Drunken Owls and Other Delights

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!

Woo, I had today off! I've had to work Sundays for the last couple of weeks due to people being out and while I'm not actually doing extra hours, it is kind of screwing with my personal time. Thankfully that person is now back from their vacation and things are sort of back to normal. [Unfortunately a different coworker seems to have fractured their ankle via an episode of inebriation, so my hours are still a tiny bit wonky. Not as frustrating, but just a bit off.]

Meanwhile, the new PC is up and running at top speed, which means I really should get back to my writing work. I've been very bad at following through lately, but now there's no real reason not to jump back in. I'm still up in the air:
--Do I finish off and revise the Queen Ophelia project? It's about 95% done but needs a lot of work.
--Do I finish off and revise Theadia? It too is about 95% done and also needs a lot of work.
--Do I outline and start the sequel to In My Blue World? It's my best seller and I'm sure readers will enjoy another episode of Meeks Sisters Adventures.
--Do I outline and start the romcom idea I've had in my head for the last year or so? I have a rough outline but it needs a lot of work, plus I need to work at getting my brain back into that style.
All this is while I'll be working on MU4 project, which I know will be a long-term one that may not see the light of day until sometime next year. I'm taking my time on that one.
What I'm doing now is reading what I have of all of them so far, to see what resonates with me the most. We shall see soon enough.

In the meantime, we've just gotten back from a five-mile walk around the neighborhood and I now have to do the laundry, so I'm going to relax a bit before I decide on anything!

 After three straight days of weird work hours (short afternoon shift followed by midshift to 8pm followed by morning open till 1), I'm glad to have tomorrow off to relax a little bit before I do my Friday-Saturday early opens. Other than doing the grocery shopping, I don't have too much else planned. I'd like to spend a good couple of hours on MU4 as I have a few ideas I want to try out, but that's about it.

Meanwhile, I had to waste an hour or so this afternoon due to a Windows update that somehow made Chrome inoperable. Apparently it has to do with an add-on that's causing it to crash when Malwarebytes is running? Either way, I reversed the update and it's working just fine. I figure I can wait on the updates a bit until they have a patch put in. We shall see.

Other than that, it's been a busy but productive week, so I can't complain. :)

 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.

 The PC continues to behave for the most part, with very few things that still need ironing out. I need to adjust the settings on the Plex server to ensure that it doesn't cause our internet to crash (which it did a couple of times, though I'm not entirely sure why), but other than that I haven't had any problems.

Which means I'm back to writing again! Yay! I'm still only squeezing maybe a couple hundred words a day which is a bit frustrating, but it's something I can work on. I know part of it has been due to squeezing said writing into a short block of time at the start or end of the day, and I can better adjust it going forward. I think what I need is a good day or afternoon off where I can get a good three-hour session in, and that should inspire me to give it all a closer focus.

Meanwhile, if you're not connected to the Discord me and my (mostly) east coast friends have, the Big News is that our downstairs neighbor has FINALLY moved out! She was definitely a piece of work. Not exactly a hateful or spiteful person, just someone who had no concept of Other People Also Live In This Building. Classics such as a line of terrible boyfriends, occasional loud partying until 1am, having a party on the roof when no one's supposed to be up there, yelling at her dog whenever it barked, and so on. I'm pretty sure she hated A and I for calling her out on her bullshit every now and again (and rightfully so: who the fuck does drunken karaoke at 11pm on a weeknight in an apartment building??), which made it all that much funnier that we are definitely the favorites of our landlady. Heh.

Anyway! Today's my day off before I start another wave of weird schedules at the Day Job. Our head bookkeeper is going on a two-week vacation which means I'll be opening at 5:30am five days a week during that time (Wednesday through Sunday). This unfortunately means waking up at 4:15 so I can shower and have breakfast, but on the plus side it means I'm out by early afternoon, just like the YC days. This will definitely give me writing time!

On that note...going to make the most of today by prepping the blogs, hitting the 750Words and working on MU4!

 Thankfully my cough and congestion lasted a mere couple of days and I was back to work on Friday. Speaking of which, my hours have been cut back a few per week and I'm only doing about 30 - 32 rather than the 35-38, and I have it on good authority that it's basically just that time of the year when it quiets down a little bit. There aren't any major holidays coming up until Easter and Memorial Day that would affect a grocery store. Which is fine with me as I'm still getting over thirty hours, they're glad to have me there, and our store is actually one of the better ones in terms of sales! 

Also in the day job universe, glass cases have now been installed on sections of two aisles. One is the biggest improvement: the hard liquor that wasn't already locked up. [The usual cast of idiots would always hit our vodka, whiskey and tequila but rarely anything else.] The other, as you will probably have already guessed, is the toiletries such as meds, detergents and cleaners. It's kind of sad that so many stores have had to do this, even despite getting security as we have, but we're doing out best to make the wait as minimal as possible. We still get so many customers coming in saying how much they love our store, and I've even gotten personal thanks from a few who thought we did an ace job helping them.

Meanwhile...I'm still working on the social media detox. It's gotten to the point on the phone where I uninstalled one of the web browsers and removed one from the screen. I do find that the Out of Sight Out of Mind Method of avoiding distraction works pretty well for me, so let's see if this works. It's another thing entirely here in Spare Oom, but I'll figure out something. There's also the issue of Avoidance here at the PC -- I know I need to work on the MU4 project, like, NOW, but hey maybe I should blog first or wait time for dinner hmm I should probably clear out my emails oh damn it all it's 8pm already too late to start anything.

Time to remind myself: just shut the f*** up and DO it already!


Anyhoo...hope everyone has a good week ahead!

 I really need to get to new words again...but first I need to get past this MU4 chapter retooling! After a few days of contemplation, I've revised AGAIN by reverting to the first couple of chapters from Version 3 from a year or so ago and using that as a jumping-off point for everything else. Long story short, that version provides a lot more tension and also sets the long-game arc.

ANYWAY! I've got a weird work schedule today and won't get any further writing done today, so.

Ah, that's better. Spent most of January focusing most all of my creative juices on starting up MU4 and maintaining a consistent and balanced schedule for it, and while the Words So Far are in dire need of revision, I am NOT going to hyperfocus on them or even fix them just yet. The whole point of this month-long exercise was merely to get in the right headspace for this project. By this I mean that I wanted to re-immerse myself into this created universe for the right reasons -- not merely because It Might Be Fun or Let's Relive the Past but because I want to be here, back in Bridgetown, telling more stories about psychic energies and supernatural connections and maybe some metaphorical stuff as well.

I also mean that I wanted to create a healthy balance between creative time and IRL time. Over the last couple of years I've noticed that sometimes I'd hyperfocus on whatever project I'm working on to the detriment of everything else going on and it wasn't all that healthy. I needed to realign a lot of that before I could move forward. I spent most of January focusing on writing MU4 creatively, but also reconnecting with the world outside (in a healthy way, of course). There are still a few bumps in the road, but I'm going in the right direction!

...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!

 Tomorrow will be seven days in a row that I'm opening the shop at 6am, six of which I had to actually be there at 5:30, and oh yeah also there's a heating unit problem there so the store has been a brisk 45 degrees the entire time, so yeah I am a bit loopy and overtired right now, why do you ask? 

Anyhoo -- things are going as normal for the last couple weeks of the year. I'm taking it easy and not pushing myself with the writing other than with the blogs. I am, of course, thinking about how I'm going to approach the new year with the various projects I have in mind. If you've been reading my latest entries at Welcome to Bridgetown, then you'll have heard that my main project for 2023 will be the fourth Mendaihu Universe book, along with doing some 'remastering' of the original trilogy (more on that at a later time). I'm really looking forward to returning to this particular world again!

Other than that...not much to report other than that I REALLY need sleep right now...