Drunken Owls and Other Delights

Ah yes. We're at the back end of this cold where I'm feeling marginally better, but my lips are chapped, my sinuses are still blocked, and I just want this to be OVER. I'm also annoyed that this came to me just a few days after I'd pulled my neck muscles somehow and had to deal with the pain for almost a week. Basically some part of me has been feeling like sh*t since late January. I'm not sure if I caught this from being in an enclosed courtroom for jury duty (even though I wore my mask 95% of the time), or one of my managers who also had a cold recently. BLEH! 

But yes, I am slowly on the mend. I've been taking Airborne and Sudafed and Advil when needed and attempting to keep rested, though waking up every hour on the hour last night because my throat was bone dry from breathing through my mouth wasn't helping. Hopefully I'll get some more rest tonight. I also have tomorrow off to take it easy!

So what else have I been up to lately? Well, I've started up on the 'remaster' of A Division of Souls and it's coming along quite nicely. Mostly just some cosmetic fixes and further editing, but nothing major to work on. At least not yet, anyway! I don't believe I need to do any, but I'm preparing myself just in case. I've got two chapters down so far, which isn't bad for a week and a half's worth of work. That means I should be quite on schedule for the September rerelease.





Hope everyone has as good week ahead!

...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...?

Today was garden clean-up party day, so A and I headed over and spent a couple of hours weeding, cleaning, replanting, laying down woodchips, and exhausting ourselves. We were also able to get a new board nailed to the side of our shared bed, as one of them was quite rotten and already broken into many pieces. We are now back home and chilling and not doing much of anything else. At this point I have just enough energy to do the laundry and give the kitties occasional attention!

Meanwhile, I have jury duty stand-by all week this week, so I'll need to call in at the end of the day to see if I need to go in. If I were going to the civil court near City Hall I wouldn't mind as much, but this is the criminal court over in SoMa that's a pain in the butt to get to and not easy to find parking for. [Not to mention the building and the neighborhood is kind of dumpy.] We shall see...

Writing: am I actually doing some? Yes! I'm forcing myself back into a daily session again: no major word count to beat or a specific length of time, I just need to get SOMETHING done on a daily basis again. Once I'm back into that groove again, everything else should go back to normal. On Friday morning I somehow managed to FINALLY figure out how to end Theadia in a way I'd be satisfied with, so that should give me a much clearer idea of where to go once I'm caught up with this particular revision. Now if I can maintain this excitement for when I start MU4...

OH! I forgot to add the neat recent thing about the day job! I'd mentioned in my previous entry that I'd spent the entire Wednesday shift cleaning and rearranging the dairy walk-in cooler...so on Saturday, one of the managers walked up to me and thanked me again for doing such a great job as it made the inventory session that much easier...and then followed up by saying "...I've been talking with (Head Boss) about assigning you dairy more often because whenever you do it, things get done." I'm quite tickled about that, to be honest! I really appreciate that this was an honest "thanks for a great job, let's follow up on this" and not a scripted "thank you for all you do, EnterEmployeeNameHere!" Definitely a difference from the Former Day Job in a lot of ways!