Drunken Owls and Other Delights

It's been A Week. And it's only Thursday.

It all started on Saturday when we got a call from one of my coworkers that opens in the mornings saying they'd be out for the rest of the week for a family emergency. Then come Monday, one more coworker who said they'd be changing their hours that day ended up calling out, and a third who'd given her two weeks decided to just not come in for the rest of the week. So yeah, three people out and a lot of frantic shuffling to figure out who can fill in.

it all culminated yesterday with me doing a rather simple 6 -1:30 shift that usually isn't all that bad, but I spent almost the entire time at the registers BY MYSELF, with the occasional but not consistent help when we got more than a few people in line. I was so exhausted by the end of that I was actually dizzy, and I'm still feeling it today. I'm thinking it might be a tension headache from having such a busy week along with a few other personal things going on.

Suffice it to say I have nothing major planned today other than doing some laundry and a bit of writing. And relaxing.

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!

 It came a day earlier than expected but after I came home from work, so I was here to sign for it. Yay! Setting it up will be my project for my day off tomorrow, as today I will be doing the usual 'copy everything important to an external/to Dropbox and write down all the software I know I'll need to download' and all the fun stuff that comes with setting up a new PC...and somehow still get some of the blogs and whatnot updated! Noted, this may also help me reroute some of the wires so there's not as much loose spaghetti under the desk, heh.

OOF. The last three days were tough at work. Two mid-shifts (including on the 4th, which was surprisingly not busy) and a closure last night that took a hell of a lot out of me. I may not have been in the best of moods for the first half of that shift, mainly due to Thwarted Plans (needing to finish open-ended bookkeeping, trying to keep the front end in line, and going to a super late lunch break on time) and Irritations (vocal interruptions by others which if you know me annoys the piss out of me) plus being hangry. By the time 8pm rolled around it was finally much more sedate and I chose to eff it and roll with the punches instead. Suffice it to say I slept like crap last night as my brain was still in ARRRRGH mode and I ended up dreaming that I'd been fired for a really stupid reason.

ANYWAY. Today's my day off and I've done little except update my blogs and do the laundry, and I have no problems with that. Maybe if I have the inclination I'll finally get off my butt and do some work on MU4 again, and maybe think about what my tandem novel project will be.

Here's to hoping that next week's schedule is nowhere near as stressful. Thankfully my next two days at work are easy opens!

 After three straight days of weird work hours (short afternoon shift followed by midshift to 8pm followed by morning open till 1), I'm glad to have tomorrow off to relax a little bit before I do my Friday-Saturday early opens. Other than doing the grocery shopping, I don't have too much else planned. I'd like to spend a good couple of hours on MU4 as I have a few ideas I want to try out, but that's about it.

Meanwhile, I had to waste an hour or so this afternoon due to a Windows update that somehow made Chrome inoperable. Apparently it has to do with an add-on that's causing it to crash when Malwarebytes is running? Either way, I reversed the update and it's working just fine. I figure I can wait on the updates a bit until they have a patch put in. We shall see.

Other than that, it's been a busy but productive week, so I can't complain. :)

Whoof -- finally finished the Expanded Edition of Mark Lewisohn's Beatles book Tune In, and it only took me THREE FLIPPING MONTHS to do it! Very dense and ridiculously detailed but fascinating, especially if you're a huge Beatle nerd like I am. It was like 1700 pages over two hardcovers. Really eye-opening on how the band formed and evolved even before they made their first single (which takes place in the last third of the book), what life was like in Liverpool at the time, and especially how old-school (in a negative way) the music business was then. 

The downside is that my GoodReads numbers are atrocious right now, and I need to read 35 more books to get back on track and make my goal of 100 by the end of the year! Pretty sure I can do it, though. And yes, I am counting manga and the occasional reread! 

On the writing end of things...as I'd mentioned on my blog recently, my work on MU4 has been good but has been lacking tension and it's bothering me. Call it conflict avoidance, call it having my brain still stuck in hopepunk territory after writing Diwa & Kaffi, whatever it is -- it's annoying as hell and I need to break myself out of it. And it occurred to me a few days ago that I think the only way I'll successfully do so is to pull a 180: You want tension? I'll give you some f***ing tension. And I started a new chapter that...well, let's just say that it's definitely an oh shit moment, and it did the trick. Now I'm very curious as to where it will go!

 The renovation guys are up on the roof this morning again, and though I'm not entirely sure what they're up to, I'm thinking that it might be that they're redoing the drainage on the southern side of the building as it would always pool and not drain properly. I would not be surprised if there was a bit of water damage up there.

Meanwhile, I haven't heard anything about new rear windows as of yet, but I have confirmed with the landlady that we are getting them! All I ask is that they let us know ahead of time when they're going to do ours, so we can corral the cats and keep them from escaping. Oh, and move things out of the way, heh.

In writing news, I hit 1108 words on MU4 yesterday! Yay! That's the most I've done in one sitting for this particular project, and I'm quite happy about it. This is what happens when I have a day off and not distract myself with the internets! Heh.

 As they often say, weather in San Francisco really depends on which neighborhood you happen to be in. Out here in the Richmond it tends to be a bit cooler than downtown, though downtown can be a bit windy from the crosswinds coming off the Bay. The fog bank always seems to stop somewhere around Presidio Avenue near the JCC before it eventually retreats or burns off by midafternoon. Today my neighborhood had a nice thick fog layer going, but now it's only lingering over the mouth of the Bay, right at the GG Bridge, and the rest of the sky is clear. And it's warmer than yesterday! Not bad for a day off if I say so myself...

Which reminds me: I've been told by our landlady that we'll be getting new rear windows sometime in the next couple of weeks! Which is great because they're both a bit worn out and possibly touched with a bit of water damage on the sills. We of course plan on getting screens for these new windows so we can enjoy the cool air during warm days while the kitties can still perch up there and watch the birds. Looking forward to better working windows!

Yay, I have Sunday off for the first time in weeks! Yay, it's a lovely day with nary a cloud and no chilly crosswinds blowing down the Avenues! I wanted to go to the farmer's market at the other end of Clement as we hadn't gone in months, so we did! It's still kind of early in the season so it's not completely in full swing, but we bought a half-flat of strawberries for snacking, breakfast and ice cream making purposes, along with new tomato plants for the kitchen window (in which we are hoping that Jules does not notice them and/or think they're food). I stopped by the pet groomer's up the street to say thanks to the cat adoption team where we got Jules & Cali and donated a pack of cat treats. Carrying a half-flat of strawberries (six small baskets) plus two seedlings is kind of awkward, so we took the bus home. Nothing too exciting, but it felt really good to get out for a walk and see what's in season!

I spent the afternoon cleaning and vacuuming, and was actually surprised there were only four cat toys (read: crumpled-up paper balls) under the couch this time! The kitties do NOT like the mysterious tall and thin growling monster and hid in the kitchen with A until I was finished. I gave them treats afterwards to calm them down.

And yay, I have tomorrow off as well! I do need to call the Honda garage to set up a time for the recall thing -- I think it's a small computer update thing by the looks of it -- but other than that, I'm probably just going to chill, do the laundry and maybe some more cleaning. And WRITE, because I've been lazy these last few days!!