Drunken Owls and Other Delights

So it's week two of the early opens and I still have two more days to go. My coworker returns on Wednesday which means my schedule is sort of back to normal at that point. Not entirely happy that I do two mid-shifts (11:30-8pm) in a row at that point, but at least I get a day off before and after them. I'm not exactly exhausted, just a bit worn out.

The funny thing is that it's made me think about how much I've gotten used to having a work schedule that varies from week to week, and how much I enjoy it these days. I know part of it is the distinct lack of dread I felt with the Former Day Job. Sure, I'll have stressful days, but the levels are nowhere near the same. And the varying schedule definitely keeps things fresh! I'm not the biggest fan of those mid-shifts as they do get exhausting sometimes, but they're definitely not terrible by any stretch.

Still, I'll be happy to get back to the regular shifting schedule again, so I can sleep in just a bit later! :)

 Some of my friends and I have been talking about the state of Twitter lately, and yeah, it's pretty bad these days. I'm trying to think of a similar situation and I've come up with a few:

--It feels like that temp job you had where you know that the department you're working in is on its way towards close-down, and you've been hired to basically do the last rounds of assignments while various cubicles are being torn down around you.
--It feels like the last semester of senior year in high school when all those social stigmas and irritations just...don't really matter all that much anymore.
--It feels like your two relatives who you love dearly but all they ever do when they get together is complain about the idiocy someone caused or how the quality of things has declined. And how it's not really their fault.
--It feels like you've just landed in someone's basement that stinks of stale Cheetos and hundreds of cans of Monster Energy.

The first one especially for me. The site has either chased off or disgusted a large number of users for a multitude of reasons, and it's a shell of what it used to be. I would not be surprised if there was a considerable number difference between active non-bot users in, say, 2013 and this past month. It doesn't help that its current CEO has treated it so badly you'd think he's dissecting and disassembling it piece by piece on purpose.

Mind you, I still connect with a number of people, creators and friends on there because like me, they haven't quite given up on it yet. I've given up (or at least muted) those who spend their online time QTing or RTing bigots -- I know they're there and I'd rather not be reminded so often, thank you -- but for the most part I'll still follow you if you're still there.

I'm mostly following the blogs these days, to be honest, but if I'm looking for that instant dopamine rush of chat-centric social media, then I bounce between Twitter and Facebook. I've tried Mastodon and it's a bit past my level of brainspace I'm willing to give (not that I don't understand it, it's just too fiddly for the amount of patience I'm willing to give it). I'm on Discord because my east coast friends have created a great server where we can all meet on the daily. But that's about it.

I'm sure I'll probably quit Twitter at some point, and I think it'll probably be in the same fashion I left LiveJournal: when no one I know is there anymore and it ceases to be useful, then I'll log off for the last time.

 The PC continues to behave for the most part, with very few things that still need ironing out. I need to adjust the settings on the Plex server to ensure that it doesn't cause our internet to crash (which it did a couple of times, though I'm not entirely sure why), but other than that I haven't had any problems.

Which means I'm back to writing again! Yay! I'm still only squeezing maybe a couple hundred words a day which is a bit frustrating, but it's something I can work on. I know part of it has been due to squeezing said writing into a short block of time at the start or end of the day, and I can better adjust it going forward. I think what I need is a good day or afternoon off where I can get a good three-hour session in, and that should inspire me to give it all a closer focus.

Meanwhile, if you're not connected to the Discord me and my (mostly) east coast friends have, the Big News is that our downstairs neighbor has FINALLY moved out! She was definitely a piece of work. Not exactly a hateful or spiteful person, just someone who had no concept of Other People Also Live In This Building. Classics such as a line of terrible boyfriends, occasional loud partying until 1am, having a party on the roof when no one's supposed to be up there, yelling at her dog whenever it barked, and so on. I'm pretty sure she hated A and I for calling her out on her bullshit every now and again (and rightfully so: who the fuck does drunken karaoke at 11pm on a weeknight in an apartment building??), which made it all that much funnier that we are definitely the favorites of our landlady. Heh.

Anyway! Today's my day off before I start another wave of weird schedules at the Day Job. Our head bookkeeper is going on a two-week vacation which means I'll be opening at 5:30am five days a week during that time (Wednesday through Sunday). This unfortunately means waking up at 4:15 so I can shower and have breakfast, but on the plus side it means I'm out by early afternoon, just like the YC days. This will definitely give me writing time!

On that note...going to make the most of today by prepping the blogs, hitting the 750Words and working on MU4!

Everything was fine last night...and then when I came home from work today, the VPN app was taking up 98% CPU for no reason at all (and this happened the other day as well). I got the Task Manager to end that, but when I tried to restart the PC the Start button refused to respond. Just a few of multiple weird things that have been happening over the past couple of weeks.

SO. Right now I'm copying important things from the C and D drives to externals and once that's done, I'm going to do a complete factory reset. (I haven't done it with this PC yet, which says a lot about how good it's been. I'm pretty sure I did at least three or four resets for my older PCs back in the day.)

On the one hand it's annoying because I'm spending all this time fiddling with the tech when I could be working on creative stuff. On the other hand, this is definitely showing how much I have on the PC itself that I probably could or should move elsewhere, either out of safety or privacy. It took a few hours to move everything, but it's safe on an external now (and I'm disconnecting everything as we speak), so hopefully I'll have this up and running again by this evening. If not, I have tomorrow off so I can always finish it up then!

 Before I begin, can I just say that I find the validation process for this site is hilarious? I mean, it's a normal "click on all the picture of hockey players to prove you're not a bot" thing, but it occurs to me that the pictures used are AI-generated. This means that said hockey players might have three arms or be playing with five sticks and bending themselves in directions that human spines aren't meant to go in. Heh!

Anyway! Happened to have today off so A and I went for one of our favorite walks around the neighborhood, heading up to a great coffee shop near Golden Gate Park then walking back through the park itself. A good couple of miles there and back with sights to see and pictures to take! I have to say that the Day Job has definitely helped me get back in shape, what with all the walking and standing I do six to eight hours a day.

Did a lot of house cleaning upon our return home, doing some intensive vacuuming (including those hard to reach bits where the carpet meets the walls) (and several days' worth of shedded cat hair, of course). I'd have done laundry as well, but I've been told by our landlord that a major fix is being done on the machine downstairs and will be out of commission until next week. Which means I'll most likely need to slip out to the local laundromat and do it tomorrow morning before my afternoon work shift. Which really isn't a problem, considering I usually spend the time doing some reading and enjoying some coffee from next door.

And the writing? Well, it's getting there. In small spurts lately, but it's getting there.

 Thankfully my cough and congestion lasted a mere couple of days and I was back to work on Friday. Speaking of which, my hours have been cut back a few per week and I'm only doing about 30 - 32 rather than the 35-38, and I have it on good authority that it's basically just that time of the year when it quiets down a little bit. There aren't any major holidays coming up until Easter and Memorial Day that would affect a grocery store. Which is fine with me as I'm still getting over thirty hours, they're glad to have me there, and our store is actually one of the better ones in terms of sales! 

Also in the day job universe, glass cases have now been installed on sections of two aisles. One is the biggest improvement: the hard liquor that wasn't already locked up. [The usual cast of idiots would always hit our vodka, whiskey and tequila but rarely anything else.] The other, as you will probably have already guessed, is the toiletries such as meds, detergents and cleaners. It's kind of sad that so many stores have had to do this, even despite getting security as we have, but we're doing out best to make the wait as minimal as possible. We still get so many customers coming in saying how much they love our store, and I've even gotten personal thanks from a few who thought we did an ace job helping them.

Meanwhile...I'm still working on the social media detox. It's gotten to the point on the phone where I uninstalled one of the web browsers and removed one from the screen. I do find that the Out of Sight Out of Mind Method of avoiding distraction works pretty well for me, so let's see if this works. It's another thing entirely here in Spare Oom, but I'll figure out something. There's also the issue of Avoidance here at the PC -- I know I need to work on the MU4 project, like, NOW, but hey maybe I should blog first or wait time for dinner hmm I should probably clear out my emails oh damn it all it's 8pm already too late to start anything.

Time to remind myself: just shut the f*** up and DO it already!


Anyhoo...hope everyone has a good week ahead!

 Okay, I really need to detox from the Birdsite, and I just fell right back into the doomscrolling, didn't I? *sigh* Let's try that again. Go cold turkey if I have to. I mean, let's think about it here: most everyone I come into basic contact with is either here, on FB or on Discord, yeah? Maybe a few friends here and there on Twitter, but that doesn't necessarily mean that I need to passively pop it open every damn time I go on break at work. I've just temporarily removed the shortcut from my phone (I didn't actually uninstall it), so maybe that'll remind me that I need to stop looking at it.

It's not as if I'm using it to disconnect from the Day Job, I've merely fallen into and stayed in the habit of reading it every time I go on my breaks. 

So what should I use for a distraction, then...?

Good question. Can't really bring a book because I don't really have the room for it in my lunch bag, unless I bring my Nook. Which means I'd need to decide on an ebook to read at some point, yeah? I already have a small notebook in said back that I'm supposed to be using for writing-during-break reasons.

Or I could, y'know, always go outside if the weather's nice. Or even then, I could hang out near the steps to the roof parking lot if the weather's not so nice. A few of my coworkers go up to the roof for their breaks. A few others who smoke head to the receiving dock to light up (this includes both of my managers, heh). A few of them who drive head out to their car and chill. Either way, I want and need to utilize those ten-minute breaks AWAY FROM THE INTERNETS. (Unless said internets are being used to read an ebook or access my Dropbox folders for writing stuff.)

One of these things should work. I just need to, y'know....DO 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!

 Finally made good on my promise to get my haircut today at the finally-reopened Supercuts on Fillmore. It's still long, just past shoulder length, but the dead- and split-ends are finally gone! I'm cursed with having extremely straight and fine hair so I can't really shape it in any way as gravity will eventually take over. On the other hand, I'm blessed with a full head of it even at my age, so I'm fine with that trade-off. Still, I spent a bit of change getting a trim and some spray that will hopefully keep it healthy.

And while I was out, I went to the vet's office across the street from the Supercuts to set up an appointment later this week to get a wellness check done for Jules and Cali. They're not going to be happy about it, but it's gotta be done sooner or later. As I write this they're both here in Spare Oom having their afternoon naps, unaware of their fate a few days from now...heh.

Anything else? I'm still behind on getting work done on MU4, but I'm slowly catching up. Just have to stop screwing around and get to work!

 I really need to get to new words again...but first I need to get past this MU4 chapter retooling! After a few days of contemplation, I've revised AGAIN by reverting to the first couple of chapters from Version 3 from a year or so ago and using that as a jumping-off point for everything else. Long story short, that version provides a lot more tension and also sets the long-game arc.

ANYWAY! I've got a weird work schedule today and won't get any further writing done today, so.