Lately I've been feeling, well...not distracted, but not necessarily overwhelmed either. Despite all the political fuckery going on (and boy howdy do I have thoughts on that), I've been trying my best to approach all that in a different way. It certainly does bother me, and not a day goes by when I don't mutter some version of goddamn I really fucking hate conservatives right now under my breath, but I'm trying to get out of a very longstanding and extremely unhealthy habit of emotionally reacting to it with undirected dread and anxiety. I'm accepting that it's there and it's happening, I'm just trying not to spiral like I used to.

But it's not really all that, either. Part of it might be that I'm still getting used to living in our New Digs and getting used to not being at the old place anymore, but I think most of it lately has been on the creative end of things.

It's not that I don't want to work on this Trilogy Remaster -- I've been wanting to do it for a good couple of years, to be honest -- but more that I feel like I haven't been completely honest with my writing career these last few years. Like I could -- like I should be dedicating more time and energy to it than I have. Granted, I'm getting older and I can't really stay up until 2am doing five hour marathon sessions like I used to, especially since I have early morning Day Job hours. But I just feel like it's been ages since I've taken it as seriously as I used to. Phoning it in sometimes, doing the bare minimum, throwing my books out there with zero follow-up.

So what's the plan, then?

That's a good question indeed. The plan is something I think I'll need to work on over the next few weeks or so.

I've come to the conclusion that I'm really not a night-owl anymore, at least not like I used to be. Part of it is having to wake up at five-ish in the morning for opening shift, and part of it is that A is just not someone that stays up well past midnight all that often. And let's be honest, there's really no reason for me to stay up until 2am like I did during the Belfry Days. Mind you, I do like the occasional sleeping in, but it's very rarely past 7am. (Two cats causing mayhem because they need breakfast will also cause that.)

But really, I've come to enjoy climbing into bed at a reasonably early hour and just chilling with a book for a couple of hours. It's a nice way to wind down, and it's especially a good way to get a good night's sleep as I'm not trying to do so right after staring at a computer screen for a few hours. Doubly so if I happen to be doomscrolling. Which I've been actively avoiding much better these days.

And speaking of getting old, it's probably far past time for me to get a check-up. It's been a while. Not that I'm doing poorly or anything, and I think my BP is a lot lower than it used to be, but age and its attendant limb achiness is starting to creep in, so it's probably for the best that I make sure that it's merely wear and tear and not anything more than that.

While the rest of the country seems to be heating up considerably, here in the Bay Area it's been stuck in the low to mid 50s, and we're both hoping that we can get our share of the warmth as well. Yeah, I know, "coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in SF" and all that, but it's weirdly true here. Summers are when a cold front comes in from the ocean and stays here for several weeks, with Karl the Fog hanging over us semi-permanently (at least here in the west side of town), making everything feel like a miserable New England spring that never ends. It's almost the Fourth of July and I'm still wearing fingerless gloves to work.

I mean, it might warm up and the sun might appear near the end of the week? Maybe? You never quite know with this place.

So of course I can't let a day off go by without Doing Stuff That Needs Doing. Because I don't know how to slack off without feeling guilty about it, heh.

More pictures have been hung on the wall, and several have been put aside for storage as we're thinking of updating our art prints. We of course buy most of them from our local museums or ones we've visited in the last couple of years, and the old ones have started suffering from sun fade. A is currently looking at multiple museums' online shops, and we're also awaiting the re-opening of Ukiyo-e Heroes' website -- they do a lot of giclee prints of anime and sf/f characters in a feudal Japan style, and we already own a handful of them already. We'll be putting more pictures up tomorrow!

Also done today: two of three things I've been meaning to get rid of have now been gotten rid of! Thanks to FB Marketplace our moving boxes have been picked up by a few local Millennials that will be moving soon, and our old Dyson stick vacuum (which is around seventeen years old at this point, and it was a refurb when we got it) was also taken. Someone is picking up our old floor lamp tomorrow. This means we once again have more room in the garage, and the pile of Things to Donate is once again shrinking. I'll need to find the time to drop the four or five boxes going to Goodwill. I'd do it tomorrow but there's no rush.

Tomorrow is my second day off in a row (yay!) and A is doing a half-day, so after she signs off we'll be doing some grocery shopping, but that's about it!

Well, at least I did get to be lazy and lie in bed until 7am!

Despite being 98% settled in at this point, we still have a few outstanding things to do here at the new digs...

--Bring up the remaining boxes of books. I think I have maybe about five or six boxes in storage downstairs that need bringing up when I have time (and do not have a bum foot due to previous dumbassery). One of the tall bookshelves was missing a few pegs that got lost in the move and we put replacements in. The midsize bookshelf next to my side of the bed also has two empty shelves for my TBR/TBR-then-donate pile.
--Bring up the one box of musical box sets and find a good place for them. I'd rather they be up here, though where is a good question... My boxes of CDs and other music-related things will stay downstairs, though. I don't mind those hanging out and they're well contained.
--Bring down the two area rugs, and contemplate keeping or tossing. We've decided not to use them and they're rather run down due to wear and cat claw-sharpening and are just taking up floor space in the living room.
--Break down more of the boxes that can be recycled. Our bin isn't nearly as big as the ones our old place had so there's only so much I can put in there alongside our usual week's recycling. Same with the bags of trash. We rarely have a lot of compost so there's no worries there.
--Speaking of boxes, I should put up a post for Free Moving Boxes on FB Marketplace. I'm sure someone will want them! Also should put up the floor lamp, small table (the one we had in the kitchen at the old place) and its two wooden chairs. At this point I'll give them away cheap, as we don't need them now.

Still, this 2% is all stuff I can do over the course of several weeks with no cutoff time, so I'm not worried...

A and I were talking yesterday about the differences between our old place the new one. Aside from the change in layout, I was taken by the fact that it's wonderfully quiet. While the old place wasn't on a high volume street, it did get its share of vehicle traffic coming and going between Geary and California, not to mention the foot traffic from the restaurants on Clement. Whereas here, we only have the kids across the street at the elementary school and the occasional car driving by. We're also kind of surprised we don't hear the traffic next block over on Fulton, which is often used as a speedway for people cutting east-west across town. Our cats make more noise!

Oh, and we are both very thankful that our downstairs neighbors are very quiet and very nice. The most I hear from them is the occasional piano practice, which I am all for. Which is a LOT better than the idiot bro at the old place with an electric drum kit and no sense of rhythm and a guitar and an amp and only plays Eddie Van Halen squealy wank with no sense of melody.

There's also the fact that it feels warmer and less humid here. It could be the fact that this is a brand new renovation so the windows are nice and tight, and we don't have leaky skylights either. The breeze is a bit cooler since we get the direct ocean wind, but only when we're outside. The view from the office on a clear day isn't as grand as it was in Spare Oom, but you can see the top of the GGB towers popping up over the hill of the Presidio, and the Marin headlands range is still lovely. We can even see Mount Tamalpais this time!

We are now completely moved into our new home, and have been spending the last several days unpacking, setting things up, putting things away, and ensuring the cats aren't too freaked out by their new surroundings.

I'll be honest, I wasn't expecting to feel a wave of melancholy when I left the old apartment yesterday after picking up the last of the leftover things I had to bring over. And again today when I left the keys and the garage door opener on the kitchen counter. It felt...well, sort of like when I moved out of my parents' house in 2005, now that I think about it. A little over fifteen years in the same place and it becomes a strong part of your history, I guess. We were only at our apartment in North Beach for just shy of four years and it took me that long to get used to our last place. 

But yeah, walking out of there for the last time was definitely a trip. Lots of memories, lots of life events.

There's still a lot to do, even though we're mostly settled now. The shared office needs things put away, the garage needs a LOT of rearranging and organization (and the two storage shelves built at that), and we still need to do a bit of grocery shopping.

It's slow going, but we're getting there. 

After all this wait, all the paperwork and the banking and the scheduling and rescheduling and info updating and everything else, we'll have finally fully moved into our new home come Tuesday! It's been such a weird and wild and extremely exhausting couple of months and I've completely lost track of time to the point of what day it is half the time. I'm finally on a full week's vacation where I can focus on the final couple of 'soft moves' (moving the small and fragile stuff, storing new purchases, setting up new furniture and whatnot) without juggling it with the Day Job.

This however doesn't mean that I'll be able to sleep in most of the days because a lot of our plans involve early or midmorning things to do like meeting up with our soon to be former landlady for a final walk-through and having the place cleaned, and most likely a lot of unpacking in the next several days after that. Still, I don't have to worry about any eight-hour shifts on top it all!

And after all that, I'll hopefully be back online and blogging and writing on a regular schedule soon!

...until we officially move into our new place! I'm still trying to wrap my head around that. It's not helping that I feel like I've been putting off all the packing even though I've done quite a large amount of it (and tossing/donating) already. It's also not helping that the Day Job has had some of its busiest days in months these last couple of weeks. I'm deliberately running on half-speed to conserve energy -- I'm not as fast at work so I can keep some of that oomph to move boxes and bins over to the new place.

We've also been doing a lot of shopping lately, buying stuff for the new place. We've even gotten ourselves a membership to Costco after all these years! Not that we're about to buy Armageddon Preparation Size boxes of cereal mind you, just looking for good deals on things we frequently use and need like household stuff. We're also buying things other than bookshelves (heh) at Ikea for storage modules we will need. We're trying not to go overboard considering we're moving into a slightly smaller space and there's only so much space for storage, but being smart about the space we do have is important. I will be heading to said Costco later today to pick up some storage shelves for the garage.

And INTERNETS! As of yesterday we are all wired up at the new place so that's one more thing to cross off our to-do list. Yay!

I am a little worried about some of the stuff we're getting rid of, though I'm hoping that won't be too much of a problem. We'll be getting rid of our old Dyson vacuum cleaner which we've had for almost 20 years that STILL runs perfectly (not bad for a refurb at that) which I'm sure a neighbor will yoink. The living room couch is going to be tricky, though. It's the one we bought from Home Reserve, known for their really good durable furniture that comes in boxes that you put together yourselves. I want to see if one of our neighbors wants it first before I put it up on FB Marketplace. I'd rather someone take it because aside from a bit of wear and sun fade, it's still in great condition, but if we have to toss it, at least it's gotten sixteen years of use!

I'll be honest, what's bothering me the most is that I'm barely getting any writing work done. I'd packed all my notebooks and brought them over to the new place so I haven't done any journaling in ages. I might squeeze in a few pages of revision and editing on the trilogy remaster, but that's about it. I just haven't had the time. I'd expected this and I'm using the time as a bit of a vacation from all that, but I am SO itching to get back to it once we've moved.

On that note, I have today and tomorrow off and I'd better get moving. Still using pockets of time to rest and relax, but I still have a lot to do.

A couple of weeks ago I'd decided I needed a three-day weekend as desperately needed the break. As mentioned before, I'd been feeling overworked but was also fighting back a cold and/or a sore throat, not to mention said cold constantly waking me up in the middle of the night. I put in the request and the weekend is FINALLY here!

This is something else I really appreciate about my current employer, by the way. At the bank I would have had to call in sick/play hooky, or if I put in the request I'd have had to jump through a few hoops with management. Sure, I have a few coworkers who gleefully exploit this so they can slack off, but for the most part the teams make do and power through the best they can. And besides, they're trying to make budget right now and I basically told them that they can give my hours to anyone who wants them instead of paying me for that extra day off. [And that's also a plus for me in that I end up not using my floaters, paid vacation or other days so I can use them later on!]

So what do we have planned? Well, not much at all, really. A few local errands, that's about it. The weather's supposed to be crappy the next few days anyway so holing up to watch movies, listen to podcasts and work on writing is just fine by me.