Thursday This n That

When your job requires a great deal of typing and mousing and other hand work, it's probably best to watch that you don't hurt your wrists.  Eh, my wrists were screwed years ago.  They wanna hurt?  Well, fuck 'em.  I've got shit to do.  So there. =op  Like the job I had where I had to be on my feet all day, but my legs are screwed.  Did I hurt?  Hell, yeah.  Did I do my job anyway?  Well, of course I did.  I'm not independently wealthy for pitysakes.  I think even if I was, I'd still be doing something.  Like writing, which lord knows is not easy on the wrists.  Can I get a what-what?

Why yes, I am full of vinegar this morning.  Why do you ask?

If you type FUCK or F*CK, it's the same thing.  You're not fooling anyone.  People don't think you're meaning FACK or FICK.  They know there's a U there.  Yeah, it's not a nice word.  That's the point.  Derp.  Fly and be free.

I try not to swear at work.  It's unprofessional.  So, I try to be creative.  Son of a motherless monkey is my favorite.  When I rack my knee on the edge of my desk... SON OF A MOTHERLESS MONKEY.  Although, I still catch myself saying 'shit' under my breath when something goes wrong.  It's sounds more like ssht but anyone within hearing distance knows what I'm saying.  

I got home from work to 4 spreadsheets that needed doing and today is payday at the side job, so if I wanted to get a check, I needed to get them done before the office opens at 7 (my time) this morning.  I did three last night.  Another one came in while I was doing those, so I finished the last of that and the new one this morning.  Yes, I am a working machine.  Got my timesheet in on time. Yay.

One good thing about the job is that although I am super busy, so is everyone else.  It would royally piss me off if I was this busy and someone was sitting around playing Candy Crush.  I've been in jobs like that.  I'd be there busting my hump while Little Miss Entitlement sat on her ass, doing her nails.  Know what effect that has?  Eventually, I stopped busting my ass.  Then I felt guilty.  Then I found a job where everyone was busting their asses, like they were supposed to, and the previous employer was stuck with no one busting their ass.  Good luck with all that.

Okay, it's getting close to time to get ready for work.  Have to make my lunch, and get dressed, and sundry other pre-work things.  Have a great day.  And feel free to drop your comments.  I'll approve them when I get home.  

Have a great day!

Sunday Update - Week 5

Welcome to Sunday.  For some reason, I keep waking up at 4am.  Which makes me want to go to bed extra early, which makes me want to wake up early... Blerg.

Anyhooways...

I'm making progress on Song of Storm and Shroud.  This third round of editing is not going any faster than the second, though.  Still, I'm at the part where I make notes and then enter them right away, instead of the part where I make all the notes and enter them when I reach THE END.  So, what I have now is pretty close to what's going to be there when it goes out to the world.  (Unless I go totally nuts and decide to make this one book into several by fleshing out shorter scenes and delving deep into the characters and the world.  Which would be kind of cool.  But if I do that, I'll never get this book done.  Except it might be better for it.  GAH!)  Anyway, I'm 49 pages into what is currently a 370 page Word file.

No marketing this week.  I'm too busy.  

No reading for the same reason.

I did do some baking, though.  I made white bread.  It turned out pretty good.  It could be better.  I screwed something up early on and I also probably should've kneaded it more.  Hubs likes it, so it's all good.  I also made no-bake cookies and added tiny pretzel sticks to them.  Those are tasty, but gargantuan, so eating one is like eating three or four.  

I also got some log work done.  That was 3 out of my 4 active days this week - sawing logs and working on restacking the stacks.  We've pulled out a fourth pallet and we're putting all the smaller wood pieces on that, which means taking the smaller wood pieces out of the other three pallets and restacking those.  

The fourth day was shoveling snow.  We got about 8 inches.  It looks pretty, but it also looks like the reason I left Michigan.  Derp.  

In other news, Beauregard the Broad-winged Hawk took down what I think was a Brewer's blackbird.  I got some awesome pics of him eating it in the snow.  

We've been having flocks of blackbirds (I think they're Brewer's) pass through over the last week or so.  Easy pickin's for a hawk like Beau.  

We're also having larger numbers of deer stop by.  The snow draws them in because they know they can get food here without having to dig through the white stuff.  I think we counted 24 at one point yesterday.  

Okay, we've been watching the Olympics.  I know, I know.  They shouldn't be holding an Olympics in China in the first place.  Here's my thinking on the subject:  The time to boycott this crap was when the Olympics committee was thinking about awarding China with the prize of holding this winter's games there.  When there was still time to change the location.  It's not like any of China's crap hasn't been going on for years.  So, the games are there now and our athletes - the ones who've been working for years to get to this point - are there now.  So, I'm watching.  If you want to hurt China, beat the crap out of their athletes by winning.  Win everything.  And highlight the dirty, rotten, nasty things China has done and is doing while celebrating the achievements of all the other athletes.  Not watching and not cheering on the good people who had no part in China's abuses doesn't hurt China.  It hurts the good people.  

And besides, I'm already boycotting so many things.  It's tiring.  I want to watch people achieving their goals and winning awards.  I want to get excited when they do something awesome.  The world is a shitty enough place.  Leave me alone with my little bright spots.  =op

Not much else going on here.  They still haven't plowed my road.  But I have nowhere to go, so I'm not that twicked about it.  (Twicked... it's something I used in my book, so I'm trying it out here.  On a personal note, I need to cut down on my swearing.  New neighbors have little ears and I swear a lot when I'm working outside.  It's not an easy task, lemme tell ya.)

Okay, your turn.  How was your week?  

Thursday This n That

The other day I was out walking when a neighbor I'd only met once before drove past me, giving me two thumbs up and mouthing 'Good job'.  I was totally confused.  It's not like the one time I met her we discussed my activity regime or my hope to lose weight or anything.  Then I got to wondering, in a playful and jocular way, if I'm so fat she felt the need to give me encouragement.  Did I look like I was losing steam and needed a boost?  I mean, I was stopped on the side of the road.  I always stop and wait for cars to go by - because I don't want to get hit from behind and would like a chance to jump out of the way should someone lose control of their vehicle.  It wasn't even a particularly hard walk that day - coolish with a slight breeze.  I wasn't even sweating like a pig, which I often do, or huffing like a freight train, which I used to do before I started walking all the time. She should've seen me 6 years ago.  Man, I was out of shape and 14 pounds heavier then.  Then a 1.6 mile hard-target walk would've done me in.  :shrug:

I don't understand why people ride motorcycles.  Sure, I've never been on one.  But I've been on a four-wheeler and on a snowmobile.  Pretty much the same thing, I'd imagine - flying down the road, wearing a helmet and no other form of protection around you.  The four-wheeler was fun, but I was young and stupid and we could've easily been killed.  I screamed myself mute during the snowmobile ride and it wasn't from fun.  Sheer terror.  It was dark and snowing and I was riding behind a guy who didn't even have his driver's license yet.  Getting pelted in the face with ice.  Loads of fun.  Substitute bugs for snow and that's how I imagine riding a motorcycle would be.  I'll keep my car, where I can sit in air-conditioned or heated comfort, listening to my tunes and feeling pretty secure that if someone hits me, my crumpled body will not be thrown 30 feet or have its skin scraped off by asphalt.  Someone once told me there are no open casket funerals after motorcycle accidents.  Yeah, sounds like fun to me.

Monday I was scrolling through my blogroll and noticed a post on swearing in fiction.  The poor guy had a reader actually take him to task for swearing in his violent epic fantasy novel.  He, of course, schooled her good.  And he pointed out that while she had a problem with his use of curse words, she apparently didn't have a problem with the violence and had even laughed about a reference to a minotaur harming a prostitute.  (Apparently she was reading it in some form of posting a story wherein readers can immediately comment as the story goes along.)  What a world, eh?  I may have to actually pick up this guy's book at some point because it sounded awesome.

I found the above guy through a fantasy novel competition I've been stalking for potential good things to read.  I've wishlisted a couple that I'll buy as soon as the budget frees up a little.  I'd enter one of my books but apparently this thing is so popular, the spaces fill up almost as soon as he announces it's open for entries.  Right now they're in the middle of a cycle, so I don't even have to think about it until next year.  

Yesterday, I went fishing.  Nothing spectacular about that.  Caught a few little pumpkinseeds and a keeper redear sunfish.  After I put the sunfish on the stringer, I went back to fishing, occasionally glancing over to check on Burt.  (Yes, I name the fish I catch.)  The last time I glanced over, I noticed a kind of longish stick in the water I hadn't seen there before.  And then I noted how the stick was jutting out from the water.  And THEN I noticed it wasn't a stick.  I was a big honking snake.  Unsure at the time whether it was a water snake or a copperhead, I sprang into action.  To save my fish.  My fish had taken refuge under a rock.  I needed to reach out past the fallen limb I'd attached the stringer to to nudge him loose, but the snake was in the vicinity.  In fact, the snake had swum to the side of the rock where Burt was hiding.  After I pulled Burt in, I tossed a small rock into the water.  Snake didn't even twitch.  I grabbed a larger rock and tossed it closer to, but not AT, the snake.  When the water cleared, the snake was lying on the bottom with the bigger rock next to it.  'Oh, crap, I hit him in the head.'  My aim was never that good, you know.  But then the snake rose up from the bottom and stuck his head back out of the water again.  No damage done, but he still looked intent on Burt.  I grabbed a longish stick and swung it near the snake's face.  It opened its mouth as if to strike.  So I tapped it on the top of the head with the stick.  Poof!  It disappeared.  Okay, it actually moved away so fast, I missed exactly where it went.  Which meant I wasn't sure if this potential copperhead was going to visit me again.  I packed up my stuff and scurried up the ledges to get the hell out of there.  I researched it when I got home and it was a water snake, which are non-venomous but exceptionally bitey. 

Burt and I made it home with no snake bites.  And now Burt is in my freezer for future dining pleasure.

Okay, I think I've bored y'all enough this morning.  Have an awesome day.  I might go fishing again, so if you leave a comment and it doesn't show up right away, I'll approve it when I get home.