Drunken Owls and Other Delights

Well, it's about time we got our winter rain! We'd normally be getting these downpours around this time of year, but it's been dry and cold the last several weeks instead. Per the forecast it's supposed to be like this for the next several days. [Which is good, because we've been bad and haven't visited the garden lately.] The downside being that all this humidity is probably going to give me a migraine. Bleh! This rain of course will also bring out all the terrible drivers, as I've already witnessed on my brief trip to the Ace to buy a few things this morning...

Meanwhile, the new direction I came up with for a secondary character in Theadia seems to have been a really good idea, as I'm having a much easier time writing the scenes now. I'm always fascinated when I manage to work out a troublesome issue with a story with a surprisingly easy answer! Just goes to show that I should continue to trust my writer instincts instead of trying to force something that may or may not work. I just need to keep working at it!

Me? Bored? Well, more like I had all this extra me-time to work with and I seem to have squandered it by enjoying some silly and pointless stuff, and now I'm feeling guilty about it. Well, no, maybe not guilty...more like I feel like I used to when I did the exact same thing during my school years and shuffled all the important homework and term papers off to the last minute, and now I'm feeling like I wasted all that time. Heh. Still, I have to remind myself that it's okay to slow down and just enjoy those silly and pointless things now and again.

As much as I've been sort-of-guiltily enjoying these extra days off, I'm starting to feel a bit restless again. Which I suppose is a good thing, because I sometimes need a push to get me going again, otherwise I get sedentary and lazy. Even the writing falls by the wayside, which is always troublesome because with that usually comes the Don't Wannas. And I hate the Don't Wannas.

Anyhoo -- I'm back to the Day job for the next few days (plus I miraculously have a full week next week, as I'm subbing for someone who's going on vacation), so I'd better get off my butt and get moving again!

The schedule for the Day Job continues to be all kinds of wonky with cut hours at the worst possible time of the year, so perhaps I'll need to speak with the boss again about getting more of them somehow, or alternately being a bit more active about helping me get a store transfer. I'm really not sure what level of management has made this decision or if it's due to the tariffs of The Fuckwit (yes, I still refer to him as that), but I can tell you that it's going to bite us in the ass if we hit peak Christmas volume with the slimmest of teams. [This is exactly what happened two years in a row back when I worked at Yankee, so yeah, I speak from experience.]

I'm not entirely thrilled either that I'm doing a weird shift today (another 12:30 - 9pm) but am a bit more thankful that it's all mornings next week. Still... going from 40 hours a week to 24-28 a week within the span of a few months is not a good sign. And it's not just me, I know other coworkers who are getting their hours cut...but I'm also seeing newer hires getting more hours as well, so I'm also inclined to think that the secondary problem is closer to home and not being given the proper attention. And to be honest, I'm really getting tired of being the only one to bring it up with the boss all the time.

ANYWAY. November is coming up fast and I'm trying to do my best at raising the bar with my creative endeavors. It's been a few months since our Big Move, and I'm itching to get back to my blogging, journaling and writing schedule, not to mention actively looking (no really, I mean it this time) into other outlets I'm interested in and could possibly expand on. Instead of deciding this deep into the final weeks of December, I figure this time out I'll prep myself a few months ahead of time, that way when the new year kicks in, I'll be up and ready to go.

Time will tell...

I have today off so this morning I headed over to Kaiser and got my combo flu and Covid shots. I figured I'd get it out of the way early this year so I don't need to worry about it! I've always had a bit of a bad habit of putting things off (not a terrible habit, just one that I've used more often than I'd like and mostly out of laziness and/or distraction), so lately I've been making sure I'm a bit more aware of it. 

Speaking of fixing habits, I'm still trying to get myself back into the daily writing thing -- I mean, other than working on my current revision projects. I really should go back to the journaling, at least. Doing that often got me into the mindset for writing each day, not to mention it being a bit of therapy to get my thoughts in order and lighten the mental or emotional burden.

Still, the only downside to wanting to do that is the near-inability to do that during work hours. I just do not have enough downtime, unless I take major steps to work on such things outside of the store. I mean, I'd really like to return to sketching out ideas during quiet moments on scratch paper, but there's more to it than just that -- I've also got to unf*ck my other terrible habit of Overthinking My Notes. I don't even remember where or when that started (I'm thinking it was at some point around the end of my time at the bank). And that's been a hard one to break.

Maybe what I need is a main focus. Decide on one specific project to work on and filter all my creative thoughts while I'm at work towards that one point.

Something to think about, anyway.

It's...Thursday? Yes, it's Thursday. Had to work on Sunday so my internal clock is once again all wonky. Another day off so I'm using it to catch up and relax a bit. I had a busy day yesterday at the Day Job which entailed cleaning up, sorting and rearranging the dairy walk-in cooler, and while I didn't get nearly as many steps as I usually do when I'm on the floor, I did get a lot of heavy lifting. Those crates of milk are heavy!!

But yeah, that cooler looks a LOT better now, especially since the store is doing an inventory this week. That was one of my reasons for doing the clean-up -- I'd originally planned to put stuff out on the floor and do some pre-inventory inventory, but quickly found the numbers were ALL out of whack, primarily due to certain products being put away in multiple places and without rhyme or reason, and thus miscounted. [We also have holiday stuff in there that hasn't gone out yet that needed to be gathered into one single place.] At the end of my shift I let a few of the others who go in there know how I set it up and to PLEASE keep it somewhat orderly, so hopefully it'll remain that way!

So...what else am I going to do today? Good question. I don't have much planned other than catching up on writing and maybe stopping at the garden to water what few plants we have left! [Not to fear, just that most of the plants we have there have finished for the season so we're just letting the rest sit there for a bit until we redo the gopher wire, resoil the plot and and put in some winter grass to feed said soil a bit.]

TIL: My day job assignment yesterday was to be out on the floor restocking dairy and frozen, which can be enjoyable if a bit finger-numbing when you're handling refrigerated things all day long. And apparently the cooler was being temporarily used yesterday afternoon as a place to store the Flipping Ginormous Recall of Boars Head meats until it was sorted and tossed (the tl;dr is that the company found traces of listeria in one of their liverwurst samples and they chose to do the right thing and recall EVERYTHING between certain dates). Side note: the pulled stuff was all tightly wrapped and unopened so there was no crosss-contamination. So yeah, that was fun to work around!

In other less exciting news, today's my one Front End Manager shift this week and considering it's Wednesday, I'm hoping it'll be uneventful. And I get to do more restock work tomorrow, then my Friday-Saturday bookkeeping assignment, so yay for avoiding the registers for the most part this week! Heh.

Other than that, I seem to be avoiding writing work again, so that needs to be adjusted once more...

It's the last Wednesday of the year already?  Dang!  Yeah, the year did go by ridiculously quick, and there were a hell of a lot of personal ups and downs, but it was also ridiculously productive and eye-opening.  Plus it was a hell of a fine year for music!  Heh.

I'll have one last Update for 2018 either on the weekend or on Monday, depending on how busy I happen to be.  (Which, given the Day Job lately, would surprisingly be "not very busy at all, really".  Not that I'm complaining.)  I've updated the other two blogs for the next few days, and then I'll give all three of them a final update on or around the 31st.  I know I've been talking a lot about Big Ideas, Changes, Hiatuses, and whatnot, so I promise these will be the last entries in which I'll talk about them.  Just something I've been looking forward to for the last few months.


Hope everyone had a fine Christmas, and has a lovely and warm New Year!

After three or four days of allergy irritation, I'm quite happy to say that i'm no longer stuffed up and can breathe easily again!  Woo!  I even celebrated by heading to the gym this afternoon!  Now I just need to get back into my daily exercises, which I've been avoiding for the same exact reasons...

Tomorrow I'll be walking down the other end of Clement Street for a local annual holiday shopping celebration called ClemenTime.  It's a stretch of three or four blocks where the local shops will have things on sale, free refreshments, and other fun things.  I usually head down there each year to hang out at Green Apple Books for a few hours and peruse while enjoying the free beer.  And yes, there is a very good chance I won't be coming home emptyhanded, considering.  Heh.

In writing news, I've stumbled across another chapter of In My Blue World that needed a complete rewrite.  Short version is that the original had a subplot that I really didn't like and went nowhere.  The problem was that the previous chapter set up a plot point that's kind of important that I DO need to keep, so I had to figure out how to thread something in that a) made sense, b) wasn't filler, and c) could also be used/referenced later on.  It's taken me a few days to figure it out, but I figured it out!  Woo, go me!  Now hopefully I'll be back to regular speed once this chapter is done!

Meanwhile, A is having a fun time in London and tweeting lots of fun pictures and making me jealous.  She'll be heading back on Saturday, though.  In the meantime, I've tried to be good, eat halfway decently, and not stay up too late.


Hope everyone else has a great rest of the week!

Rain, blessed rain!  It's been dry and stale here for far too long.  While it's probably hindering some progress of the post-fire triage and cleanup, it's clearing the air here in the Bay Area and we're able to breathe again without feeling like we're inhaling chalk dust.  It also means that there's a bit of wind as well, pushing the smoke away.  This morning before the downpours started I was able to see the Marin Headlands from Spare Oom's window for tie first time in weeks.  Woo!

Meanwhile, Thanksgiving is nearly here.  We'll be driving up to Petaluma to have dinner with A's family this time.  Alas, I still have to work on Friday but I'm expecting it to be relatively dead.  I'm kind of hoping it is so I can finally get caught up and clear up the inboxes.  That also means I should probably start with the Christmas shopping as well, yes?  I'll have to start prodding the family and asking what they'd like.  I'm trying to be better at ordering things early on instead of last minute!  

Which of course means coming to terms with the fact that it's already coming close to the end of the year already.  I'm not even going to say 'what the hell happened' this year, because a LOT happened.  Some stressful things, some annoying things, but also some fascinating and wonderful things.  I could dwell on the fact that A was laid off from her job, but it also let her truly relax for the first time in a few decades (and let her do a lot of things she'd been putting off for too long), and made me do a serious rethink of my own career and life.  We're both still in a good place right now, so it all evens out.  I'd say despite the numerous ups and downs, I've had a pretty good 2018.


Hope everyone has a good relaxing weekend!  Don't eat too much! :)

Here we are at the end of the month already!  Man, October just FLEW by.  Mostly due to my ass being handed to me at the Day Job with the sheer amount of volume.  I'm amazed I was able to get anything else done!  I'm hoping it quiets down a bit more, because I have Other Things to Do and I hate it when Day Job sucks the life out of me like a psychic vampire.  (I say this from experience in my YC days around this time of year, when I'd be so overworked I'd get sick.)  Speaking of job things, I've been updating my LinkedIn profile the last few days and doing some serious job searching and applying as well.  I'm trying to avoid the mindset of making this move out of desperation, and think of it more as a fresh start as well as some much-needed clarity.

Clarity is a Very Good Thing, I've found lately.  Not sure if it's got to do with the exercising or coming to terms with/accepting personal things or finally exorcising the ghouls of self-doubt and pessimism.  Could be a bunch of things, really.  I'm just running with it right now, ain't complaining.  I'll have a few up and down days as normal, of course.  But I'm trying to balance it all out by remaining upbeat.


Hope everyone has a fun Halloween! :)