Drunken Owls and Other Delights

I very rarely work on Sundays, and when I do it's usually because our head bookkeeper took the day off and I'm pretty much the only one to take his place. Today was such a case, meaning my weekend will be tomorrow and Tuesday instead. Thankfully the last few post-Valentines shifts have been extremely laid back and uneventful (and fully-staffed!) to the point where I could do what needs doing, take my own time doing it, and not have to worry about doing five other equally important things at the same time.

Unfortunately I haven't quite been on top of my writing schedule these last couple of weeks. Some of it is due to my work schedule, but a lot of it still boils down to distraction. I'm definitely on track for the Trilogy Remaster work, but I feel I could better utilize my time elsewhere as well. I'd rather not keep Theadia sitting there doing nothing. So again -- I need to readjust my time. I'll admit it didn't help that I had that neck pain followed immediately by a week's worth of head cold, but now that I've gotten past both I think I'm more than able to do so.

So what am I doing the next couple of days, aside from the writing? Not much other than laundry and relaxing. After six straight days of the Day Job I need the break!

Woo, I've got today off! The last couple of days at work haven't been too bad. Last night got a little exhausting, as it was raining hard for quite a long time and keeping everyone at home, only to have a sudden surge come in once it stopped. If anything it was an eight hour shift that felt like twelve. Bleh!

Noted, I'm thinking I'm probably going to need a social media detox again. It's partly because the Rs are up to their usual destructive nonsense again and everybody (rightfully) has something to say about it; I do too, but I often feel overwhelmed whenever this wave comes rushing through and I end up wasting a day spiraling by watching the destruction in real time on Threads or wherever, and I REALLY need to stop doing that. It helps no one and it certainly doesn't help me either. Plus, I've finally got my blood pressure down to normal levels these days and I'd like it to stay there. Sure, I'll check the news for updates, but otherwise I need to back away. So yeah, I'm still out here, just keeping a safe distance. Planning and preparing ahead of time.

Anyway, going to spend the day getting things done that need doing.

...that rubs me the wrong way is actually not that it screws up my daily schedule. That bothers everyone, but it is what it is and I make do. Shrug off the annoyance move on. No, the thing that gets me, and it really came to light when I made it all the way to the voir dire segment where they select possible jurors, is that I spend most of that time in the courtroom being asked theoretical questions. Would you do X in this instance? What do you think about the unfairness of A? Let's think about this theoretical situation for two hours and ask all sorts of what-ifs and whether-or-nots. These questions may or may not have a point, but we're not going to ever really come to one until the case begins.

To me, it felt like spending an entire day being asked about that damn trolley problem, and it was driving me fucking BONKERS. [Never mind the fact that we spent most of the in a stuffy and windowless room and there were only two other people wearing masks other than myself.] I get what the judge and the lawyers are trying to do. They're preparing us for whatever the case is about, and kind of messing with our heads a bit so we think first and don't purely act on instinct or emotion. But it just feels like this process could have taken a MUCH shorter time.

That being said, I think they kind of caught on that I saw through all that. I will admit that when they asked "would you feel okay that justice was served even if you felt the law was wrong?" and I responded quite negatively. That definitely tripped them up and in the process that must have gotten me excused, heh. [Noted, I also claimed I'm a pacifist so I Have Opinions about violence, and that was another mark against me.]

I think this also ties in with my feelings on those videos they play for you in the waiting room when you arrive. You know, the "jury duty is one of the most important and patriotic things we must do as citizens" and "wow I never realized how fascinating and awesome being on a jury would be" PSAs that feel just a little too forced. Again, I get what they're trying to do, and this is just my reaction. Those videos to me feel like being on the receiving end of a telemarketer call (and I've been on both ends of those, believe you me), trying to sell me something we may need but neither of us want. I dunno, maybe it's my lingering GenX cynicism creeping out?

Anyway. Not saying that jury duty is stupid or pointless or whatever, just that I don't think I'm their target audience when I'm able to see what's behind the curtains. A weird quirk of being a writer, I suppose...?

Do I have occasional feelings of 'what am I doing with my life' and 'why am I delaying what I could do today'? No more than anyone else at this age, I think. I haven't slid into any midlife crisis second childhood thankfully, and that's because I haven't spent a majority of my adulthood trying to climb any corporate ladders or crunch-working sixty hours a week. My stubbornly sticking to a healthy work-life balance, my long-game writing career, and my lifelong and somewhat unhealthy obsession with music has pretty much kept me from doing any of that. Hell, I'm not even doing the 'I have enough money, let's splurge on a stupidly expensive and high end stereo system' bit either. My PC and my externals filled with media are all I really need anyway.

The new printer should arrive at some point tomorrow, which is totally fine as I haven't needed it just yet. I'm most likely going to bring the old one to the local Goodwill dropoff as they take working and non-working electronics, and I also have several boxes of books that need giving away that have been taking up space here in Spare Oom. I'm thinking I'll do that on one of my future weekday days off.

Do I have any other plans for my birthday today? Well, not really. Picking up my cake that A ordered from the bakery in Laurel Village, maybe stop in at CalMart and Walgreens for a few things, and that's it. I'm not even doing laundry today! I could but I don't really need to right now. I an probably squeeze that in the afternoon in the next day or so.

Okay, back to goofing off! :)

I didn't exactly plan to skip my midweek post, I just completely forgot about it is all. Bound to happen sooner or later.

Anyway! Tomorrow starts my return to the writing grind. I actually picked up Theadia again about a week ago, but I'd done that on purpose: I chose to work on it because I wanted to and not out of a sense of duty or an attempt to force myself into a writing habit. These last two weeks have been pretty much all about calming down from the Day Job's Christmas rush and just taking it easy. This actually worked in my favor because I'm in the midst of cleaning up a scene that needed some heavy rework, and this approach kept me from getting too stressed out about it.

Meanwhile, my Day Job hours seem to be sliding into a semblance of normalcy -- mostly opening shift (or very close to it) Tuesday through Saturday, finally giving me a bit of a two-day weekend of sorts. It's mostly been upstock work at the start in addition to my two-day bookkeeping duties on Friday and Saturday, and while it can be exhausting of we have a huge delivery (those cartons of milk are heavier than they look when you have to stock several dozen of them while inside a cold walk-in fridge).

Still, as much as I enjoyed (and needed) that small break from my whiteboard schedule, I'm glad to be back!

I'm allowed to be cheesed off when it's warranted. Case in point today at the day job, where:

1. My two openers both called out sick.
2. Meaning I had to work the entire front end solo until the 3rd level manager came in.
3. Who thankfully helped when he should have been doing managerial things.
4. Our two local homeless idiots who steal boxes of Cutwater from us DAILY came in like clockwork to steal said booze and other things. Again. [Mind you, I'm not heartless. If they come in and take a few things from the hot bar to feed themselves, I'll allow it and see them out before they take anything else. But these two guys have been hitting the liquor aisle nearly every single day for several years running and we can't do a damn thing about it except yell at them and see them out.]
5. I'm so distracted and behind that I almost nearly fuck up the morning's bookkeeping. Thankfully I do not.
6. Our ten o'clock checker comes in on time but proceeds to spend more time in the restroom/out in the aisles/who the fuck knows where than she does up front. And when she's up front she burrows out of sight and plays with her phone. This has also been an ongoing issue.
7. When it's the busiest up front and several people are in line, someone arrives for the pick-up order I'd finished, and other manager decides to yammer on the radio about it instead of letting me butt in and ask if he can get it because I am stupidly busy. Thankfully 3rd level mgr runs up and saves the day.
8. And with twenty minutes left of my shift, the midshift lead goes on his ten minutes break (which is fine), leaving me with checker from #6 who answers a call to unlock one of the aisles...and proceeds to not return until I'm nearly done.
9. As I leave, I think once more that I REALLY hope those two people don't call out again tomorrow, because they're my openers tomorrow as well. Otherwise I'll be running solo until 7am and the coworker who should be working stock will have to work the front.


Yeah. So I may have screamed bloody murder at those two guys stealing (thank you Voice and Articulation class for teaching me how to project!) and a "this lane is closed" sign may have been the unfortunate victim of a slap across the room to release some tension, and I may have been a bit salty about #6's frequent disappearances today.

BUT! My shift is already over, I think I've finally caught up on some of my lack of sleep, and I have one last day before my own two-day weekend, so I'm not going to let it ruin the rest of my day.

I am extremely happy that I have today and tomorrow off, as Christmas week was VERY busy for me with the day job. Yes, even post-holiday it was a bit crazy as one of our bookkeeping systems was absolutely convinced that we were open on the 25th and would not let me close the day otherwise...and that took me two days to resolve. Sheesh!

Anyway, I'm pretty much at the wind-down part of this last week of the year. Today the in-laws will be stopping by for lunch and whatnot (in which A and I did a marathon cleaning of the house, including terrorizing the cats with the vacuum cleaner), but tomorrow I have very few plans other than dropping a very heavy return off at the local UPS store, doing laundry, and finalizing my end-of-year blog posts and best-of music lists. It felt SO GOOD to sleep in until 8am this morning, as I'm usually up around five-ish due to my early work hours. I desperately needed the rest.

On a more personal note...yeah, there was Drama and a Life Event that went on earlier this year, but I think I'm doing pretty well regarding, as I actively made it a point not to spiral into moodiness and reactive emotions. I think that was probably one of the last life-cleaning things I really needed to do at this age, and it felt really good to move on from that part of my life. I'm able to move on and reach that clarity I've been needing. And yeah, I'm still not thrilled about what the next four years might entail, but I'm learning to face it directly and with a healthy dose of "oh FUCK no, not on my watch" instead of shrinking and hiding away. I've always hated that part of me and I don't want to do that anymore. I'm tired of avoiding conflict, especially when it is desperately needed.


That said...signing off for the year. Hope everyone has a great 2025!

Winter here in westside SF is always a crapshoot -- either it's unseasonably warm and sunny, extremely humid and rainy, or a mix of both with the weather border firmly holding at Presidio Avenue. It might be a thick fog in my neighborhood and sunny at the Embarcadero. Today? Overcast, misting but not raining, 99% humidity, and the chance of rain over the next several days.

Mind you, the weather does affect the customer volume I get at the store, depending on how extreme it is. When there was a torrential downpour a few weeks back, the store was dead quiet with only a few regulars and a stressed out last-minute shopper or two. On warm and sunny days we get hit with a LOT of volume (partly because we're surrounded by parks and people want to hang out and enjoy the day). It being the last week before Christmas, however, I'm thinking it might be a little busier than usual but not overly so. Our numbers might be down from last year, but that'll happen anywhere these days. We still have our regulars, several locals and the occasional visitor or tourist. 

Me, I've been doing a lot of dairy upstock days lately, which on the plus side keeps me from the stress of front end ringing but on the minus side keeps me forever interrupted by needing to unlock cabinets and guide people unsure where items are. It all balances out, though.

But yeah... I think I've pretty much accepted that I'm in a good Zen space in my head now, and that's been a long time in coming. Being in charge of my emotions instead of letting them get the best of me. Having the ability to plan out ahead of time and adjust on the fly. I thought of that the other day when I saw someone posting the meme of 'post a gif of where your mind's at'. I saw a lot of fiery 'this is fine' level gifs, Homer screams, cartoon explosions and other chaotic nonsense, but it dawned on me that for the first time in ages, that's not where my head's at. Sure, I still hate conservatives with a burning passion and get upset over stupid (and non-stupid) things, but they no longer completely ruin my day. They only fuel it to make it right, or better. 

Not bad, considering how my year started, come to think of it.

Today was our annual trip to the SF Ballet to see The Nutcracker. We've pretty much gone to it every December give or take a few years (the company streamed it online in 2020 during the pandemic and yes, we bought tickets for that as well). It's always a fun time and further underscores the fact that Tchaikovsky is one of my all-time favorite composers. It's not just the famous segments everybody knows, but also that SF Ballet's version is quite brilliant in its own way.

And now I have tomorrow off again (yay!) so I think I'm going to head over to Green Apple Books to pick up the calendars I've been meaning to get. Oh, and I need to mail out my family's Christmas presents as well! Almost forgot about that! 

I'm not entirely sure if this is going to become the norm but I'd certainly like it to be: for the last couple of weeks the Day Job has been giving me Sundays and Mondays off, and primarily putting me on the floor for upstock work on Wednesday and Thursday. (Tuesday has wavered between the occasional Front End Managing midshift and another upstock morning. Fridays and Saturdays remain my bookkeeping/opening days.) I know there was a bit of chatter between a few of the managers about that, so it would be nice to have a bit more stability in the schedule. We shall see!