Drunken Owls and Other Delights

Time goes by

Thu, 03 Jul 2025 02:06:27 GMT

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.

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Weekend update

Mon, 17 Jun 2024 01:45:19 GMT

It felt wonderful to sleep in until 8:30am, something I haven't done in ages! Granted, I was up until 11pm last night finishing off Shannon Chakraborty's The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi, which I'd realized early on was in fact a 'let's get the gang back together for one last heist' caper film, complete with bonkers action and wait-what plot twists, and just enough humor to make it a super fun ride. This new series is a lot less serious than her Daevabad trilogy, that's for sure, but it you loved that, you'll love this one as well.

Meanwhile, we walked to the park today and spent a little bit of time in the botanical garden, harvested some more of the red lettuce (there's still a ton of it left), then had a late lunch at the Richmond Republic, where I had a 10% APV beer that was super tasty and left me slightly spinny for at least two and a half hours. All in all a lovely day to be outside!

I'll admit I've been allowing myself to relax over the last couple of days, partly because my setting up Queen Ophelia's War for Thursday's drop date went so smoothly and quickly. I've earned it, dang it! I'm not entirely sure how I'll go about promoting this one but I'll give it the old college try, I suppose. That's something I'll be working on in the next six months anyway: figuring out productive ways to attract attention to my novels!

As for the day job, I'm doing a few midshifts this week (one as a register jockey, the other as a front end babysitter) with a midweek day off, which I've come to enjoy. the 1-2-1-3 variation on the day job schedule breaks it up so I'm not going full out for five days.

Hope everyone has a lovely week!

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Writing thoughts and reading habits

Wed, 07 Feb 2024 23:50:12 GMT

Okay, so I really need to stop re-re-re-rereading my WIPs at night, because my Mount Read Me pile isn't budging. I'm thinking I should put my e-reader here in Spare Oom so I'm forced to read what I have before it gets any worse. I'd rather not have a repeat of last year where I basically read like ten books because I was so distracted by my writing and lost interest in everything else. I need to get back into reading new things again!!

[Oh, and I finally recently read Pride and Prejudice, and it is indeed a brilliant and shockingly funny book. The Lizzie/Catherine DeBourg face-off remains one of my all-time favorite literary moments.]

Meanwhile, I did manage to get a bit of writing work done at the Day Job today in the form of writing a few thoughts about what to do with my space opera Theadia. I'm on the cusp of thinking that this may end up going the same route as The Phoenix Effect and being completely rewritten as a multi-book project, probably a trilogy if not a duology. As much as I'm proud of what I have so far -- and that's saying a lot considering that I've never written in that genre before -- I think the story should be allowed to breathe a lot more. I'm intrigued by what's going on offscreen a lot of the time and I think it's worth expanding to make this universe another large-scale, large-cast story like the Bridgetown Trilogy.

I haven't decided yet either way, but I'm intrigued by this, so if I can get Queen Ophelia's War done soon, then I can do a deep dive and give it a shot?

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I suppose I should write, shouldn't I? And maybe read something else?

Mon, 16 Oct 2023 01:53:56 GMT

I've been doing a lot of rereading of Queen Ophelia's War these days. When I get in to the 'constantly rereading my WIP' segment of a novel project, that means that I'm relatively okay with the draft I'm currently working with, and this is the one I can use as a master to work on overdubs, edits and additional vocals. Which is a good thing, because I've been hoping to get this one out sometime early next year.

Thing is, what I haven't been doing is actually working on the damn thing. Part of it is because I've been distracting myself with blogging and other things. I haven't necessarily been putting it off as I haven't really made all that much effort to try and get somewhere with it. I've just decided to go on a blog hiatus for at least a month in the hopes that I'll get off my arse and get moving on that right away. [I'll still work on the daily 750 as that doesn't take all that long for me and I kind of see it as a warm-up before the actual work. And besides, I'm still writing and not doing something else like playing games or futzing around with my mp3s, right?]

I haven't been reading all that much this year either. I've mentioned much earlier that I think reading that Big Honking Two Volume Beatles Book exhausted me mentally, but come on -- it's been a good number of months so there's got to be another reason why I'm just not resonating with any books these days. I did distract myself recently by reading the full run of the Gunsmith Cats manga on hoopla (as mentioned, I'd forgotten how horny that one could be at times, heh), and the occasional manga catch-up, but that's it. I've got Karen Lord's latest next to my bed with two of her previous books in the same universe to reread, and I'm hoping that might break me out of this slump. We shall see.

Anyway, it's far past time for me to get work done again.

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Reading and Writing

Thu, 08 Jun 2023 16:21:53 GMT

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!

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Weekend updatery

Sun, 18 Apr 2021 22:28:17 GMT

Let's see...what's new to report...

--Managed to get a vaccine appointment for A for the 30th by way of doing the same thing I did for myself: constantly refreshing multiple websites until something came up! Once again it's RiteAid and findashot.org for the win! Some of the sites were super picky, stating you could only be someone from this particular county or zip code, or that you had to log on to some other website first, or what have you, but FindAShot basically kept it easy and clean: it refreshed itself every five minutes for places that offered it like CVS, Walgreens, RiteAid, Safeway, and so on. As soon as I got a bite, I just went for it.

--Multiple important scenes in Diwa & Kaffi have been improved significantly and I'm quite happy about that. I think I may have maybe six or seven Big Moments to fix, but most of the rest of the scenes read just fine. It's the ones where you can tell I rushed it that needed work. I'm *hoping* to get it done by the end of the month, but I'll be happy if I get it done by mid-May. Where am I going to submit it? Good question. Still working on that.

--I'm getting lazy with my stretches and exercises again. I need to spend more than just five minutes doing a few twists and saying "meh, I'll do my crunches tomorrow". I'm doing okay with them, but I could be doing a lot better.

--Building management stopped by the other day to check the layout of the apartment, as apparently they need to get into a few of our closets to set up some kind of fire safety thing. Which means that on a certain day, I'll need to empty it all out so they can get in. Which means that I'll have to figure out where I'm going to put certain boxes and whatnot, even if it's just for half a day. It'll be a pain in the butt, but at the same time I'm trying to look at the plusses, such as dusting and vacuuming the corners (and maybe getting rid of a few shirts I haven't worn in like five years). Thankfully this shouldn't take more than a day so it won't be too big of an issue.

--For the very first time, the bookshelf containing my music books now wholly contains *books I have actually read*. I've managed to get the TBR pile down to a few dozen, which have been moved to the bookshelf next to my side of the bed. And THAT particular TBR pile is only a single shelf, so I should be able to get through them soon enough!

--Next week we'll be going to a restaurant (with A's parents) for the first time in who knows how long. To be honest, it's not really blowing my mind as it would most other people. I think it's partly because I've been the one heading out each week to do the grocery shopping or other outside errands, so it's not as if I've been squirrelled away and not seen another human being aside from A this past year. I do miss heading to places like some of the local diners and a few of our favorite watering holes, though!

....and that's all I can think of for now. Gotta finish doing the laundry and prep my writing blog entry for Monday. Hope everybody has a fine week ahead!

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Midweek Update Is Cleaning House

Wed, 28 Nov 2018 21:32:07 GMT

...in particular, I'm thinking of doing a purge of books again. I'm making my way through the music biographies I have and clearing off my bedside TBR pile at a good clip (status: currently reading Warren Zanes' book about Tom Petty). I'm at the point where I'm pretty sure I won't be reading some of these books I've held onto for so long. Come to think of it, I've been kind of super-choosy about my book buying lately as well. I think part of it is that I've grown tired of some of the popular trends lately (post-apocalypse, urban fantasy, grimdark) and nothing's really grabbing me as of late. Not that I've slowed up on my reading...my GoodReads list is actually LONGER this year than it was last year! I think I'm just doing a lot of reading in other genres -- music biogs, comic trades and manga tankobon, and so on.

Anyhoo, I'm sure by the time I go through the bookshelves I'll have more tomes to donate to the Friends of the SF Library bookstore down in the Marina! :)

That's all for now, folks...nothing else new to report! :p

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Weekend Update Does Some Downloading and Cleaning Up

Sun, 10 Jun 2018 00:10:31 GMT

It's a windy Saturday here in San Francisco, but it's also clear and nice. A and I went to the De Young Museum in the park to see a few exhibits (Cult of the Machine, a look at the machine age in art in the early 20th century; and Weapons of Mass Seduction, a look at WWI and II propaganda posters and art), and after that went for a walk through the arboretum. All in all a nice three mile walk! Then back to our boring world of buying groceries and then spending the afternoon doing not much of anything else. I just went through a month's worth of political fliers that were mailed to us, ripped off our address and shredded that bit (the rest can go into the recycling). We'll most likely hit the farmer's market tomorrow and do a spot of vacuuming.

Now? I'm downloading the all the folders of the 2018 Hugo Packet. I tell you, when they came up with this some years back it was a brilliant idea. They work with all the participating publishers and provide us with e-books of the nominated items. It gives me tons to read for the next month or so! [Plus, it gives me e-books of stuff I already have that I enjoy reading too!] I'm still trying to find time to make good on my idea of reading more e-books, especially including self-published items, but now that I'm mostly caught up with my To Be Read Pile, I should have more time very soon.

And with that...not much else this weekend! I'm trying to keep it minimal, because I have to head to Concord on Wednesday, and then we have the weekend trip to Mendocino/Ft Bragg next weekend. Between that and squeezing in my writing and my blogs, I'm always kind of busy. A *good* kind of busy, but busy nonetheless. The mini-vacation will be a nice respite.

Hope everyone is having a good weekend! :)

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