Drunken Owls and Other Delights

Another nice but somewhat cool Sunday sees us taking a walk to our garden plot to make sure everything looks good after Friday/Saturday's rain, and yes! It not only looks healthy, some of our greens are actually VERY happy to be there! There's already major growth on the red lettuce and two of the tomato plants, and we only had to deadhead maybe one or two flowers that were already dying back. Quite proud of ourselves for doing pretty well first time out in ages!

After that we picked up a couple of peppermint mochas at one of our favorite coffee shops near Golden Gate Park (Rise & Grind on 8th) then walked back to Clement to do some shopping at the farmers' market. Lots of greens and citrus picked up, plus I was also able to speak to the person at the Rize Up bakery stand to let them know we're selling a ton of their bread at my shop and it's very popular. (We also got cookies from them, which I have not yet eaten, heh.) After a brunch burger n' beer at our usual haunt (the Richmond Republic) we headed back home to chill, relax and stream Time Team Specials on YouTube. 

And speaking of plants, I'm trying to be better at taking care of the plants here in Spare Oom. They're all high up on bookshelves now to be out of kitty range, but in the process I've forgotten to water them every now and again. I just had to toss one of them as it was dead and shriveled up -- I think it was at the end of its cycle anyway -- but the rest aren't looking too bad, maybe just a bit droopy. I try to remember to water them every Sunday, the same day I usually run my PC cleaners and update this here site.

Alas, I skipped working on Theadia last night for various reasons, so I'll need to catch up tonight!

For today's adventure we drove down to Sloat Gardens near the zoo buy plants for our freshly tilled and composted community garden plot, then spent an hour or so laying it all out and getting it all planted and watered. We picked up a mix of things: tomatoes, peppers, beans and lettuces for the most part, with some flowers for accents in and around the plot. It was fun! It reminded me once again that I do NOT need to experience everything at high volume, so to speak; sometimes just doing a small and quiet Zen-like thing like gardening really is worth doing instead. Something that took me years to learn and remember.

Meanwhile, the Theadia rewrite is moving forward as scheduled. For the most part I've been doing pretty good and getting a bit over a thousand words done per session, and that's been easy because the opening scenes haven't needed all that much change. That's the daily word count I'm aiming for, and these days I usually don't have a problem hitting it unless I'm distracted or needing to focus on something else.

Hope everyone has a good week ahead!

So in order to take this coming Wednesday off they scheduled me for today, and I almost never work on Sundays. This has kind of screwed up my internal calendar because today is literally my Wednesday -- I'm working tomorrow and Tuesday as well. The plus side is that I have not one but TWO days off in a row after that, so I should be back to normal by then.

In other news, A has finally acquired a plot at the local community garden! It's been a long wait but we're quite happy and looking forward to getting stuck in. It's mostly going to be her thing but I'm of course glad to help. I'm just hoping that I won't be too exhausted from the Day Job to join in after work when we want/need to head over there. It's been ages since I've done that sort of thing other than the watering of house plants!

Lastly, I'm planning on starting the rewrite of Theadia tomorrow evening! I'm really looking forward to working on it and giving it the attention and TLC that it really deserves.

It felt VERY good to sleep in today. I don't often get to sleep until 8am these days, even on my days off or on days I work midshifts; I'm used to waking up at five or six in the morning. I rarely stay up past eleven at night...I'm usually passed out by ten. I don't mind, though...it's just how my life is now. And I'm adjusting my writing time accordingly, depending on my work shift, and it's working out just fine.

Writingwise, I'm about two-thirds through the spot-cleaning of Queen Ophelia's War. I need to focus tonight on fixing one particular scene that needs more than just the word change or edit, but other than that, the process is going quite nicely. It's delaying my start on the Theadia restart, but I'm not complaining...on the contrary, it's just raising my excitement levels on getting it going! 

Not much else to report, though...

I had to work today (Sunday) to fill in for the head bookkeeper who'd requested the day off, so I basically did one midshift and four opens in a row, just a few days after the time change. So yeah, my head's kind of a mush at the moment. Thankfully I have Monday off which means I can sleep in and chill! I'm hoping that I can catch up on rest this week, as it's been quite an exhausting one these past few days... I usually don't have too many plans on my days off other than catching up on small things like emails and short errands. I'm probably not going to do much other than laundry!

Meanwhile, I've FINALLY finished with the spot-check reread of Queen Ophelia's War the other night, so this basically means that I can get started on fixing the minor details! I think I have like six or seven notepad pages to work with, and most of them are 'reword this' (I did the smart thing and reworded them ahead of time in the notes) and things like that. Working on those won't take more than a few days at most, so between tomorrow and Thursday, my other day off this week, I can probably get everything complete and start doing the self-publishing prep! Woo!

First off, I'm quite happy that I was able to sleep in this morning, especially after changing the clocks last night. I've been waking up early even on my days off lately (I just have a lot I want to do), but today was a good sleeping-in day. The cats felt otherwise and started climbing all over us when it was clear we weren't up with the sun to feed them, but they forgave us after I filled their kibble dishes.

We made our way up to Petaluma this afternoon to have lunch at a lovely Swedish restaurant downtown, in which I ate an extremely tasty, filling and messy lamb wrap. We got coffee and walked around a bit afterwards, which of course meant stopping at Copperfield's Books, where I finally picked up the new Bob Stanley bio about The Bee Gees. (He's an excellent music writer and I highly recommend his work.)  We were home by late afternoon, and are now chilling with the cats and watching our latest bingewatch, Murder She Wrote. [Noted: I'd forgotten how corny it could be and how star-studded it was, but I'm also impressed that they make an effort to use Maine accents!]

Now? Just catching up on blogging and daily words. I have a slightly longer work week coming up, though they're almost all opens which I love. 

When I saw how few hours I was getting this upcoming week, I had to double-check with my boss to make sure it wasn't just a screwup, because this past week had been chaotically cobbled together before Head Boss entered the picture to make things right again. [The original schedule last week had me closing one day -- which I NEVER do -- and doing really weird midday shifts.] But no, he said...this time Head Boss had okayed it, and that Upper Management was cutting hours for a few weeks in March. I'm ambivalent about it, partly because I know it's not permanent, and partly because it kind of gives me a reprieve of an extra day off for which I can relax, sleep in and do things without feeling rushed. 

So what will I do on those days off? Well, I'm kind of hoping that I can finally start on the Theadia rewrite! I've sort of been putting it off while I tidy up the dust and detritus from finishing off Queen Ophelia's War, though I've been sneaking in some crafty world building exercises and gathering what I have of the Theadiaverse into one handy reference file for future use. [This is what I did for the Bridgetown Trilogy, which saved my bacon more than a few times. Learning from past experience!] I've already started on the QOW reread, so all that needs doing is to just do the minor fixes I'll find during this sweep.

There is, of course, the time I can spend playing with the cats!

Before my PC went all funky last month, I had a really good habit of running various cleaning apps on Sunday afternoons just to keep it in tip-top shape. (And considering I did that with my old PC and it still runs fine after four years, that's saying something.) Unfortunately I've been distracted by other things on the weekends so I've been missing it for weeks at a time.

Which is not as bad as something else I'd do on Sundays, which is water the plants in Spare Oom. I was reminded by A some weeks ago that I really needed to do that as some of them were looking extremely wilty. I am now back in the habit of watering the plants, running the PC cleaners, and doing any other around-the-house stuff that needs doing. I'd have done laundry today as well, but a) I'd forgotten to ask A to pick up quarters (which I can get at work tomorrow) and b) we spent most of today in the East Bay shopping at Ikea and elsewhere in Emeryville. 

In the meantime, I've also done some much-needed dusting and putting away of things, so all I need to do now is prep a few blog entries for the week and maybe get a bit of revision work done as well.

 If anything, that's how I would describe Wim Wenders' new movie Perfect Days. I've always been a fan of his work, and in a way he's been a influence on my own work: from his movie Until the End of the World I learned how to take my time telling a story, allowing it as much time as it wants or needs, and using those quiet moments as part of the story itself. This new one simply follows one man throughout his days, working for the city of Tokyo as a public toilet cleaner. He takes pride in his work, says little, and captures quiet moments of his day with an old film camera, mostly of the sun filtering through the tree canopy above. Is there even any conflict in this? Yes, there is! But the brilliant thing is how he handles each moment that pulls him out of his daily habits: he observes, he contemplates, and he adjusts. Even in the few moments that deeply upset him, he eventually learns from those moments. His life may have been slightly changed forever in those moments, but he never refuses to embrace them.

And Koji Yakusho, who plays the old man, deserves all the awards and nominations he's been getting. He rarely reacts with any kind of emotion at first, only opening up near the end, but throughout the entire film he lets out tiny moments of extreme joy: a slight smile, the shine of his eyes, a hum of acceptance. Just those simple and understated moments have the ability to carry the entire scene to show that within, his emotions are nearly always full to bursting.

I can't say enough about how brilliant, lovely and peaceful this movie was, and I highly recommend it.

...I just don't want them to be based on passive internet scrolling anymore, is all. A suggested I try out Squaredle, which is basically word game site should keep me busy and occupied during my work breaks. That's all I ask for. I did buy me a crossword puzzle book but it hasn't been doing the trick (especially when I'm having a busy day and don't want to think), so maybe I should put one of my word search magazines in my bag instead. 

But yeah, the Day Job has been a bit chaotic these last couple of weeks, between the bad weather, the good weather following, the upcoming holiday (Valentine's Day) and today's football game, not to mention being short-staffed due to scheduling and/or call-outs. I've been rather exhausted by the end of the shift after trying to keep everything running smoothly. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't (and sometimes I wonder why I bother). Hopefully next week will be significantly less nutty.