Drunken Owls and Other Delights

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. 

For those playing along, I've been in Massachusetts for the last five days and just came back home to SF late last night. I am physically and emotionally exhausted and I called out from the Day Job today to recharge.

My father's calling hours were very well attended by at least 50-60 people -- relatives, friends, neighbors, coffee buddies, even an Elvis impersonator he knew -- and it was great to see so many of them. Quite a few I had to ask their name as I'd known of them but had never met them in person. It was also great to see a bunch of the old neighborhood gang paying respects. Most of the trip itself was just visiting my family, who are holding up well. And when I was back at my hotel, I mainly spent most of the time getting caught up on novel revision.

How do I feel? Well, as said, I'm exhausted. Not in a bad way, just drained from having to go through that as well as having to deal with several hours of crappy New England winter weather that I haven't dealt with for almost two decades. It took a lot of will power to get through it all. There's also the fact that I've been surrounded by several people in a short amount of time so I really should take a Covid test at some point today.

I should be better today if I take it slowly today. I have nothing planned other than laundry.

The head bookkeeper has taken an extended weekend to house sit (somewhere in the mountains, so I've been told) which means I've been doing 5:30 opens for the last couple of days. Surprisingly I'm not exhausted, but merely sleepy. Even yesterday, when I pulled a very heavy u-boat of bag bundles across the entire store to the front then emptied a full pallet of bagged ice in the walk-in freezer soon after? I wasn't all that tired. A good sign that I'm in much better shape than I thought, I guess? Either way, I have one more open and then a midshift, and then I have Wednesday off. Hopefully I won't be too drained by then. I'm thinking I should get back to doing the outside breaks again. I stopped last week due to the bad air quality (smoke from Oregon and far north CA), but it's gotten a little better again, so there's no reason not to. As long as the weather is with me!

Having good vibes about the work I'm doing on Queen Ophelia's War, even if it has been just a few paragraphs and sentences here and there. I know I have a few rough spots that are going to need a hell of a lot of work, but I'm not going to worry about it because once I get past those two or three problem scenes the rest is relatively smooth sailing. I'd also like to get back to MU4 as well, but one thing at a time for the moment.

Not much else to report, considering it's been a work-home-write-sleep cycle for the last several days. Looking forward to the next few days off, where I may do something crazy like laundry or grocery shopping! Heh.

This past week at work was exhausting and a bit weird due to people calling out and things not going as planned, but yesterday it ended quite nicely with me almost completely avoiding the registers by way of finishing up several small work-related errands I'd been putting off. I got most of them completed with few issues and spent the rest of the day relaxing! Thankfully my schedule is even more back to normal this coming week with only one mid-shift and no closes. Yay!  Oh-- and I may be in the running for becoming the new liquor manager for the store...? Still not sure where I stand with it as the posting schedule got kind of effed up, but the talk around the shop is hinting that I *might* be in the lead? Who knows? More to come as this unfolds...

Today we were originally going to go to Crissy Field but the fog had come in over the mouth of the Bay, so we nixed that as it would probably be a bit cold and unexciting. So we ended up walking up to the farmer's market to buy fruits and have lunch at one of our favorite taquerias. I was still a bit tired during the walk home but managed it without wimping out and catching the bus, heh. 

Anything else to report...? No, not really. Although I need to talk with my coworker this week to plan out their cat-sitting for us. We're letting them stay over while this happens so that's fine, but I'll need to make sure everything is good to go, they get paid, and have some extra keys made for them to use during that time.


Hope everyone has a good week!

Woo, I had today off! I've had to work Sundays for the last couple of weeks due to people being out and while I'm not actually doing extra hours, it is kind of screwing with my personal time. Thankfully that person is now back from their vacation and things are sort of back to normal. [Unfortunately a different coworker seems to have fractured their ankle via an episode of inebriation, so my hours are still a tiny bit wonky. Not as frustrating, but just a bit off.]

Meanwhile, the new PC is up and running at top speed, which means I really should get back to my writing work. I've been very bad at following through lately, but now there's no real reason not to jump back in. I'm still up in the air:
--Do I finish off and revise the Queen Ophelia project? It's about 95% done but needs a lot of work.
--Do I finish off and revise Theadia? It too is about 95% done and also needs a lot of work.
--Do I outline and start the sequel to In My Blue World? It's my best seller and I'm sure readers will enjoy another episode of Meeks Sisters Adventures.
--Do I outline and start the romcom idea I've had in my head for the last year or so? I have a rough outline but it needs a lot of work, plus I need to work at getting my brain back into that style.
All this is while I'll be working on MU4 project, which I know will be a long-term one that may not see the light of day until sometime next year. I'm taking my time on that one.
What I'm doing now is reading what I have of all of them so far, to see what resonates with me the most. We shall see soon enough.

In the meantime, we've just gotten back from a five-mile walk around the neighborhood and I now have to do the laundry, so I'm going to relax a bit before I decide on anything!

 Aaaaah. I have not slept until 8am in AGES. Mind you, we did get awakened by Jules and Cali jumping on our bed for pettins, attention and morning kibble but it felt REALLY good to turn over and fall back asleep. I really needed that.

Yesterday we went to the de Young Museum to see the Ansel Adams show and it was quite lovely. It's one thing to see his black and white pictures of Yosemite on the ubiquitous calendars in a book store...but it's quite another to see original large prints and even a few of them superimposed on currently-shot panoramas! And I only recently found out that he literally grew up at the end of my street, and the house is still there!

Today we don't have much planned other than to go see Mary Poppins at the 4 Star around the corner, do some laundry and for me to call my mom and wish her a happy mother's day. Like I said, I haven't had a truly relaxing day in quite some time so I'm just going to embrace it. :)

Last week was a mixed blessing: it was all opening shifts, which I love...but I found myself exhausted by the end of it. Part of it was due to being short-staffed at work (two people calling out sick on certain days, slim schedule on others), and part of it was an uptick of customers. Which is fine, except that quite often it was either one-at-a-time (another appears in line just as I'm finishing up with someone) or dead-dead-dead-NINEATONCE surges. And one of the days I pretty much ran the entire front end on my own with only occasional help. This week's upcoming schedule is a bit odd in that I have three mid-shifts in a row followed by two opens, all in a row. I'm hoping it won't be too overwhelming.

Meanwhile, today was one of those Best Laid Plans days in which we came back from brunch to learn that one of our hot water tanks in the basement broke somehow and a replacement would be coming...maybe tomorrow or Tuesday?...which means getting laundry done was nixed. Which also turned into an afternoon of laziness in which I didn't even get around to vacuuming the apartment. D'OH! Oh well. I have tomorrow off so I'll take our stuff to my favorite laundromat down the street midmorning, then hopefully I can get some of the house cleaning done afterwards!

Oh! And I brought both cats to the vet this past Thursday. Just a general wellness checkup / vaccine update, and I'm quite happy to say that both Cali and Jules received a clean bill of health! The only drama there was getting Cali in the cat carrier, which eventually included me throwing my sweater over her, dropping her in the carrier and then pulling my sweater out. She was NOT happy about that...but they've since forgiven me and are both doing just fine.


Hope everyone has a nice week ahead!

Today we drove down to the IKEA in Palo Alto for various home-related things. The weather was quite nice for the most part and we haven't done any major road trips lately, so why not? We may have spent a bit more than expected, but it was worth it. One of the major things was to get new dishes, as we've had our old fiesta ware once since we moved out here in 2005 and they're getting quite worn. We also got a duvet cover in the hopes that this will keep Certain Destructive Kitties from further destroying our comforter, and a few storage bins for the kitchen and Spare Oom. [I bought a standalone wire mesh storage thingie that I can put under my desk as I have lots of space under there. I figure that'll clear up the desk space a bit as well.] On the drive back we took the main surface roads instead and though it took a good hour and a half or so, it was worth it!

Meanwhile, I have been told by the landlady that our washing machine is borked (I think the agitator is broken as it popped out of place when I was using it the other day) but it won't be fixe for another week due to the usual repair team being booked up. Which means that I'll be spending tomorrow morning (I have tomorrow off) heading over to our local laundromat again. The good thing is that I can use multiple machines and it'll take much less time, so if I do it in the morning I'll be back before lunch. Which means I'll have to think of a few writing-related things to do while I'm at the laundromat instead of goofing off online. I'm all caught up with the Trilogy reread, so maybe I'll read What I Have So Far of MU4 instead...? Or maybe go over what notes I have so far? We shall see.

Of course, this also means tomorrow will also be partially spent putting the two IKEA items that need building. That shouldn't take long, however...!

At the moment the Day Job has settled into a schedule that allows me Saturday afternoons off as well as the entirety of Sunday, so we've made our weekend plans accordingly. And given that we've been lucky with the weather for the most part, we've been out and about! Yesterday we made our way over to the Botanical Garden as the magnolias are just about to bloom (it's still a bit early so not all of them were out yet) then stopped at the Richmond Republic (one of our favorite local alehouses) for dinner. And today we visited the Haight for the first time in ages, checking out some of the nicer houses off the main drag and visiting some of our favorite stores as well.

It's still a bit cold and it rained late in the afternoon today, but it does feel really good to get out again!

 I've got a two-day weekend here (off today and tomorrow) so I get to a) sleep in despite being woken up by cats, and b) catch up on things without much interruption or lack of time. A's parents will be coming in early this afternoon for lunch which means that I spent most of this morning post-coffee with vacuuming and tidying up (see: cats again).

In the meantime, I'm sneaking this entry in while A finishes cooking before I finish cleaning/bringing down the trash/etc and doing my weekly PC cleaning.

I'll be honest, I've been feeling kind of guilty for not being all that productive with the writing, but I've told myself not to be swayed by that. I'm allowed a few off days, especially at the end of the year! Besides, I'll most likely be catching up on the blogging later tonight after A's parents head out. I just have to remember, it's not about feeling guilty for not writing...it's about preparing myself for the next writing project phase!