Drunken Owls and Other Delights

WHOOF. It's Bay Area Summertime, which means it's our turn for a few weeks of extremely high temperatures. Our summers are usually much cooler, with the heatwave coming rather late in the season, and this year is no different. It's been in the 80s and 90s over the last couple of days, which is NOT fun, considering us San Franciscans really don't need AC or fans 90% of the year. I'm just glad that my store is a bit on the cool side! (Speaking of which, I'm scheduled to do dairy upstock the next couple of days, which means I get to hang out in the cooler parts of the store, yay!) The only downside to this is that several customers will also grok to the fact that my store is a perfect place to cool off. It's a double-edged sword: we'll make our budget and then some, but it'll be super busy and I'll be exhausted by the end of it.

My writing sessions have been kind of wonky the last couple of days as well, partly due to the weather making it a bit too warm and stuffy in the apartment, but it is what it is. I'll catch up eventually. I'm also getting close to ready to try out a few things in the Mendaihu Universe on the 750, probably in the next week or so, so I'm looking forward to that.

Oh! And I did the smart thing and scheduled my latest Covid shot the day BEFORE my day off. I always do that, just in case the vaccine kicks my ass. The first one laid me out back then, but all the shots since then have only left me achey for a day or so. A few of my coworkers made the mistake of not scheduling it like that and ended up calling out the next day, which for me was NOT fun at all. [I don't blame them for feeling ill at all, only that those days where I'm doing twice the work because of their being out end up laying me out eventually.]

Hope everyone has a good (and much cooler) week!

As of this past Thursday, I am fully vaccinated! Had shot number two that morning (same place as before) and as expected, by day's end the brain fog and muscle ache started settling in. Sleep that night really sucked, as by then EVERYTHING ached and kept me awake. The next day I had a slight fever and more muscle achiness (even in my fingers!!) so I spent most of that day listening to new music releases and catching up on webcomic reading.

Thankfully I felt 110% better by Saturday morning, because a) I finally could take an Advil now to quell an accompanying headache I'd had the entire time and b) I could sleep in, which I did. Small price to pay, but I'm glad it didn't completely lay me out, and I'm glad I'm now fully vaxxed up! Still wearing my masks, though, because I'm not THAT PERSON (you know who I'm talking about). Today I'm back to normal, and we went for a three mile walk around the neighborhood and got tasty breakfast sammiches as rewards after.

The downside is that I'm about half a week behind on Diwa & Kaffi revision work, so I need to catch up on that ASAP. Maybe later this afternoon after I finish the laundry and vacuum the apartment. Oh, and I also need to call my mom and wish her a Happy Mother's Day too! Heh.


Hope everyone has a good week ahead!

Let's see...what's new to report...

--Managed to get a vaccine appointment for A for the 30th by way of doing the same thing I did for myself: constantly refreshing multiple websites until something came up! Once again it's RiteAid and findashot.org for the win! Some of the sites were super picky, stating you could only be someone from this particular county or zip code, or that you had to log on to some other website first, or what have you, but FindAShot basically kept it easy and clean: it refreshed itself every five minutes for places that offered it like CVS, Walgreens, RiteAid, Safeway, and so on. As soon as I got a bite, I just went for it.

--Multiple important scenes in Diwa & Kaffi have been improved significantly and I'm quite happy about that. I think I may have maybe six or seven Big Moments to fix, but most of the rest of the scenes read just fine. It's the ones where you can tell I rushed it that needed work. I'm *hoping* to get it done by the end of the month, but I'll be happy if I get it done by mid-May. Where am I going to submit it? Good question. Still working on that.

--I'm getting lazy with my stretches and exercises again. I need to spend more than just five minutes doing a few twists and saying "meh, I'll do my crunches tomorrow". I'm doing okay with them, but I could be doing a lot better.

--Building management stopped by the other day to check the layout of the apartment, as apparently they need to get into a few of our closets to set up some kind of fire safety thing. Which means that on a certain day, I'll need to empty it all out so they can get in. Which means that I'll have to figure out where I'm going to put certain boxes and whatnot, even if it's just for half a day. It'll be a pain in the butt, but at the same time I'm trying to look at the plusses, such as dusting and vacuuming the corners (and maybe getting rid of a few shirts I haven't worn in like five years). Thankfully this shouldn't take more than a day so it won't be too big of an issue.

--For the very first time, the bookshelf containing my music books now wholly contains *books I have actually read*. I've managed to get the TBR pile down to a few dozen, which have been moved to the bookshelf next to my side of the bed. And THAT particular TBR pile is only a single shelf, so I should be able to get through them soon enough!

--Next week we'll be going to a restaurant (with A's parents) for the first time in who knows how long. To be honest, it's not really blowing my mind as it would most other people. I think it's partly because I've been the one heading out each week to do the grocery shopping or other outside errands, so it's not as if I've been squirrelled away and not seen another human being aside from A this past year. I do miss heading to places like some of the local diners and a few of our favorite watering holes, though!

....and that's all I can think of for now. Gotta finish doing the laundry and prep my writing blog entry for Monday. Hope everybody has a fine week ahead!

I spent the entire morning on April 1 skittering between some light revision work and constantly refreshing nine different tabs in a frenzied search for COVID vaccine appointment openings, and I'm glad to say that my persistence and stubbornness paid off as I found an opening this Thursday at a RiteAid across the GGB in Mill Valley! I knew I wouldn't get anything done in the interim, and I wasn't really expecting to find any openings right away (I'm now of age where I'm eligible for it), so I was rather surprised and pleased that it worked out. And the good thing is that they'll automatically schedule me for dose number two once the first one is taken care of. I'd said on Twitter later that day that it kind of felt like when big concert tickets went on sale: it was a matter of constantly checking and refreshing and hoping I didn't get disconnected or booted offline. Heh.

In more mundane news, I think I'm about a third of the way through this recent revision. I'd like to be further on but it is what it is. Some of the passages are just fine, but others need a bit more work. Last night I discovered that a super important scene that shifts the entire story felt kind of...flat, unfortunately. I know exactly why: I rushed it. I got too embroiled in the moment of the action that I didn't pay attention to the pace. I'll need to work on that one in the next day or so, but I think after that it should be smoother sailing. I don't think I had any other scenes that wonky...at least I hope not!


Hope everyone has a lovely week!