshift tomorrow which is most likely going to exhaust me, especially that I need to get up before the sun AGAIN on Tuesday morning. That one's non-work related, as I need to drive A to the airport. The good thing is that traffic is usually quiet all the way down and back, and I specifically requested the day off on purpose to rest up. Here's to hoping that one midshift isn't stressful!

The downside to working on Sundays is that it tends to screw with my sense of time. I spent most of the last couple of days trying to remember what day of the week it was as it didn't feel like the weekend to me. [This is another reason I requested to be 'unavailable' on that day!] Although I do appreciate that the levels of Weekend Busy don't really kick off until the last hour or so of my shift! This meant I was able to get a lot of the needed Week End paperwork done in time. I'm also a stickler about overtime -- I won't do it unless I'm stuck in the middle of something that absolutely needs to get done. And besides, the bosses would rather I not do OT unless necessary anyway, just to keep the budget down.

ANYWAY! Right now I'm making plans for the week to work on the revised cover for The Persistence of Memories. I've been contemplating looking for a slightly better cover as the current one looks slightly muddy when it's small. I'll have to take a peek at what Shutterstock has available and see what I can do. Other than that I just need to tweak the title and byline fonts. I also need to write up a Ten Years Later Update like I did with A Division of Souls, and get it all nice and pretty so I can rerelease it! Hopefully soon!


Hope everyone has a nice week ahead!

This past week has felt far too busy and exhausting, even though on a personal note it's been the least chaotic. I think part of it was the final culmination of the entire store being on edge because of the bigwig walkthrough that happened on Thursday, mainly caused by several days of last-minute cleaning, reorganizing, restocking, replacing, and so on. Noted, I've been told the walkthrough (in which I had the day off) went really well, so Friday and Saturday were more of a breath of fresh air and exhausted thank god that's over. There was a quiet moment on Friday when we were all caught up and basically standing around up front, when one of the store managers did a half-serious reminder that we clean when necessary. Now, we know each other well enough at this point that I half-joked "It's kind of hard to clean when we did about three weeks' worth of it the other day." They appreciated the levity and reworded it as "It's not so much about cleaning as maintaining." Fair enough! I sent one of our courtesy clerks off to check on the carts outside and called it done.

Meanwhile, it's thankfully back to cool weather here in the city, though unfortunately that often comes with high humidity as well, so I guess we can never win at experiencing perfect and comfortable here. It's cool right now but damp and I have a bit of a headache from it. We were supposed to go to the opera today but due to a union disagreement between the company and the orchestra our show was cancelled. We'd already reserved parking and brunch, however, so we drove down there anyway and spent a few hours. A half-assed attempt at going grocery shopping at two separate stores were thwarted by full parking lots and we just couldn't be arsed at that point (I of all people should know better than to go on what is usually one of the busiest days of the week, sheesh) so we headed back home. It wasn't a complete write-off, considering brunch was extremely tasty (though the restaurant was LOUD) and we stopped at our favorite bookstore in that neighborhood. 

Writingwise, I am now on the LAST chapter of The Persistence of Memories, which means that I'll need to do a bedtime reread to make sure I didn't miss anything. I'll spend a few of my future days off working on revising the cover and prepping it for the Anniversary Edition release, which will probably take place in either October or November, depending on how long I end up working on it. As expected, the revision on this book was easier than the one for A Division of Souls. I'm pretty sure that the revision work for The Balance of Light is going to be much harder, however, so I should probably get started on that one right away instead of delaying it like I did for this one.


Okay! Back to updating the blogs and other boring Sunday errands...hope everyone has a good week ahead!

Taking the early part of last week off both from the Day Job and online stuff was an excellent decision, as I was able to get a lot of personal stuff done, work on the trilogy remaster, catch up on much-needed sleep, and go outside and have fun! And with the weather being warm to somewhat hot (this is right about the time for SF's brief summer weather season), we indeed had a lot of fun. 

But alas, the mini-vacation came to a close for me (A had the entire week off, and she goes back to work tomorrow) and I had to head back to work. I also have a full forty-hour week ahead, so I'm assuming I'm filling in for a few other people's days off, and that a few of our younger employees have a new school semester ahead of them. Fine by me, because I appreciate that they often split my week up. They usually do three in a row, a day off, then the Friday-Saturday opens, which gives me a midweek reprieve. I've also noticed they haven't been giving me that many late midshifts. A few here and there, but for the most part I'm very rarely the chosen Front End Manager. 

But yes, this also means that I'm going to get back on my blogging schedule once more, and perhaps finally start up better art and journaling habits again. I've moved a lot of things around on my desk and its surroundings -- because putting things front and center really isn't panning out as a reminder to do them if I'm not making an effort in the first place -- and made other things a bit more easily accessible in order to make good on it all. I've been doing my best to get the daily words down earlier in the day as well, because all too often I end up shoehorning them in at the end of the day and eating up time I could better use with the writing/revision sessions.

That's not to say that's the only vacation I have left! I'm pretty sure the bosses have already confirmed my week off in early November (a full week using up the last of my paid vacation time). We don't have anything big planned but I'm sure we'll come up with a few ideas for day trips and whatnot. And it works out well because it'll give me a brief respite before the holiday season kicks in at work!

Now, if I can find the time to get a few health check-ups... nothing bad, just want to take care of them for various reasons before the next round of open enrollment starts at work. The Day Job does have its own medical reimbursement account that I'd like to sign up for, considering I'm working down the one I had left over from Previous Day Job (which I've been using for dental reasons), and I've finally realized how much they come in handy! While I'm at it, I should probably get a vision checkup as well, considering it's been a few years. Oh, and I still need to find time to do the dental deep clean (so involved that I'll need two sessions), though that might be tricky.

Anyway! It's early afternoon here and I'm already headlong into my usual Sunday errands of laundry, plant watering, PC cleaning and so on. A fresh start all around!


Hope everyone has a good week ahead!

I've still been feeling tired lately, and I'm thinking it's still caused by not sleeping well due to head congestion. It's not as bad as it was, but it still shows up occasionally when it's heavily humid around these parts. I just don't want to be mainlining Benadryl more than I have to, yeah? And right now I am still refusing to fully admit that maybe it's that I'm in my mid-fifties and my body just ain't as strong as it used to be. I'm not as flexible, sure, and I'm leaving a lot of the heavy lifting to the youngs that don't have anything better to do during my work shift, but I'm not above taking a good long walk around the neighborhood on our days off!

Speaking of days off, I am very much looking forward to the start of next week, as I'm taking Monday through Wednesday off to hang with A (it's her birthday on Monday). We might do a trip up to Petaluma to visit the inlaws, but other than that we'll just be doing whatever we feel like. One plan was to walk up to our favorite coffee shop on 8th Ave (a good ten blocks away and partially uphill) and then into the park to check out the recently blooming dahlias near the Conservatory of Flowers.

And that's not all! I've also put in a full week's vacation the first full week of November! I haven't been on that kind of break since much earlier in the year, so it'll be nice to have some time off to do stuff. And we timed it perfectly so this will be a good breather before the holiday season fully kicks in at my shop. I do kind of miss having 3-4 weeks off a year which I had with the Former Day Job, but that was acquired through being there for a decade and a half and setting up an additional pre-paid week off at the beginning of the year. At the same time, however, I still appreciate that I don't have to donate an arm and a leg and go through ridiculous hoops to request days off like I did there. At the shop, I can just put in a request and 99% of the time I'll get it with no issue. [That 1% is when I find out I can't because Head Bookkeeper already put that time in and I'm the only one to take her place. I have no issue with that, of course.]

I do have some thoughts about my recent and future creative output, but I'm thinking that'll probably be a weekend installment here as I want to sit with it a bit longer. Just stuff about approaching things from a different perspective and things like that.

Those two midshifts went by miraculously quickly, thanks to it being JUST busy enough for time to fly by, but not enough for it to be stressful or exhausting. Really, the only complaint I had was getting home just in time to change into my jammies and climb into bed! I had to squeeze all my blogging and writing stuff in the morning, which I can definitely do but it felt like I was being rushed. Ah well. Next week I only have one midshift to deal with, so I'm fine by that. As long as I don't end up getting those by default again!

I've been pretty good at maintaining those daily words these days, and I'm quite happy about that. Even if it's what I call a 'cheat day' on the 750 (revisiting an old entry and offering updated response to it), I've come to accept that it doesn't necessarily need to be new words every single time. The important thing to focus on is that I'm DOING the work in the first place. [This of course has inspired a possible blog entry about AI content creation, which I might work on later today.]

Also: looking forward to time off in the future! Taking a few days off early next month around A's birthday, and then a full week in early November to use up my vacation time. I'm terrible in that I often forget to look at what my vacation balance is at work, so I was quite happy to see that still had some coming to me. And it's timed perfectly so I get a little respite before the chaos of Q4 kicks in!

It's been a quiet first half of the week with days off to get caught up with various errands and writing plans. I did this mainly because I'm working the next few days and didn't want to have to squeeze all that into a short amount of time before or after my shifts. Go me!

I know it's silly but I'm still priding myself for finally learning how to fix certain things around the house that I haven't worked on before, like wonky plumbing, instead of calling the landlady every time. Definitely not going to get in over my head of course, but picking up on little things like switching out faucet aerators or learning why the dishwasher air gap thingie floods a little bit. My family was never one to look that deeply into things other than perhaps replacing a worn out doorknob or some such and often just called someone, so it's kind of cool to be able to do this without calling for help. That was a long term personal goal with owning this place, actually: wanting to know how things worked before I spend money on something I could conceivably fix myself given a bit of googling and video watching.

Meanwhile, I finally put in my vacation request for the remainder of the year...I'm taking a few days off around A's birthday and then a week early in November, so hopefully they'll go through with little issue. To be honest this job has been a LOT more flexible with my time off than the bank ever was, and I still need to remind myself of that. At my shop it's more along the lines of 'Oh, you're off? Okay, we'll work around it.' Which is why I still occasionally get the weird midshifts or a Sunday, but they're few and far between, especially at this store I'm now at. I don't need to twist an arm or feel guilty for taking time off.