Drunken Owls and Other Delights

Stuff going on:
-- The one midshift for the week has been completed and I have today off, which means that the next three days will be opens. One 8:30am start and two store opens (4am on Friday, and 5:30am on Saturday in which I'm opening my old shop). 
-- Said day off includes laundry and giving the cats more attention than necessary.
-- Finally submitted the request to get reimbursed for the dental stuff, and got an email today saying it was authorized. Yay! This makes further dental work worth the aggravation and pain. I've got another appointment on the 28th to get that one temp crown replaced with a permanent one. We'll see where it goes from there.
-- Making a concerted effort to read more of the physical books gathering dust near my bed. Current reading: Bill Janovitz's Let the Stories Be Told, about the band The Cars.

Stuff done:
-- The garage storage room has been slightly reorganized, as it seems most of it was in pretty good shape to begin with. I merely needed to move a few things such as: the old side table we aren't using towards the door (for Storage of Small Things); the holiday and wrapping stuff in one area, all artwork that isn't currently on walls safely in a box; various boxes of collectibles, tchotchkes and desk cluttering toys placed in one central office box; the remaining boxes of books stacked all together for future sorting. Empty boxes have been broken down and placed in the Empty Box Box elsewhere in the garage. The floor is now a little easier to navigate.
-- Watered the garden and front plots the other day as we've had a warm spell in the city the last few days. Might need to do it again in the next day or so.
-- I finally finished up a few new mixtapes! Woohoo! And I've even got a few more going! I miss making them, as I didn't have the spoons to do so last year. I haven't decided on any titles (series or stand-alone) just yet, as I want them to be just different enough from their forebears.

Stuff in the future:
-- I'll have to find time to go through those last remaining boxes of books to see if I want to save any. I probably don't need them, but it's worth looking through.
-- Restart the Great Longhand Writing Scan Project again. Probably in a few weeks. I think the best idea is to bring up a little at a time instead of a big honking storage bin; that is, go project by project. Finish scanning The Phoenix Effect and start in on the poetry composition books.
-- There's a good chance I might pick up the Walk in Silence (book) project again, in tandem with the more fictional The Decline and Fall of Western Massachusetts. One of the mixtapes I've made recently was for the fiction book, which carries on from its 2024 first volume with several songs from the 1984-1989 era.
-- Semi-related: I've been toying with the idea of working on the latter by waking up the 750 Words site again. No solid plans on that yet, though.

Thankfully this week at the day job has been busy yet not draining. It's that sweet spot where there's a constant flow of customers but not a ridiculously long line, so time goes by quickly yet the stress levels are low. As I keep saying: I love that this store is well-staffed. I still feel a bit like The New Person but I'm certainly getting along with my new coworkers, that's for sure. Definitely a different bunch but they're definitely more willing to step up instead of slack off. A lot less drama as well, I notice, and that's always a plus.

I am also happy that I have today and tomorrow off, as I've been wanting to relax for the last couple of days due to constantly waking up at night due to congestion. Whether it's on my own or A prodding me because I'm snoring, I keep waking up every two hours or so and it's making me feel sleepy for the rest of the day. It's definitely allergies, so I just need to remember to take some meds before bed next time. That, and I have only two more days to work this week (my stupid early Friday-Saturday shifts), then I'm on a week's vacation! Yay! I was smart and scheduled next week off before I transferred to the other store, so it's not as if they could say no at this time. It did cause a minor kink in scheduling plans for the head bookkeeper (who is also out next week), but they've already found someone to fill in, so we should be good. Like I said -- I love that these are people who take the initiative instead of doing the blank stare of bogglement.

Also on the docket: I really need to eat better at work. More to the point, I need to stop buying the cake slices and the Twix bars and other indulgent stuff and start thinking about what I should have if I'm looking for a breaktime snack or a lunch dessert. I mean, we have a huge produce section and a well-stocked dairy wall so perhaps having a yogurt or an orange instead might be a good idea? Especially since I'll be getting my teeth fixed soon enough. Time to be a bit more wary about my level of moderation, yeah?

Writing? Well, it's...going. Slowly, but it's going. I need to do more with the planning out of where I need to go with it, otherwise I'm just going to run out of steam just like I did with The Balance of Light, and I'd rather not let this novel sit for another couple of years. Perhaps that's something I can work on over the vacation. And in other plans, I've tossed one of my many empty notebooks into my satchel for possible future use at work -- again, get myself into the habit of NOT scrolling or goofing off online. I shall conquer this, as Darcy said.

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!