Drunken Owls and Other Delights

If you haven't heard elsewhere already, as of 1 April I have now officially started the complete rewrite of Theadia! The tl;dr here is that I'm approaching it the same way I did in rewriting The Phoenix Effect as the Bridgetown Trilogy way back in the day because I feel its current version doesn't do the story justice. Will this too be a trilogy? A duology? A really long single book? Stay tuned!

But yeah, that's been on my mind these last couple of days, and I'm excited about that. I've been ensuring I have a good stretch of time to focus solely on it, just like before. It's kind of an exercise to see if the process that was so successful previously could be repeated here, I suppose. Right now there hasn't been all that much divergence other than rephrasing a few passages and pulling out some of the chaff, but I'm fully expecting that to happen soon enough, once I start elaborating on some of the subplots and introducing more of the characters.

Other than that, I have today off, so I'm hoping to get a lot done after I do some of my morning errands like playing with the cats and grocery shopping!

In preparation for our mini-vacation starting tomorrow, we've spent most of today so far (after a tasty brunch at Joe's Coffee Shop) cleaning the apartment. This would include: using the Uproot Clean rake on the two rugs in the living room, a major scrub-down of the shower, washing of bedsheets and blankets, floor mopping, and vacuuming. [I will be starting in on that final one once I catch my breath.] 

And who, you ask, will be watching over our cats in our absence? One of my coworkers will be cat-sitting! They have experience and have confirmed their work schedule fits perfectly on the days we need. They'll be staying here so we're just making sure everything is clean and in working order.

And in between all that, I am of course also doing my weekly PC cleaning, of which I am about two weeks behind on. I'm not too worried considering I've had this new computer for about a month now, but it doesn't hurt to chase out those pesky bugs and fix those weak spots. Thankfully I have not had any PC issues so far other than the occasional internet drop-out (which I've mentioned here before), so it's always good to ensure it doesn't happen anyway!

Am now all sweaty and a bit tired, but it's worth it.

Yes it is! it's weird when I *do* have a Sunday off because I'm so used to my occasionally oddball work schedule that midweek feels like a Monday, heh. And I have tomorrow off, yay! Which means I get another 'get caught up' day! Woo!

Anyway -- a coworker of mine is going to be stopping by very soon to visit our two cats as we're hiring them for cat sitting when we take a mini-trip in early September. They've got pet-sitting experience and we get along swimmingly (and amusingly I often forget I'm basically their parents' age) and live just up the road so it won't be that much of a problem either way. This is the first time we'll be away from the cats for more than a few hours so this is going to feel a bit weird, but the fuzzbutts will be in good hands.

Meanwhile, one of our elderly neighbors passed away some weeks ago and they've been slowly emptying out the apartment. He was one of this building's longest tenants for quite a few decades, and sadly was a bit of a hoarder (super nice guy, though, and one of the first people I met when we moved in) so there's been a slowly growing pile of all kinds of things out front that will probably need more than one dumpster to get it all out and away. There's also most likely going to be a few months' worth of remodel/reno while they're at it. This added to the downstairs neighbors moving out, the southern lightwell and the garage getting some repairs, and an upcoming street drain excavation and fix, I kind of feel bad for our landlady (another super nice person, and we're on her Good List!), but it's gotta be done!

And that's what's going on here in foggy and wet Richmond District these days...

 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.

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!

...has been interesting so far. The Bay Area has been getting hit with multiple weird storm fronts these last few days so there's been hella rain (as they say in the local parlance) and hella wind to go along with it. We're fine here at home, safe on the top floor with a non-leaking roof above us and no sub-basement levels (our garage is on ground level), but we've seen some trees and branches down and a bit of flooding and washouts in the neighborhood. The first hit us late Tuesday night and apparently after I left work at 1:30 there was a mad rush of panic buying that lasted for about six hours, followed by a few days of rather quiet retail work. On a side note, the cats are fine but a tad confused by all the noise going on outside, especially all that pitterpat on the bathroom skylights.

I've been rereading A Division of Souls these last couple of days in preparation for writing MU4 as well as making a few mental notes for the Great Trilogy Remastering as well. I think it still holds up amazingly well, not to mention I'm still a bit blown away at the level of detail I put into it, and I think most of the Remastering will end up being a general fix-up of formatting errors, making a few better word choices and a bit of grammatical spot-cleaning. I'm also having fun revisiting a few of my favorite scenes! I'm really looking forward to both the Remaster and the new project!


Hope everyone's having a great new year so far!

 I've got a two-day weekend here (off today and tomorrow) so I get to a) sleep in despite being woken up by cats, and b) catch up on things without much interruption or lack of time. A's parents will be coming in early this afternoon for lunch which means that I spent most of this morning post-coffee with vacuuming and tidying up (see: cats again).

In the meantime, I'm sneaking this entry in while A finishes cooking before I finish cleaning/bringing down the trash/etc and doing my weekly PC cleaning.

I'll be honest, I've been feeling kind of guilty for not being all that productive with the writing, but I've told myself not to be swayed by that. I'm allowed a few off days, especially at the end of the year! Besides, I'll most likely be catching up on the blogging later tonight after A's parents head out. I just have to remember, it's not about feeling guilty for not writing...it's about preparing myself for the next writing project phase!

...and all sorts of silly nonsense has already taken place. Jules is about six months old and full of energy, extremely curious and even a bit silly at times. The first day and evening was a mix of ...where am I? and yay look at all this stuff I can explore! She hasn't quite figured out that we sleep at night and wakes us up around 2am demanding playtime, so that's something we'll need to train her on. But yeah...looks like she's going to fit in just fine!

Her sister California (I've been calling her Cali but she may have a different name, we shall see) is currently healing at a foster home after being spayed so we're not entirely sure when she'll come, but hopefully within the next week or so! It'll be good to have two of them here so they can entertain each other when need be!

see more Gifs

This is a hell of a lot funnier than it really should be. :p