Thursday This n That - Late Again

After waking up late yesterday, I started this post, then got distracted and called Mom, then went grocery shopping.  Woke up this morning to see I'd never completed nor posted this post.  Derp

I read something last night about carrots - they thrive best between 60 and 70 degrees F.  Oops.  The inside of my greenhouse these days has to be topping 100.  :shrug:  So, they either steam or they get eaten by critters.  I'm letting them steam.  We'll see what happens at harvest time.

Today's bird is a Barred Eagle-Owl.  Weird looking dude.  Possibly stoned.  Could be an extra in Disney's The Sword and the Stone.  

If you're into super-intense crime shows, check out Line of Duty - a UK show about a special group of police officers who investigate police corruption.  It's so intense I sometimes have to take a break in the middle because the villains are PISSING ME OFF.  But it usually works out in the end.

I'm calling the little fox Reynard. (Rey for short.)  It's after a mythological fox figure I reached while writing the Once Upon a Djinn series.  Yes, I am a nerd.

This morning, I read a neat story about a dude who'd just gotten out of prison and was on his way to a job interview when he saw a car accident.  He got off the bus and saved the man who was trapped inside, thus missing his job interview.  Online donations afterward gained him over $50K and three job offers.  As Hubs said, this is what sites like GoFundMe were created for.

I have encouraged Hubs to jump on some type of social media so others can benefit from his sparkling wit, canny insights, and wry humor, but he'd rather douse himself with gasoline and play with sparklers than use social media.  I can't say as I blame him.

While I was out and about yesterday, I stopped at the local store to pick up smokes for Hubs and I.  There was a brand-spanking new cashier there - like first hour of first day new.  I'll call him Jay.  Anyway, I told Jay I needed two cartons of smokes and the types, and he went over to the rack.  After much assistance on my part, he finally located what I needed.  Then he rang everything up and told me the total.  It was about half what it was supposed to be, so I let him know he hadn't rung up both cartons.  After we went through the whole 'first time processing a check' thing, Jay thanked me for being honest.  It's a sad world when pointing out that a cashier hasn't rung up all the items is worth a thanks because honesty is shocking or something.  I'm glad I caught it.  The guy seemed nice and I didn't want him to get fired.  Also, it doesn't help local businesses when they don't get paid for their products.  While my smokes are the cheapest smokes a gal can buy, they aren't cheap in the scheme of things.  Miss ringing up a candy bar?  Eh.  You're out a couple bucks.  Miss a carton of smokes and you're out anywhere from $30 to $80.  After I left, I mused about it being nice if they'd given me an 'honest customer' discount, then I laughed.

Okay, time to get this post posted and let you get on with your day.  Have a great one!

Non-Writing Projects

 I'm embarking on a couple new projects.  No, not writing projects.  Yes, I'm still editing and I still have tons of stuff to do in the writing vein.  These are for me. 

First off, Hubs and I decided to try our hands at growing trees from seeds.  Yesterday, I went out onto the property and gathered seeds pods from the redbud, then I gathered fruit from the dogwoods, the spicebushes, and the carolina buckthorns.  I've already done a ton of research to see if this is even possible and then to see what exactly needs to be done to get the seeds to germinate and thrive.  I've already planted an elm (poor Elmer, may he rest in piece... he was quite lovely before the deer ate him) and two cedars (Cecil and Cedric.  Cecil is doing fine in a pot right now.  Cedric never recovered from a late night critter attack.)  This won't be a short process and we won't even know if this works until Spring.  Fingers crossed.

The other project... err, hobby?... I'm gotten the urge to embark on is woodcarving.  We have all this wood and some of it is quite lovely (cedar, lilac, black cherry), so I'm going to try my hand at using it to make something beautiful.  I spent some time yesterday reading up on it and looking at tools on Amazon.  Sadly, the majority of inexpensive wood carving tools are made in China.  I may have to spend more to get domestic tools.  We'll see.  

Yes, I am quite aware that these are distractions and time sucks away from what I should be doing.  I also think I need this to keep myself sane.  :shrug:  Who knows how long I'll stick to this stuff?  It's worth a shot.  I mean, sure, I still have a big plastic tub full of yarn from my crocheting days - along with a blanket I started back in Colorado that I have yet to finish.  This may all come to nothing.  Either way, I'll learn something and that's never bad.

If the trees and shrubs work out, they'll make nice additions to our landscaping.  If the carving works out, I'll sell the stuff I make - or use it for gifts for friends and family.  I really want to carve up some really nice walking sticks and canes.  I have a thing for those.  :points to sporadically gimpy leg:  

Your turn... Tell me about something you do as a hobby.  Or tell me about a hobby you would like to have.  

Sunday Update - Week ?

 The weeks... they blur together like... things that blur.

Work is work.

The cats are in the middle of a wrestling match ranging all over the office.  Time out for litterbox.

This morning Hubs couldn't believe we've only had the cats for two weeks.  But yeah, it's only been two weeks.  Like I told a co-worker, it's like having toddlers with knives.  I think my two most used verbalizations are 'Be a good boy.' and NO.  They're going to the vet on Thursday for a wellness check.  I should probably trim their claws beforehand.  I mean, they're good kittens, but they are kittens.  

To say I'm distracted would be putting it mildly.  I have work, which takes all my concentration M-F (and some on the weekends because I can't make it stop) and I have the kittens who take all the rest of my brain power.  I thought briefly about writing, but that's about the extent of it.

I'm reading the same book I've been reading for two weeks now.  Every time I open the book and get settled, I have a cat on my lap... sometimes two.  

No baking.

No activity.  Weight 159.2

And they're back to wrestling again.

The birds are singing their brains out.  I love Spring.

The deer are all fat pregnant.  

And I think that's about it for the update.  Have a great week, everyone.

Sunday Update - OMG, What Week IS it?

 I have lost track of the weeks again.  Oh, I could go look it up.  I could even just count backward from the end of the year and junk.  Right now?  Nope.  I need a coffee IV.

What did I do last week?  Oh yeah...

I'm still not writing new words, but I did make some small progress with the edit notes.  I've gotten 8 pages of notes input now and that's brought me to pg49 in the manuscript.  Go me.  If you knew the mental hurdles and roadblocks I'm trying to jump, you'd see this is a bigger thing than it looks like.  I need to just put my head down and soldier through.  First I need to be in a place where I can put my head down and soldier through, though.  

I thought about marketing.  Really, I did.  And I learned that Amazon does not let you do any Kindle Countdown Deals or freebies 30 days before a book drops out of Kindle Select and the book has to be in Kindle Select for 2 weeks after the KCD or free offer.  Or some such nonsense.  Except this morning, when I went to check my facts, they're now saying I could possibly put Unequal into one or the other and it's drop date is 11/29, so what do I know?  A friend told me she clicked the box to take a book out and when she went back, they'd put it back in.  Unequal is still showing as deselected, so I'm not sure what's going on there.  Anyway, I'm not doing it.  If you want one of my books, pay full price.  None of them are really that expensive - between $2.99 and $4.99.  You can get the four-book Once Upon a Djinn series for just under $16.  Which is less than one hardcover of most other books these days.  :shrug:

In reading news, well, I didn't finish any books before my Saturday Reading Wrap-up, but I did some other stuff that made a reading wrap-up worth perusing.  

On the baking front, I did a batch of granola bars and yesterday, I made scalloped potatoes with ham.  I also put cheese and bacon bits in it.  Hubs was pleased.  I was content.  I think it needed more of something tasty, but I'm rarely 100% pleased with my own cooking.

We spent some time in the woods this week, but not as much as I wanted.  It was too warm for really getting into the woods until yesterday.  And we sawed through all the wood we'd already gleaned, so we had to wait.  Yesterday, we spent a good hour dragging timber up the hill and then another hour sawing.  We only really got through a 3" diameter piece, part of another, and most of an 8-9" piece of oak.  That last sucker was a bear.  It needs one more cut and it'll be done, but we were tired and left it to today.  The other piece was a wood we'd never cut through before, so we set it aside to do some more research.  It's pretty dark pink inside, but it is definitely not cedar.  I'm guessing black cherry.  We'll see.  It's definitely not firewood.  We may find a way to make flooring with it. We'll see.  Weight: 180.4 - mine, not the wood. (Not sure where the pound and half went, but yay for it going.)

Did the Wallyworld thing.  I'm down to only going once a month, so it's a big deal now.  Anyway, I picked up the turkey for Thanksgiving.  I got a Honeysuckle White for 87c a pound.  Yay.  Unfortunately, the smallest one they had was over 14lbs.  We'll be eating turkey for a while after TGD.

Got an unexpected wrinkle this week which, oddly enough, set me to working on edit notes - just to give my brain something else to think about for a while.  It helped while I was doing it.  Too bad I can't work on edit notes while I'm trying to sleep because my brain went after the wrinkle with a vengeance that night.  Still not a thing I can do about it, but the ol' brain doesn't bother with that.  It just climbs on the hamster wheel and runs.  It would've also helped if I could've gone into the woods, but it was close to dark when it occurred and then the next morning it rained and by afternoon it was windy.  Blerg.

I also really need to go fishing, but the weather's been a turd for that.  If it's not raining and cold, it's windy.  Nerts.

Okay, well, that's enough out of me for today.  I'm sure there's something I'm forgetting.  If you want an update on something that's not here, ask.  I'll most likely answer you.  

How was your week?

Sunday Update - Week 34

 It's been a week of hurry-up and wait.  And I'm still waiting.  Basically, I didn't get much of anything important done.  No writing.  No editing.  No reading.  No baking.  Let's see what I did do.

I did some marketing for the freebie of WIOH.  The free thing moved 57 copies.  And someone read Wish Hits the Fan all the way through in KU, so I've got that going for me.  Now we wait to see if more page reads or sales of the other books come through.

I only did one active thing this week.  Hubs and I took a walk.  I did not weigh myself because I've been such a slug.  And I've been eating a lot.  When the active stuff I'm waiting for actually kicks in, I expect to burn a lot of calories, so no worries.

I spent a good portion of time the other morning taking care of the veggies a neighbor brought.  We had like 5 zucchinis, 4 green peppers, and about a baker's dozen of tomatoes.  I shredded two zukes and came up with enough for 3 more batches of bread.  I parboiled and skinned half of the tomatoes, diced them and put them in the fridge.  Two of the peppers went into a deconstructed 'stuffed pepper' casserole dish.  The other two will either end up that way or I'll dice them for later use.

Two of my tomato plants are blooming, but no more fruits.  My one tiny tomato stopped growing at about the size of a racquetball and it's turning orange now.  Can't wait to eat it.  I still have lettuce and I'm picking it here and there for addition to iceberg lettuce salads.  This week I will decant my carrots and see if any of them are big enough for more than a snack.

Another thing that took up some time this week was online house hunting for a friend of mine.  I sent her probably 10 listings to look at.  That was fun.  I like looking at houses.  I think she's found the one she wants now, though, so I'm done with that unless I hear otherwise.  I wonder if I should hire myself out to people who don't have time to look for houses themselves.  I'm pretty good at it, if I do say so myself.  (Even if she didn't pick one of the houses I found.)

Other than that, I spent too much time playing poker.  I moved up to the Elite rooms and now I'm playing with 10mil in chips at a time.  My bank of play chips has grown to 71 million.  Would that it were real.  

I'm still a walking brainfart.  And I still can't sleep.  These may be related.  

So, what's up in your world?

Thursday This n That

You know me.  I love baseball.  But I swear if the players don't knock this horse shit off, I'm done with it.  I loved football more and I quit that without too much pain.  I don't even miss it anymore.  Next up, golf.  All this COVID crap has shown me I can live without sports.

The guinea fowl now wait for Hubs to do his morning 'feed the critters' thing.  They are his faithful subjects.  I have three of them named now - Harry and Henry (previously Harriet and Henrietta, but then I learned they were males) and Pie (short for Piebald - also male).  Henry's light, Harry's dark, and Pie has white on his breast.  They travel together and have enough differences (all guineas pretty much look the same) that I can tell who they are.  There's also a trio of nearly identical guineas - all the same dark shade of gray.  Two males and a female.  And the female limps, so I know when it's THAT particular trio.  I think I'll name them Bing, Bob, and Dorothy.  They're off on the road to Morocco.  ;o)

I think that's Dorothy.  (Smaller wattles is the key to gender identification in guinea fowl, I guess.)

I've been distracting myself with playing free online poker again.  No worries, though.  I can only play for ten minutes at a time before my computer starts to whine from the overload.  Then I learned I can play free slots at the same site without the drain on my system.  Totally mindless entertainment.  I went through 250K chips yesterday, though, so now I have to wait and build my acct back up again.

I don't know about you, but I'm sick of virtue signaling.  Then again, I'm pretty much sick of everything right now.  Like I've seen on FB, I think we need to turn 2020 off and back on again, and see if that fixes the problem.  We need some sort of reset on this year.

Tropical Depression Cristobal was a non-event here.  We got like an inch of steady rain overnight.  :yawn:  Right now, we're getting more wind from some thing blowing out of Oklahoma than we did with big, scary Cristobal.

On a walk last night, we saw a squirrel that was dead in the road.  Flat... and more than that, it's spine was laying about 3 feet away from it.  Which I thought was cool.  Owl was grossed out.  On the way back, we had to pass the squirrel again.  I had Owl walk as far away as possible and look into the field as she passed it.  I took a better look.  The animals had definitely been busy on the carcass.  I won't gross you out, too, but I still thought it was pretty interesting.  I'm weird that way.  For years, I had a cat skull one of my brothers found long ago.  Not sure where it went.  Lost to one of my many moves, no doubt.

Okay, on that note, I should probably wander off somewhere and let you enjoy your day.  Have a good one!  And tell me what's going on with your this n thats today.

Updated to add:  I woke up this morning to learn that A&E cancelled Live PD.  Those fuckers.  I'm beyond pissed.

Sunday Update - Week 4

Wow, January is kind of flying by.  I saw a meme the other day that called January the Monday of the year.  Yah, pretty much.

Okay, so I actually did some writing last week.  I picked the humorous SF project - tentatively called 'Evil Space Bunnies'.  It's rolling right along.  I'm averaging like 2K words a day.  And as long as I can keep the self-doubt away, I should actually be able to finish this sometime in the next 30 days or so.  I'm not promising this will be published any time soon or at all.  The positive thing is it has gotten me writing again.  Yay.

No editing other than what I do as I write.

I didn't do much in the way of marketing this past week.  I did set up a sale that will run from February 3rd thru 11:59pm on the 9th.  All of the Once Upon a Djinn books will be on sale and Bargain Booksy will be running an ad on the 5th.  Since my goal is to run one sale with advertising a month, I'm on track for that.  And with page reads, the SU sale has almost cleared the advertising, so I got that going for me.

I only finished one book last week - All Creatures Great and Small.  DNF'd a few others.  Not sure how much reading I'll be doing with ESB on my brain, though.

We do not want to talk about activity.  Despite my best intentions, I only did stuff like one day last week.  I'm holding steady at 180.0 pounds right now.  We had a little niggle with the exercise bike.  Apparently, it doesn't appreciate being continuously ridden for longer than 30 minutes at tension 6.  (That was Hubs, not me.)  It started to make a weird thumping noise on the down stroke of the left peddle.  We took the damn thing apart.  Didn't find anything.  Once we put it all back together later in the day - we had a something that interrupted the process - it worked fine with no thumping.  I'm guessing that when the flywheel inside overheats, it rubs against something.

The 'something' we had in the middle of the bike surgery was a cat thing.  Another UTI.  Yeah.  Not sure where those are coming from.  Anyway, they let me get meds without bringing the cat along, so that's something.  But I was warned that the next time this happens, I'll have to bring her in for a round of testing.  Meh.  She'll be 16 this year.  I expect the tests will show she's an old cat.  I give her the antibiotics and it clears right up.  Within 24 hours, she's back to her old self again.  Today, her only problem is that she can't figure out why I'm still giving her medicine.  Umm, because you have to use it all up, cat, or the infection will roar back.  Sheesh.  For the record, she's now eating IAMS urinary tract health formula kibbles.  She doesn't like it, but she is eating it.  A little.  I'm running on the theory that stale dry food is causing the UTIs.  She eats so little dry food that by the time she gets halfway down the bag, it's stale.  We throw out so much food.  Sheesh.  This time, I took the bag of food and separated it into freezer bags.  One bag to eat, the rest in the freezer until she finishes a bag.  Defrost and feed.  Should keep the stuff from getting stale and maybe prevent her UTI.  Right.

Oh, and yesterday, we cleaned the carpet in the office.  Moved everything but the bookcases and the desks.  At any rate, I was offline between 8am and 5pm, when the carpets were finally dry enough to move everything back and plug everything back in.  Hubs did most of the work, except for moving some stuff.  Not sure why it all made me so tired.  LOL

Okay, well, that's plenty out of me for the time being.  What's been going on in your world?

Combating Distractions

I was just about ready to start writing a post for this morning when Hubs walked into the room and started talking to me.  Needless to say, everything that was in my head regarding a post disappeared.  I can't even remember what topic it was going to be. 

So, the topic for this morning will be... distractions and combating them. 

Now, I'm pretty lucky.  I don't have that many distractions around.  There's Hubs, but he's pretty good about leaving me alone when I'm actually working.  There's Kira, but she's a cat and cat's cannot be controlled.  But they can be scheduled, so as long as it's not near 7am, 2pm, or 7pm, I'm pretty assured she won't bother me.  (I fed her before I started writing this post, so that was taken care of.  Otherwise, she'd be next to me meowing.)

Not having that many distractions around is a necessity for me.  I'm easily distracted.  And I forget stuff.  A lot.  I used to have a mind like a steel trap.  Now, it's a sieve. 

Some people combat distractions by having an office with a door that closes.  Go inside, shut the world away, and focus.  That would make me totally claustrophobic.  Our office is one big room (formerly the master bedroom of this house, but we needed a big office more than we needed a big bedroom, so we converted it to our purposes).  And we leave the door to it open. 

Some people combat distractions by putting on headphones and listening to music.  I do this sometimes, but lately I haven't wanted even music around me when I'm writing. 

Years ago, I started writing at night.  After dinner and dishes, when the house was quiet and I was done teaching the Kid for the day.  (Homeschooling and writing is not for the faint of heart.)  And the schedule stuck.  I still write at night, when there's less chance of a distraction.  (Unless I'm under a fast approaching deadline, then I suck it up and write during the day, too.  But it feels weird.)

The worst distraction, though, cannot be combated by simply shutting yourself away.  It's the distractions in your own mind.  You're supposed to be thinking about your work, but your brain keeps going off on tangents.  There are bills to be paid and that appointment you forgot to make and that home repair you need to do and the to-do list and...  Argh.  I'm still not sure how to make this stop except by trying to get as many things off your plate as possible before you sit down to write, or by simply accepting that there's nothing you can do about any of it right then and maybe your brain will allow you to focus on writing instead.  It's a work in progress.

What about you?  What are your distractions?  How do you combat them? 

Distractions

As you all might've surmised, I'm distracted as hell right now.  And you're probably sick of hearing about my other job, so I won't talk about what I'm doing.  I'd like to talk about being distracted, though. Unfortunately, I'm so distracted I forgot what I was going to talk about. 

My brain is scattered.  Every time I try to pull together what I meant to say, I keep getting derailed and my mind wanders to distracted driving.  Don't drive distracted.  Seriously.  One simple loss of focus while you're behind the wheel of a car can wreck your life and the lives of others.  Don't do it.

More than cell phones can distract you, too.  I didn't have a cell phone when I lost focus and wrecked my car (and my body) back in 1994.  I don't know what distracted me then, but whatever it was, it was sufficient to make me run a red light and BLAMMO. 

Not that cell phones aren't big distractions.  Personally, I don't use mine for anything other than emergency calls.  No internet surfing, no texting, no playing games or watching videos, no apps.  It's a phone.  It makes and receives calls.  That's it.  I don't need the added distractions. 

My brain is distracting enough.  Lately it's like living in Short Attention Span Theater.  When it's not focused on Spreadsheet Land. 

The cat is a big distraction right now as she works on getting over her infection.  A side effect of the new antibiotics is that she's having litterbox problems and I'm cleaning it up.  Ew.  Which means having to shift focus to her when she steps out of the box so the mess is contained rapidly and doesn't visit a large portion of my home.   

Hubs is a distraction as he works on his stuff.

My neverending to-do list is a distraction.  And as a result, the house is a distraction because every time I walk through, I see things that need to be addressed - a dusty shelf, a fuzz bunny, a spot on the floor, schmutz on a counter...  Add in the outside stuff and ARGH.

And there are the writerly things I should be doing.  I do have a book releasing this month after all.  Plus, I have a sale going on that I haven't advertised.  And more sales and free things going on around release day that I haven't scheduled for advertising...

It all kind of makes me want to crawl in a hole. 

So, if I forget to stop by your blog, or I forget to reply to an email, or I totally miss posting a blog of my own, I apologize.  I hope this all evens out later this week.  Then again, Early Grave edits will be back by then and I'll have a whole other thing to shift my focus toward. 

Sunday Update - Week 7

Ugh, what a week. 

Some stuff happened.  It derailed my schedule and I'm left with working long hours to meet my publishing deadline.  Life does intrude when we least expect it, eh?  Anyway, it'll still get done.  I'm just about finished with that polishing I was supposed to finish on Friday.  Only the Epilogue left.  When I can't look at it anymore, I've begun the final proof.  I'm two chapters in on that.  Polishing the end and proofing the beginning.  Burning the manuscript from both ends, so to speak.  I'm really liking how it's turning out, though.

I didn't read anything but Blink of an I this past week.  Oh, wait, I started a book on the Kindle while I was waiting for something else, but I couldn't keep my mind on it.  I don't remember the title.  Something YA and magical.

After nearly five years of living here, I finally visited Branson this week.  :shrug:  It's a city like any other city of its size, I guess.  I was tied up with stuffs, so I didn't take in any shows or anything.  It was interesting driving on a kinda-sorta freeway again.  The last time was my trip to Michigan, so about 4 years ago.  LOL, hard to believe the former road warrior doesn't drive distances or freeways anymore.  I like to putter now.

I went fishing once, with Hubs, but we didn't catch anything.  We didn't even get any bites.  It was just nice to be out at the lake again with my sweetie-pie.

Hubs and I went for a wander in the woods.  No woods work.  Just walking the trails and looking at interesting things. 

Oh, and we have a particularly fat opossum hanging around the yard again.  I think she's cool and I'm going to name her Petunia.  Actually, now that I think about it, she's probably not fat.  She's probably preggers.  Petunia and her future brood of little 'possums.  Cool.  (Of course, she could be a fat he.  I'm not lifting its tail to find out.)

And that's it for me this week.  What's it for you?

Scattered

I'm editing and my deadline is Friday.

I'm working with a new cover artist to bring my genie series together as a cohesive unit.

I'm working on a few things to generate sales.

I'm trying to keep a clean... err... tidy house.

Max is a rollercoaster of 'feels good kitty' and 'crashing kitty'.

It's college football season.

I'm 10 books behind in my reading challenge.

The squirrels won't leave my iris bulbs alone so I keep having to replant.

Facebook

Twitter

Spreadsheets

Baseball playoffs

I need exercise of some sort so I don't meld with my desk chair.

Dishes... who keeps using all those dishes??

Kira wants out on the sun porch, even though I moved her special secret water into the office.

Author interview.

News

We need food in the house.

Hubs is working on something at the computer kitty-corner from me.

Leaves need raking.

Max killed a mouse.

There's a centipede on the ceiling.

The neighbor's new truck is loud.

I forgot to write that blog post.

My coffee needs refilling.

:wanders off: