Drunken Owls and Other Delights

See, now this was the week where I actually planned to take multiple days off so A and I could frolic and relax for a few days before Q4 nonsense kicks in. [Read: we weren't planning on going on any vacation trips this year, so instead we take various days off throughout the year like this. One, the current political nonsense going on, and two, cats.] We do have a few destinations in mind, including an olive farm up in Petaluma and some shopping down the peninsula. Other than that, I had very little on the docket other than sleeping in a bit later than usual and enjoying the company of Juli and Cali! :)

Speaking of days off, I'm still getting used to not having to worry about wondering if I'll be working on Sundays or not, and not knowing until the last minute. It's a weight off my mind, and there's a much better chance of us deciding to visit a neighborhood we haven't visited in ages, or heading up to A's parents' house, or just a fun day trip somewhere. I don't feel the least bit guilty about having won that particular battle at work, though it is wild that I'm having to adjust my head around it still.

Not much going on this weekend other than we did our occasional Costco run today to pick up household needs, and to head over to the garden to plant the several things we bought at Sloat Gardens the other day. I've been trying to keep up with my new habit of truly having a day off where I don't have to pile it up with several events, errands or whatever. Just do what needs doing and relax.

The storm, by the way, is that school is starting back up this coming week. As I've said before, our local high school is just a few short blocks away from my store, and over the last several years, five days a week and often twice a day, we'll get hit with thirty to forty noisy teenagers coming in to buy chicken tenders and sour gummies. It only lasts for about twenty minutes, but it's the most stressful part of the day, especially when we happen to be short-staffed. Each year I keep hoping that the next class will be a bit less obnoxious (and stop stealing) (and stop standing in the middle of the aisles in complete obliviousness), but we shall see. For a very brief time the school's principal kept them from coming over by citing the rule that they're not supposed to cross the major boulevard to get here. [They can always walk a few blocks in a different direction to a different shopping area to buy food.]

Alas, I'm not looking forward to it, but I'm going to try to keep an even calm about it.

Even though my weekends are pretty much only a day and a half of free time (I open Saturday mornings and get out at 2pm), I'm happy with the fact that I still manage to get a lot done in that time! And I even got to sleep in this morning!

Yesterday we headed over to the Petco to buy a new cat tree as the old one is getting quite worn out and flimsy (verdict: Jules is quite happy with it, but Cali is yet to give it much attention). This one has a slightly different footprint so we were able to slide it up against the window, giving me a lot more room behind my desk chair and the ability to access my filing cabinet. And as for today, we did a very-much-needed trip to the grocery store (not mine, but an affiliate) to restock. The great thing is that we're both under the same corporate umbrella so my hard-earned rewards points and associate discounts work there as well, and we ended up saving a ridiculous amount of money. Sweet!

And now it's time for me to get cracking on the writing session. I'm about twenty pages from finishing off this cycle of 'remaster' revisioning of A Division of Souls, so I'm well ahead of schedule for getting this one ready for release. Go me!

The rest of my week isn't so bad...there's only one midshift this week and the rest are opens, and I have Thursday off in which to relax a bit before A and I go on a little midmorning roadtrip down the peninsula to a lovely garden park!

Ouch! I was a dumbass earlier today at our community garden while trying to back up with a wheelbarrow full of pulled greenery and completely forgot there was a wooden stump seat right behind me. Yep, I went ass over teakettle and landed on my back, but not before hooking my foot around the wheelbarrow's handle and rolling it. I don't think anything's broken as I can walk on it and put a bit of weight on it, it just feels very sore right now and I'm trying to stay off it as much as I can. I though I'd heard a snap when it happened, but I'm thinking (and hoping) that was just me falling onto the wood chips and not any actual bones fracturing! Yeesh! Well, we'll see in a day or so...

Other than that, we spent a good couple of hours pulling out the old fava bean stalks after a final and very fruitful yield, cut back a few things and pulled whatever else had gone to seed. We'd stopped at the garden center at the southwestern end of town to try out our latest summer crop of things -- lettuces, beans, squash, tomatoes and flowers -- and we're hoping that we won't get hit with another wave of feasting gophers this time...! We'd originally planned on redoing the wiring underneath the plot, but due to other Real Life Things going on, we figure we'll try to do that at a later time when we have more money and patience!

In other news, I've been doing yet another reread of Theadia and I am not the least bit surprised that this story is a bit close to home right now in the current climate. Mind you, it was supposed to do that (I'd started writing it during the Fuckwit's last administration), so I'd like to think that's a good sign then. I'm hoping to get back to it very soon after I finally finish off the remastering of A Division of Souls, which I'm hoping will be within a few months or so!

A couple of weeks ago I'd decided I needed a three-day weekend as desperately needed the break. As mentioned before, I'd been feeling overworked but was also fighting back a cold and/or a sore throat, not to mention said cold constantly waking me up in the middle of the night. I put in the request and the weekend is FINALLY here!

This is something else I really appreciate about my current employer, by the way. At the bank I would have had to call in sick/play hooky, or if I put in the request I'd have had to jump through a few hoops with management. Sure, I have a few coworkers who gleefully exploit this so they can slack off, but for the most part the teams make do and power through the best they can. And besides, they're trying to make budget right now and I basically told them that they can give my hours to anyone who wants them instead of paying me for that extra day off. [And that's also a plus for me in that I end up not using my floaters, paid vacation or other days so I can use them later on!]

So what do we have planned? Well, not much at all, really. A few local errands, that's about it. The weather's supposed to be crappy the next few days anyway so holing up to watch movies, listen to podcasts and work on writing is just fine by me.

Ah yes. We're at the back end of this cold where I'm feeling marginally better, but my lips are chapped, my sinuses are still blocked, and I just want this to be OVER. I'm also annoyed that this came to me just a few days after I'd pulled my neck muscles somehow and had to deal with the pain for almost a week. Basically some part of me has been feeling like sh*t since late January. I'm not sure if I caught this from being in an enclosed courtroom for jury duty (even though I wore my mask 95% of the time), or one of my managers who also had a cold recently. BLEH! 

But yes, I am slowly on the mend. I've been taking Airborne and Sudafed and Advil when needed and attempting to keep rested, though waking up every hour on the hour last night because my throat was bone dry from breathing through my mouth wasn't helping. Hopefully I'll get some more rest tonight. I also have tomorrow off to take it easy!

So what else have I been up to lately? Well, I've started up on the 'remaster' of A Division of Souls and it's coming along quite nicely. Mostly just some cosmetic fixes and further editing, but nothing major to work on. At least not yet, anyway! I don't believe I need to do any, but I'm preparing myself just in case. I've got two chapters down so far, which isn't bad for a week and a half's worth of work. That means I should be quite on schedule for the September rerelease.





Hope everyone has as good week ahead!

Slightly different work schedule this week -- of course as soon as I mention that things have calmed to a regular schedule, it up and changes on me almost immediately, but not too much. And besides, I managed to somehow get my birthday off in the process, so that's a win!

On a different note, my printer seems to be not working for some reason and I'm not entirely sure why. I mean, it could be that one of the cats may have stepped on the USB wire and loosened it (or the jack) somehow, or that it's finally showing its age (I've had this one for so long I don't even remember when I bought it, other than that it's at LEAST a decade old). Either way, it got me thinking about how much I don't actually rely on printing nearly as much as I used to. We usually use it these days for box labeling and A's work-related things. Maybe it's time to look into getting a new one...? 

Not much else to report other than that this weekend was too short but I still managed to sleep in this morning! 

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!

Wait, is that blue sky I see outside the window...? It's been a weird wave of good and bleh weather over the last several weeks -- and it's been quite nice when I'm stuck inside at work for hours on end -- so it's a pleasant surprise when the fog and the clouds have dissipated for the moment.

A and I walked to the other end of Clement for the farmer's market, and I think I can safely say that with all the walking I do at work, a simple just-over-a-mile walk up to Arguello and Clement has become a pleasant one rather than an exhausting one. We picked up various tasty fruits and veggies (A wanted some squash for pickling purposes, I wanted some Concord grapes which are finally in season again), and had a very filling lunch of chilaquiles at Taqueria Los Mayas. [We of course took the bus home because we were now carrying many things.]

It's been a very busy month both here in Spare Oom and at the Day Job, but I think I've managed to maintain that balance and get most things done that I'd been wanting to do. I feel that the writing work could use a bit more focus, but I'm not too worried about it considering most of it is revision right now. Still, I'd like to be a bit more serious and consistent about it. Maybe come October...?

Which reminds me, I am going against my better judgement and doing Inktober this year. Whether it'll be on paper or elsewhere, I'm not sure, but we shall see.

 It felt wonderful to sleep in until 8:30am, something I haven't done in ages! Granted, I was up until 11pm last night finishing off Shannon Chakraborty's The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi, which I'd realized early on was in fact a 'let's get the gang back together for one last heist' caper film, complete with bonkers action and wait-what plot twists, and just enough humor to make it a super fun ride. This new series is a lot less serious than her Daevabad trilogy, that's for sure, but it you loved that, you'll love this one as well.

Meanwhile, we walked to the park today and spent a little bit of time in the botanical garden, harvested some more of the red lettuce (there's still a ton of it left), then had a late lunch at the Richmond Republic, where I had a 10% APV beer that was super tasty and left me slightly spinny for at least two and a half hours. All in all a lovely day to be outside!

I'll admit I've been allowing myself to relax over the last couple of days, partly because my setting up Queen Ophelia's War for Thursday's drop date went so smoothly and quickly. I've earned it, dang it! I'm not entirely sure how I'll go about promoting this one but I'll give it the old college try, I suppose. That's something I'll be working on in the next six months anyway: figuring out productive ways to attract attention to my novels!

As for the day job, I'm doing a few midshifts this week (one as a register jockey, the other as a front end babysitter) with a midweek day off, which I've come to enjoy. the 1-2-1-3 variation on the day job schedule breaks it up so I'm not going full out for five days.


Hope everyone has a lovely week!