Drunken Owls and Other Delights

I had Sunday and Monday off, so in my brain, today is my Tuesday. If that makes sense, heh. Which means that I spent the first couple hours of my shift completely forgetting that I had to do a specific bookkeeping process at the Day Job today. Oops! It's not entirely something that MUST be done that day, so I figure I'll do it when I go in tomorrow instead. And speaking of which, apparently we've got a few company bigwigs coming in as well which means that several people are all freaked out whilst I am my usual calm self. Sure, I take those visits seriously and do what needs doing to show that we're Doing It Right, but after all those years at the bank I've just grown accustomed to this sort of thing. Freaking out might be a normal response because you fear that you'll fail the inspection, but when you're already confident in what you do it just seems kind of silly to do that simply because they're upper management. My immediate reporting bosses often get a bit nervous when I do that, and I get that, because they think I'm not taking it seriously. I am, I'm just choosing not to fall prey to the anxiety it causes.

Oh hi there! It's Sunday afternoon, which means it's time for my usual weekend errands of laundry and gardening (today was a community garden clean-up day, in which A and I spent some time picking up trash and also cleaning and reorganizing the sheds so they're less of a hot mess). We got home just in time for us to get our awaited IKEA delivery (a drying rack for A's knitting and a storage caddy for the laundry room).

It was also high time for the PC cleaning. I've been forgetting to run the cleaner software as of late, so said PC was quite happy that I gave it a very thorough once-over this time. It definitely needed it, especially since I've been doing a lot of file reorganization, Plex server updatery, and writing work! I also never turn it off (mainly because of the Plex so others can access my entertainment collection), but it's something that should be done now and again. What I'm delaying, however, is the latest Windows 11 update, because a) I really don't need it, and b) if I did update it, I'd then need to dig in and turn off the stupid AI crap that I definitely do not need nor want. It's not a critical update, so I'm going to avoid it for a long as I can. Or at least until I have the spoons to do the settings adjustments.

In reading news, I have been obsessed with the manga and anime The Fragrant Flower Blooms with Dignity lately. It's firmly placed in Everything Is So Dramatic levels of teenage drama, but I appreciate that because the story precisely about dealing with that kind of stuff as a teen. It's very well written and each character has their own fleshed-out backstory and conflict to deal with. And it's also a really sweet love story as well. I highly recommend it.

In health news, I think I've FINALLY shaken this stupid cold/allergy, though I'm still getting stuffed up every now and again, including today. I'm just not continuously clogged as I was last week, however. Meanwhile, I have been feeling rather tired a lot lately, and whether that's due to Day Job Stress/Overwork or said congestion keeping me up at night, I'm not sure. Maybe both. I don't feel it's a major worry, but at the same time I am keeping an eye on it just in case it becomes one. Besides, I ain't as young and agile as I used to be!

In writing news...I'm just a few chapters shy of being caught up once more with the latest revision of Theadia. Which means I have two things to do staring soon: one, I need to go back and start writing the 'WRITE THIS LATER' gaps, and two, I need to actually, y'know, finish the dang novel itself! I've been working on this one for quite some time now, but I'm really excited about it as well, and that's always a good sign. I'm still roughly on schedule for "sometime next year" as its drop date. I might even look into commissioning a cover for this one! Heh.

And finally in Day Job news...well, let's just say there's still a lot of Hurry Up and Wait in regards to wanting a transfer. Right now there's a lot of Managerial Drama and Metrics Obsession going on which is taking precedence, as well as Holiday Season starting up. I'm a bit annoyed that I've been put on the backburner because of it all, but there's not too much else I can do except occasionally poke at the main players and remind them I'm still there and waiting. I'm also still a little annoyed about the lower hours, but I'll set that particular commentary aside for now.

In the meantime, Sunday also means Sunday dinner, and A is currently making beef stew which has the entire house smelling amazing right now.


Hope everyone has a good week!

On the non-Day-Job front, we spent most of today up in Petaluma, visiting the in-laws. A and I were getting rid of a smallish freezer (about the size of one of those dorm fridges you're not supposed to have in a dorm) that we figured they'd like to have so we made a day of it by visiting to drop it off and then go out to brunch. Said brunch was QUITE tasty at a family restaurant that looked to be quite the destination for the post-church crowd on Sundays. I ended up getting the chorizo hash which was extremely filling and very generous.

But that's not all! I had another reason to be up there, and that was to sell off three of the acoustic guitars I've had for the last several years that have been gathering more dust than play. [These are the guitars that were in front of the window at our old place, and when the cats saw birds out said window they would get all excited and their tails would hit the guitar necks, letting out an amusing twang.] I got about what I'd expected from the exchange, and this is a REALLY good guitar store that would fix them up and sell them off relatively quick. 

All in all it was a very nice and warm day, and the traffic was surprisingly not at all stressful. I was worried I'd be a bit exhausted but so far I'm not doing too bad. [That's another story entirely...I've been feeling exhausted for the last few weeks, most likely due to Work Stuff, to the point where maybe I should see a doctor. It's probably nothing, but it wouldn't hurt considering I'm getting old and not running on all cylinders like I used to.]

Anyhoo...I have a few days off this week, so I'm going to spend those days enjoying myself and getting things done.

It seems calling out on Monday was a good idea, because I was extremely burned out. I stayed at home and didn't do much of anything other than a bit of writing and reading, and by the afternoon I felt a lot better. I also had a good rethink about why I was feeling so exhausted, and I'm pretty sure it was day job related. There's been a few things happening that I was letting get to me in a rather unhealthy way and it just kind of all came to a head over the weekend. Long story short, I've decided I'm going to just stop getting angry about the consistent lack of assistance and the frequent assumption of managerial status from a certain coworker. I'm still annoyed that they've fucked with my pay and I'm hoping it will be rectified very soon, but I'm not going to ragequit or let it eat at me as much.

More to the point, I've decided that I need to reapproach the day job the same way I did during my years at Yankee Candle. The day job is the day job and I should only put in what I feel I want to put into it. My main focus should always be with the writing -- the day job is the day job, the writing is the career, after all. It's time to dial it back a little and rebalance my priorities here.

In other news, I've resurrected the longhand journal and the 750 Words sessions again, and the poetry/song writing might make a reappearance in the near future as well. Why? Well, because I want to, which is a fine enough reason. I'm sort of giving myself a trial run during these last few days of the month with the aim to be more consistent about them in October. We'll see how that pans out...

Good question, considering I've had the last several days off! It feels weird having this many off in a row, but I've been keeping busy-ish. I've gotten a lot of house cleaning done! I still have a few things to do here and there, but the laundry is finished, dusting and swiffering have been done, groceries have been purchased, the garden has been watered, and the cats have been given more than enough attention throughout the day. I've also gotten a significant amount of revision done for this go-round for Theadia, which includes making much more detailed notes in the few "write this later" chapters I need to insert!

Mind you, I have most of next week off as well (this time on purpose, we're taking a few personal days off), so it feels kind of weird to not be at work so much. I'm pretty sure I'll be exhausted again once I'm back to full time hours again.

As you may have seen in the news (or not), Safeway has come to a tentative agreement with my union and there will be no strike! We kind of expected them to blink first, we just didn't expect them to take so dang long! Anyway, I don't know the full details yet of what we'll now be getting but hopefully it will be positive.

Semi-related, it looks like the Day Job has been able to follow through with my request to not assign me Sundays, and I hope it stays that way. Head bookeeper is currently on vacation but we managed to get a third-stringer to fill in so I don't need to worry about it. I am kind of surprised that I'm not filling in for him elsewhere in the week, but I'm not too concerned at the moment. 

In the meantime, I've got a few days off in which I'm hoping to both get a lot done and also chill out. I have no major plans as I've already taken care of most of our weekend errands -- wash is running, home is vacuumed (and cats temporarily traumatized by it), things put away and other things cleaned. It's been extremely damp and misty these last several days so we're not too worried about our garden plot drying out, though we might head over there at some point later in the week.

I'll also be honest, I've been feeling my age the last couple of weeks, partly because of the stress of moving and partly the weird work schedule (and also doing the job of at least two people due to budget constraints), so I'm thinking it's high time I start doing something about that. I was doing really good for a while doing my stretches and whatnot, but that fell by the wayside and now my joints are aching. Perhaps it's also time to go see the doc for a checkup just to make sure I'm not actually falling apart, but I'd like to think that right now I'm just at the 'wear and tear' part of my life and just need to be better at taking care of it, heh.

Lately I've been feeling, well...not distracted, but not necessarily overwhelmed either. Despite all the political fuckery going on (and boy howdy do I have thoughts on that), I've been trying my best to approach all that in a different way. It certainly does bother me, and not a day goes by when I don't mutter some version of goddamn I really fucking hate conservatives right now under my breath, but I'm trying to get out of a very longstanding and extremely unhealthy habit of emotionally reacting to it with undirected dread and anxiety. I'm accepting that it's there and it's happening, I'm just trying not to spiral like I used to.

But it's not really all that, either. Part of it might be that I'm still getting used to living in our New Digs and getting used to not being at the old place anymore, but I think most of it lately has been on the creative end of things.

It's not that I don't want to work on this Trilogy Remaster -- I've been wanting to do it for a good couple of years, to be honest -- but more that I feel like I haven't been completely honest with my writing career these last few years. Like I could -- like I should be dedicating more time and energy to it than I have. Granted, I'm getting older and I can't really stay up until 2am doing five hour marathon sessions like I used to, especially since I have early morning Day Job hours. But I just feel like it's been ages since I've taken it as seriously as I used to. Phoning it in sometimes, doing the bare minimum, throwing my books out there with zero follow-up.

So what's the plan, then?

That's a good question indeed. The plan is something I think I'll need to work on over the next few weeks or so.

 I finally have a Sunday off after multiple weeks of working through the weekend! Yay! I was looking forward to spending a bit of time with A walking through the park, getting some coffee at one of our favorite places, then heading over to the farmer's market. Sure, doing a bit of shopping for fruit might be uneventful, but it's always fun to head to the top of Clement Street and work through the stalls, check out all the tasty foods and try out the free samples. Plus, whenever we do go, we always stop for brunch somewhere. Today was at Cafe Bunn Mi for, yes, banh mi's. In this case, crispy duck! So filling that our plans for dinner are now essentially salad, bread and cheese!

I've been talking with my boss about marking me as permanently unavailable on Sundays recently. Right now they've got me listed as available on opens and midshifts and they manually try to avoid putting me on Sundays, but that isn't always the case. I wanted to clear it with the head bookkeeper as when I do work on Sundays, it's most often because he's taking the day off as well. (His schedule is Sunday to Thursday, and I do the bookkeeping on Fridays and Saturdays.) He's fine with it, so at this point it's a matter of getting a third-string person that we can trust and not have to worry about, just for those occasional days where we need someone else to fill in. He's brought up a few names, so we'll see how that pans out.

Point being, I'd really like to make it permanent that I have Sundays free so A and I can plan to do things without having to wait for me to see the schedule on that Friday morning before the weekend. I've been there since 2022 and even the boss says I've more than earned it. Also, this might also mean that my second day off will most likely be midweek, and I certainly enjoy breaking up the work week like that. It gives me a break so I'm not exhausted by week's end!

I'm trying to get into a positive habit of getting off my duff when I'm not working. Most of the time it's me heading out to do some grocery shopping or some such, but I'm thinking I should also add Errand Walking as well. We're only three long blocks from Geary (and we live at the corner of a street that's got an easy incline between here and there), and we're close enough to many places we frequent down that way. So I'm thinking either Monday or Tuesday I'll head down there to buy some ice cream and get an updated passport photo taken. And in the process I'll get my exercise!

Not that I'm not getting a workout at the Day Job, far from it. I must have done at least five miles' worth of steps today (per my Fit app, at least) because I processed FAR too many Home Shopping orders before 11am which had me walking all over the dang store. This is partly why I drive to work now, even though it's only just shy of two miles away now -- while it's an easy gridded-street walk, it's the hills in between that would be too exhausting to handle. And given my schedule of 6am opens, the bus doesn't always run on a frequent schedule that early in the morning. And this has often been why I end up not doing much of anything physical on my days off.

I'd like to change that, however. I don't need to do all the walking all over creation, mind you. Maybe head over to water the garden (now only two blocks away!), or head to the corner store or the coffee shop. Just so I keep from getting too lazy!

Despite being 98% settled in at this point, we still have a few outstanding things to do here at the new digs...

--Bring up the remaining boxes of books. I think I have maybe about five or six boxes in storage downstairs that need bringing up when I have time (and do not have a bum foot due to previous dumbassery). One of the tall bookshelves was missing a few pegs that got lost in the move and we put replacements in. The midsize bookshelf next to my side of the bed also has two empty shelves for my TBR/TBR-then-donate pile.
--Bring up the one box of musical box sets and find a good place for them. I'd rather they be up here, though where is a good question... My boxes of CDs and other music-related things will stay downstairs, though. I don't mind those hanging out and they're well contained.
--Bring down the two area rugs, and contemplate keeping or tossing. We've decided not to use them and they're rather run down due to wear and cat claw-sharpening and are just taking up floor space in the living room.
--Break down more of the boxes that can be recycled. Our bin isn't nearly as big as the ones our old place had so there's only so much I can put in there alongside our usual week's recycling. Same with the bags of trash. We rarely have a lot of compost so there's no worries there.
--Speaking of boxes, I should put up a post for Free Moving Boxes on FB Marketplace. I'm sure someone will want them! Also should put up the floor lamp, small table (the one we had in the kitchen at the old place) and its two wooden chairs. At this point I'll give them away cheap, as we don't need them now.

Still, this 2% is all stuff I can do over the course of several weeks with no cutoff time, so I'm not worried...