Sunday Update - 2025 Week 51 or Whatever

 I figure since this coming week is the last of 2025, then last week must've been week 51.  Or whatever.  It was Christmas week and I'm short a few brain cells due to the timewarp that occurs this time of year.

I had a good writing week... well, a good beginning of a week and then the holiday hit and crickets.  Still, I managed to crank out 2236 words and I feel like I'm pretty close to THE END.  I mean, I could wrap it all up in no time and be done with it, but it feels flat, like it needs one more oomph to give it a real climax and then I can write the denouement.  So, I've been playing with how to make that happen over the last couple days.  Today, there will be writing.  I can still finish this by the end of the year, if I hunker down.

Marketing occurred.  Not a lot of marketing and thus, not a lot of movement.  Better than nothing, but not by much.  I'm like $2.50 away from clearing $200 this year.  Not sure if that'll happen, but a girl can hope.  I don't know what I'll put forth as a freebie to finish out the year and start next year.  Stay tuned.

I finished reading a book this week!  Woot.  That puts me at 35 for the year.  Still 5 short of my adjusted Goodreads goal, but I'm not flagellating myself over it.

On the activity front, we took three walks this week because the weather has been nice, and way too hot to play in the woods.  I also did some cleaning.  Eh, it's better than nothing, which is what my ever-widening ass wants to do.  Weight: 176.4

Baking happened.  I made a pumpkin pie bread pudding for Christmas dessert and it was pretty yummy.  (Recipe below.)  I also did a ham for Christmas dinner and it turned out awesome.  Total yummers there.

I've been busy getting ready for next year with my spreadsheets and crap.  Hard to believe Thursday will be a whole new year.  I do wrap-up posts and junk starting Friday.  Maybe.  If I remember.

Christmas happened.  We don't give each other gifts anymore, so no big whoop there.  We got ourselves a chainsaw and a deer dragging sled and a couple books (one of woodworking and the other on art).  Mom sent me card with a check in it, but that still hasn't arrived.  (Don't get me started on the USPS.)  MIL sent a card with a check in it, too.  That's the total of prezzies here.  The tree is still up and will be until Friday-ish.  We watched a boatload of movies - some of them Christmasy and some not.  Life is good.

Other than that, it was a quiet week.  Here's to a quiet end to 2025 and all that.  :hugs:

How was your week?  Did you get any good prezzies?

***

Pumpkin Pie Bread Pudding

2/3 loaf of Italian Bread* (or about 8-10 oz worth)

2 ½ cups evaporated milk

1 15 oz can of pumpkin puree

2 cups white sugar

3 large eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

½ tsp rum extract (optional)

1 tsp cinnamon

Dash ground cloves

Dash ground ginger

1 cup pecans (coarsely chopped)

1 cup raisins

¼ cup butter 

Cube bread (1-1 ½” cubes).  Preheat oven to 350F.  Put bread cubes into a large bowl.  In a separate large bowl, stir together pumpkin and evaporated milk.  Pour wet mixture over bread.  Fold together and let sit until bread absorbs wet (about 5 minutes).  Mix together sugar, eggs, vanilla, rum, and seasonings. Fold that into the bread/pumpkin mixture.  Put butter into 9x13” pan and put in the preheating oven.  When it’s melted, remove and set aside.  Fold pecans and raisins into batter.  Spoon mixture over the butter in the pan.  Bake 35-45 minutes until firm in the middle and edges are crisp.  You might need to put a separate cookie sheet on the rack below the bread pudding, in case the butter decides to escape over the edges.  Serve warm with ice cream or drizzle with caramel sauce, or both.

*I bought a 14oz loaf from Walmart and cubed about 2/3rds of it.  The original recipe called for an 8oz loaf of French bread, but I improvised.  

Sunday Update - Week 45

 Well, hello again.  Let's see if we can rebuild this past week, eh?

No writerly things.  To my amazement, I sold a book.  Woo.  Which meant I needed to update my book sales spreadsheets.  (They were still on September, even though I sold a book in October, too.)  I did that yesterday.

I didn't finish reading anything.  I DNF'd two books before yesterday's post.  I'm DNF'ing the book I started after the post.  It's just weird and I'm tired of trying to make it make sense.  I'm sure it probably does at some point, but meh.

In baking news, I made an apple cranberry crisp last Sunday, then nada.  I do have plans to make a layer cake this week.  I bought pans for it and everything.  I haven't made a layer cake since Owl was a baby.  Wish me luck.

On the activity front, we walked last Sunday and then we went fishing.  Friday, I cleaned the bathrooms at work.  Took me like 20 minutes.  No weight loss this week.  I mean, I got down to 164.4, but then yesterday, I was 166.4, so up and down.  :shrug:

No one made me clean the bathrooms, btw.  I have a low tolerance for scudge in bathrooms. Rather than whine about it, I clean it.  2 bathrooms - each with a toilet and a sink.  I did the floors and the mirrors, too.  Are they perfect?  Nope.  That would take longer and I didn't have longer.  Are they presentable?  Yep.  I also take the garbage out on Fridays because the thought of garbage sitting over the weekend makes me gag.  They're my quirks and I own them.

As for fishing, we didn't catch anything but it was nice to just be at the lake drowning worms with my favorite person.

We got snow Friday night.  It was just a dusting.  Barely enough to make the grass white and leave some on the car.  I can handle that.  No more, though, please.

I went to the thrift store yesterday.  I was looking for an overcoat, but since they didn't have one of those, I picked up 6 books.  4 paperbacks and 2 hardcovers - $2.  Yay.

Work is work.  Like my weight, it's up and down.  The creeping crud is making its way through the staff.  I spent the last two hours of Friday by myself in the office because all the other office staff went home sick.  (I am fine, by the way.)  It was awesome.  I threw a rave.  Hundreds of people showed... :shudder: I can't even joke about that.  I enjoyed the quiet and got some stuff done.  I finally organized the surplus inventory room so it doesn't look like a tornado went through there.  All my filing is done.  Score.

I might zip down to the Wallyworld this morning and see if I can find a turkey that doesn't cost a wing and a drumstick.  (See what I did there? ROFL)  Seriously, though, I've heard turkeys are hard to find and that they're REALLY expensive this year.  Keep your fingers crossed for me.

Okay, that's probably enough out of me.  Nothing much else is going on.  How are things in your world?

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 37

 I woke up tired today, so bear with me.  It doesn't help that last week was a blur.

Writing?  Nope.  Editing?  Nope.  Marketing?  Nope.  I did get an idea this week for a new book.  I wrote it down.  The note says "UF Golem PI".  I know I had more than that, but as the days passed, the rest disappeared from my head.

Someone in France bought the third book in the A Model Curse series.  I've never sold the other two into France, so I hope the reader doesn't get lost.  Maybe I'll get lucky and they'll buy the first two.  

I finished reading that series I was working on.  Well, finished until he comes out with more books.  Whenever that'll be.  It was a good three books.  Being done with them gives me a sad.  I did pick up some new books, though, so it's all good.

Not much going on in the baking realm.  I made granola bars yesterday and I made zucchini bread last Sunday.  Baking bookends for my week.  I probably won't bake anything today, though.  

Last Sunday, Hubs and I walked almost 2 miles.  And that was it for activity.  Weight: 169.6 - which puts me down 12 pounds since I started work almost three months ago.  

Gah, that's right. I'm approaching my 3 month anniversary.  One would think I would have this down by now, and I do for the most part, but they keep adding things to my tasks, so I'm not as settled as I want to be.  Some days I feel like I had everything to do and I did it.  Other days, I feel like I spent 8 hours running in place and, while I was busy all day, I didn't actually accomplish anything.  On the upside, I am never bored at work.  Plus, getting a regular paycheck is all kinds of awesome.  And I never have to clean house.  Hubs does all the chores while I'm at work.  

I'm still doing spreadsheets for the other company.  I have four I need to do today.  Plus, I have the spreadsheets for book sales to do.  (Yes, one sale a month still means I need to update those.)

Speaking of which, I should probably wrap this up and get to work.  Nothing else much happened, so I guess I'll leave it at that.  What went on during your week?

Thursday This n That

Hey, it's still Thursday!  I meant to post this morning, but I got distracted and then it was time to get ready for work.  

Man, we got slammed at work yesterday.  Thank goodness this afternoon was kinda quiet.  So quiet we were all afraid to say it was quiet and jinx it.  LOL

One of the things I do is collecting on past due stuff.  I figure as of today, I've already paid my wages to this point back to the company in the debts I've collected.  BE for the win.  Go, me.  Okay, so 7 days of work doesn't amount to any huge amount, but it's good to feel productive again.  And hey, it's good to know I'm taking some of the load of the gals who were slammed on a daily basis.

Nope, still not saying where I work.  =op

I had a meeting with the boss.  Kind of an informal, how're things going so far, chat.  He's good people.  They're all good people as far as I can tell.  Funny thing, though.  He asked me about my books and I went all 'deer in headlights'.  I guess I just made a wall in my head between that and this.  I can't think about being a writer when I'm in office worker mode.  

At some point, I need to slip into writer mode and then not think about the office worker.  Maybe this weekend.

It's hard not calling Mom every morning.  I do manage to get a couple short calls into the office first thing before I go to the day-job.  And I'm doing spreadsheets at night.  But the hour and twenty chatty calls with just Mom every day are a thing of the past.  I have to content myself with Saturdays, I guess.

There's an itty-bitty baby bunny who lives by the well-house.  I see it sometimes on my way to work.  It's soooooo cute.  

Okay, well, I'd better post this so it's still a Thursday.  Have a great day wherever you are and whatever you're doing.  :hugs:

Sunday Update - Week 52

Time for the update on the last week of 2021.  Yay.  But I've been up since 2:30a, so bear with me.

I worked on editing five days out of seven this week.  That got me 65 more pages edited.  As of last night, I'm on page 181 of 355.  Over halfway!  Yay!

I finally got Dying Embers loaded to Draft 2 Digital.  Just a few minutes ago.  Links will be updated once a few distributors are on board and I can get a customized link.  I set it at 99c.  I also went back and changed the price of Wish in One Hand to 99c, too.  Loss leaders for the rest of the series and all that.  Trying to drum up sales, doncha know.  (I'll do a sales wrap-up sometime this coming week.)

In reading news, I had an okay week, but I missed my yearly goal by 5 books.  Derp.  Ditto on the wrap-up thing here, too.

On the baking front, I made more cookies.  Heh, like I need more cookies.  And I made more granola bars for Hubs.

Speaking of not needing cookies, I didn't hardly do anything active last week.  One day cutting limbs into firewood and two days messing around with the dirt in the front bed.  The good-ish news is that I haven't really gained too much weight.  Starting this year with 182.2 pounds.  Only .6 pounds more than I started last year with.  Woohoo.

Hmm, what else... Oh, I created 2022 versions of all my spreadsheets.  I have some formulas to add for the big one, but the rest are ready to input data to.  Yay.

Ancestry.com had a free week of searching through birth, marriage, and death records, so I did some of that.  Discovered my cousin Gerald died last year.  (Don't worry, we weren't close.  My uncle got divorced from his mom and they were estranged.  So I only saw him a couple times at the family reunion when I was a teen.  Nice guy, though.)  And that my poor little cousin William, who would've been older than my dad, only lived 13 days.  Oh, and that my great-great uncle Cecil may have been a prisoner of war in WWII.  Interesting stuffs.  I also got farther up the tree in a couple spots where the family was still in Europe and those records were translated - like to a Great-great-great grandma whose maiden name was Grodzyski.  (Already found one whose maiden name was Pruzinski.)

Oh, and I saw a big, beautiful bald eagle not far from the house.  So pretty.

Anyway, not a lot of exciting stuff for the end of 2021.  Pretty par for the course on that year.  How did your last week of the year go?

Sunday Update - Week 51

We're almost done with 2021.  Yay!  That's the great thing about the end of one year... There's always hope for next.

This past week... the week of Christmas... went about as expected.  I did some editing, but not as much as I would've liked.  I got thirty-seven pages done and added about 300 words.  I'm at pg 116 out of 351 pages now.  I spent part of Friday undoing some things I did book-wide because I got to a part where the changes didn't make any sense, so I undid them.  

I uploaded 5 books to Draft 2 Digital.  There are only 4 books still wide with Amazon - the SCIU books and Project Hermes.  If you haven't read them in KU, you better get started.  DE and EG drop out on Tuesday and Wednesday respectively.  FG drops out on January 14th and PH drops out on 1/20.  

It was a pretty good reading week, but with Christmas, my update was delay to tomorrow.  I hope to finish the book I'm currently reading today so it can go on that update, too.  We'll see.

On the baking front, I did cake cookies with chocolate stars pressed into the middles and another pumpkin cheesecake.  (Note, do not buy cheap brown sugar again.  It's missing flavor.)  I also did a stuffed turkey tenderloin, a pot roast, and yesterday's big ol' ham.  Wow, that ham was amazing.  If you can find the, I totally recommend Frick's Meats... a company name that lends itself to my calling it 'the best frick'n ham'.  (I think it's a waste the company doesn't use that slogan.  Hubs says it's in poor taste and they don't want their hams to taste poor.  Ba dump bump.)

In activity news, we spent four days this week working on the front flower bed.  It's all dug up and new dirt/fertilizer/etc. has been added.  Hubs has about 2/3rds of it turned so the new dirt mixes with the old.  He'll do that to the rest of the bed today.  I also did a little cleaning.  Weight: ?  I'm not crazy enough to weigh myself right now.

One day this past week was spent driving to the county seat, so we could visit the title company and close on our new strip of land.  .32 acres worth.  It was our Christmas present to each other.  This coming week, we plan to take our pretty pink string and run the property line, drive a few stakes in... you know, mark our territory.  Part of the problem with that is a few large trees that have fallen across the line.  We'll figure it out.  We always do.  

This coming week ought to be filled with year-end stuff.  I never did work on those spreadsheets like I wanted to earlier in the month, so I have to do them now.  And I have to clean.  I've been such a toad about cleaning lately and the dust is starting to pile up to the point that I got sick of it and did some spot cleaning yesterday afternoon.  Gah.  Christmas cleaning?  No one is supposed to clean on Christmas.  Hell, I didn't even do the dishes.  Which I need to do right after I get this post finished.  LOL

Anyway, I hope you all had brilliant holidays and I hope the end of the year does right by you.  If not, there's always next year.  :hugs:

What were you up to last week?  Get anything good from Santa?

Spreadsheety Stuffs

There's a flaw somewhere in my big sales spreadsheet for 2021.  I've got three different yearly totals going on here.  Derp.  This close to the end of the year, I'm wondering whether it's worth trying to find the flaw or to just say screw it and move on with my life.  I mean, I did check the obvious spots and it wasn't there, so any further investigation is going to take up a lot of time.  And I do know which one is the correct total, so it's not like figuring out the others is crucial.

As it's a formula error, it will not carry to next year's spreadsheet.  When I create a new spreadsheet for the year, I only move over the formatting and the text.  The formulas get rebuilt as the year goes along.

I am thinking about redoing the whole damn thing.  But only thinking about it.  Because it would be a huge pain in the buns, that's why.  I did get rid of all the graphs last year.  Graphs can be fun when the data is good.  Otherwise, they're just depressing and who needs that?

The whole flaw problem is, I think, the amount of data I'm trying to juggle with one spreadsheet.  16 books, 12 months, 18 columns of various ways each book can be sold and prices for such.  (And that's not including the smaller spreadsheet and its daily information.)  It's a beautiful swirl and dance, but it can also be a headache.

There are probably easier ways to deal with some of this, but I'm working with the knowledge I have.  (Don't even suggest macros.  I hate macros.)  Relearning stuff at this point would take away the benefits of having learned it.  And this old dog might not even be able to learn new tricks.  Just ask my 81-yr-old mom who's still doing all her stuff with paper ledgers while also trying to grasp the ins and outs of Excel.  Poor mom.

I'm working with Excel 2007.  It's pretty stable and since I've had it this many years, I'm pretty comfortable with what I know how to do with it.  Gah, can you imagine if I tried to teach myself each new version of Excel to handle any of this?  I'd be so bogged down with learning, I'd never get anything else done.

Oh, I'll probably wade in and try to figure out where the flaw is.  It'll drive me nuts until I do.  Something somewhere - maybe several somethings - is pointed at the wrong place.  Eh, it'll give me something to do when I'm not doing anything else.  Heh.

And yes, I will do a yearly wrap-up of the sales data.  Look for it after the first of the year.

Thursday This n That

Does it seem like every week since this started is stranger than the last?  Or is it just me?  (Yes, I am getting stranger, too, but that's not the question.)

In case you missed it, this week a police officer saved a young girl's life by shooting the girl who was trying to stab her.  He's being attacked for doing it.  See?  When you leave all the skin colors out of it, it's pretty simple and the reaction to it is pretty strange.

Lumpy's jaw lump is back again.  She's still eating fine and is still a good weight, though.  Not sure what's going on there.

On the way back from fishing the other day, Hubs and I saw a buck who still had one antler.  It should've dropped off a long time ago.  Not sure what's going on there either.

I'm going to turn 51 next month.  If that ain't strange, I don't know what is.

A Model Curse is still on sale.  99c each.  Get all three for less than the regular price of one.  How is that not a deal?   Strange that people aren't snapping that up.  :shrug:

A couple days ago, we got a half inch of snow.  Which promptly melted.  Then that night, we got below freezing temperatures.  Which sucked.  I was afraid all my plants would croak.  Hubs told me the peonies were all gross looking.  I didn't want to see.  I've spent so much time and effort on those gardens and I didn't want to see the carnage.  Well, I sucked it up and went out to look yesterday afternoon.  Most everything seems fine and the peonies looked normal to me.  The black walnut trees on the other hand look like crap.  All their tiny new leaves are wilty and curly and turning black.  =o(

Michigan is seeing some kind of surge in the Kung Flu.  I mean, several states are seeing an uptick, but Michigan is way worse.  Not sure why, since that bitch has those poor people so locked down I'm surprised any virus could get through.  Mom says it's because people aren't being given the vaccine quick enough.  Data shows that to be false, so I can only assume she's being lied to by the press.  We're pretty opened here in MO and we're floating along.  TX is way open and despite having a larger population than MI, there are fewer cases.  Maybe it's because people are trapped inside due to the policies and the weather.  Then again, if that were true, there should be a surge in all the cold states with dem governors.  :shrug:  

For one of the spreadsheets I do, the company we get it from decided it would be a good idea to round the figures.  So any line item that was less than 50c is now a zero sum.  Sure, the lines that are more than 50c and less than a dollar were rounded up, but that didn't work in our favor.  Now I have to wait to get the right numbers so I can do the spreadsheets.  Blerg.  Now sure what the thinking was on that.  Strange.

I had this one guy trying to friend me on MeWe.  I went to his profile and there was nothing but pictures of him.  Sorry, dude, but I'm not interested in you.  Show me something in your interactions that might make me think I'd like to see your posts in my feed or don't bother.  So, I denied the request.  He must've thought I was a pretty hot chick, because he tried three more times.  I finally blocked him.  Of course, sometimes I look at their pages and think they might be interesting only to have them immediately try to sell me something when I friend them.  Those get blocked, too.

My knee is still bending right.

And that's more than enough out of me.  How are things in your this-n-that world?

Thursday This n That

Last night while I was making dinner, I went to shift the Foreman Grill and grabbed it in the wrong place.  Yep, burned my fingers.  Derp.  I won't be leaving accurate fingerprints with those for a while.  

On a happier note, look who I found in the Christmas clearance area of the DG:

They're Ralph the Elf and Kris Moose.  (Kris got two pics, so you can see his little sign and his face.)  They gave me a happy, so they came home with me.  And they were 50% off, so I got them both for $7.50.  Cha Ching.  They've already more than paid for themselves in the joy they've brought me.

You were looking at the titles on my books, weren't you?  Heh, caught ya.  I do it, too.  If I see books in the backgrounds of pics, I always read the titles.  (To help out, Ralph is sitting next to Henry V in its box and original oil skin, Don Quixote also in its box, and a volume of Jack London stories.)  That bookcase is for my collectibles and special stuffs.  Here's how it looked before I rearranged it:

Sorry you can't read the titles.  I'll help you out there, but we'd be here all day. 

Tonight is New Year's Eve.  I'm holding out hope next year will be a better year.  For us all.

I spent a large part of yesterday working on spreadsheets.  The morning was for my own stuff.  In the afternoon, I got stuffs from the payjob and spent the rest of the day working on that.  By the time I was done, I was too pooped to write.  I'll rectify that today.

Hubs always warns me before he turns on the overhead light in here.  And I invariably look at him, which means I get a blast of light in the face when he hits the switch.  Derp.  I really need to stop doing that.  :blink blink:

Tomorrow, I should be taking down the Christmas decor.  We'll see if I have the gumption and whether I want the house to go back to being non-cheery.  I might leave Ralph and Kris out year 'round.  I definitely need to take down the tree and get my dining room table back. 

Here's wishing you the happiest New Year possible.  Hang in there.  :hugs:

Rambling at Year's End

Stuck in the between when the holiday is over and the new year hasn't begun, when I have no idea what day it is. (Worse than usual.)  The lost final week of a lost year.

At some point today, I have shopping to do.  They're predicting craptastic weather starting tomorrow, so the big decision is whether to go south and get groceries today and go north for cigarettes tomorrow, OR do both today.  Cigs are a half hour north.  Groceries are a half hour south.  Doing both today would put me on the road for 2 hours today.  Not that I haven't done that in the past.  Yo, former road-warrior here.  But it has been a while since I did hauls like that and these days, if I have to drive a lot, I'm a toad for the rest of the day.  By the time you see this to comment on it, the choice will have been made.  

At some point this week, I have to finish the spreadsheets.  Oh, I finished the ones for the pay-job yesterday - all twelve monthly ones, and three others input to throughout the year.  I also got some smaller personal sheets done - books acquired, the weight/activity log, the one where I keep track of my marketing.  I have the big Sales Totals spreadsheet and the Books Sales Data sheet that feeds it left to do there.  And I have to update the one where I keep all income and outgo for the writing biz.  That one makes me have a sad, but ignoring it doesn't make it go away.  Ignoring it would be like sticking my fingers in my ears and humming to avoid having to hear bad news.  It is what it is.

I also have to do my yearly wrap-up blog posts.  

And I should probably start thinking about taxes.  Blerg.

I have three books left to read by the end of the year to meet my updated goal of 90 books.  The one I'm reading now, though, is longer than I thought it would be, so I might not hit 90.  We'll see.

Eh, it's time to call the office.  I'll catch you all later.  What are you up to this week?  Getting ready for 2021 or trying to hide from it?

Sunday Update - Week 48

Well, it was a week.  Holiday weeks always mess me up.

I didn't do much writing this week.  Only about 700 words on a story I had no plans on writing.  But it wouldn't leave me alone.  Unfortunately, this seems to be the song for the week - loads of ideas but no real impetus to keep writing on any of them. Hell, last night I had to get out of bed and write down another idea.  Gah.  Plus, my unpublished books are screaming at me, too.  Silly brain is doing its rendition of short attention span theater.

Starting today, Dying Embers is free for 5 days.  Plus, Fertile Ground and Early Grave are 99c/99p each.  (All of them always free if you have a Kindle Unlimited subscription.)  So you can get the whole series for less than $2.  Fingers crossed this'll help end the year end with less of a whimper than the rest of 2020 showed me.

Tuesday is December, so I've been thinking about 2021 and you know what that means... spreadsheets for the new year.  I have my own to do and the pay-job ones to do.  Umm... yay.

Reading was slow last week, but I did finish a cute romance set in Canada and populated with people of Chinese heritage.  I like to mix it up a bit every once in a while.  It was way spicier than I usually like my romances, but you know me, I flip past that stuff anyway.  If you like spicy, and I know at least one reader here who does, you'll probably enjoy it.

In baking news, I made my pumpkin cheesecake.  So much yum.  I also did granola bars.  Hubs made another awesome Thanksgiving turkey.  He's so good at that.  

After Thanksgiving dinner, I took the turkey and broke it down.  Six quart freezer bags of meat and two gallon bags of bones, etc. for soup.  Yaha.  Meals I already paid for?  Oh, yeah, baby.

Other than that, not much went on here.  How was your week?

Sunday Update - Week 41

Not sure where the week went, but here we are again at another Sunday.

Okay, so most of the week disappeared into edit hell.  Lucky for me, edit hell is not pink*.  I am this close to having this edit pass done.  Like 177 pgs out of 189**.  I worked on it every day, but it wasn't a quick process.  I hope to have those last twelve pages done today.  Right now, the book is at 63390 words.  I don't expect that to change too much.  Unless the proofers tell me they hate the beginning.  

I'm thinking about doing a sale on the genie books next week.  I need to stop thinking about it and make it happen.  I'll schedule a sale for the model books once I know when I'll have this last one published.

Alas, with all the editing going on, reading fell by the wayside.  I didn't finish any books.  I am making progress on an Agatha Christie short story paperback, though.

In baking news, I made chocolate chip cookies and granola bars and zucchini bread.  We're full up on baked goods right now.  Yay.

On the activity front, I did manage to get something active done 6 out of 7 days.  Okay, some of the activities weren't super active, but they weren't 'sitting on my ass in front of the computer', so they count.  Weight:179.4.

The trees are starting to turn here.  And the bucks are starting to come around.  We seen three now.  The main one, Arthur, was looking kind of puffy faced on the right side last week.  This week, we know why.  He must've had an abscess.  And it burst.  He's kind of gnarly looking right now, but he's healing and it's not affecting his ability to eat.  Other than the gnarly face, he looks beautiful.

I have some spreadsheet work to do today - both my own and payjob stuff.  I also have a blurb to work on for a friend and one to work on for myself.  Then there's dusting and vacuuming and I probably should get a walk in there somewhere.

I think that's about it.  What about you?  How did your week go last week?

*You'd understand the pink thing if you read Ugly and the Beast.
**The number of manuscript pages does not reflect the number of published pages.

Labor Day? Oh, I'm Laborin', All Right.

It's Monday, but it isn't.  It's like Sunday Part Two, The Revenge of Sunday.  These Monday holidays wreck me.  Every damn time. 

So I spent a large hunk of the weekend working on a spreadsheet thing, and when I wasn't actually working on it, I was thinking about it.  Then I'd get an idea and head back here to the keyboard.  It's pushing me to give up, but I will not be defeated. 

The problem is I have two sets of data from two different entities I have to try and match up.  Well, actually, it's three sets of data because one of the entities sent it in one format and then sent additional data in a different format.  And I'm trying to make it all match.  It's hard to explain without getting into details I can't make public.  Suffice it to say, it's infinitely harder than it would be if all this was consistent. 

And I have to take it all and put it into a legible format to present to the boss.  Which I was trying to have to him by Monday, but Monday isn't Monday this week.  So I have an extra day to try and make it happen.  It still isn't looking good, but I'll give it the ol' college try.  (Cuz the new college try is half-assed, if you ask me.)

So, here I am, smoking too much with grainy eyes, getting ready to dive back in.  Labor Day?  Oh, I'm laborin', all right. 

What are you up to today?

Sunday Update - Week 35

Well, hell, it's Sunday again, isn't it?  I totally meant to work on this post yesterday and then didn't, but then again, I was deep in spreadsheet stuff and most of yesterday is a blur.  Most of the week is a blur right now, too, so let's see if I can rebuild what happened.  (Thank goodness for the log I keep.)

On the writing front, I finished AuGoWriMo inauspiciously, and started SeeMeWriMo with a bit of a whimper.  But I'm still in the game.  I wrote 24761 words in August but none of that in the last days.  I've written 2735 words so far this month.  And I've done 28% of this round of edits on CU.  I took yesterday off because spreadsheet stuff.

Not a lot of reading got done last week.  I can't decide what I want to read right now.  I tried that du Maurier, but meh.  I'll find something.  I did download what promises to be a fun cozy mystery, but right now, my Kindle is occupied with edits.

As for exercise and activity, I did four days out of seven.  All walking.  I made my best time ever going around the loop - 1 mile of hilly terrain in 22 minutes.  (I can do 1.6 miles in 29 minutes, but that's on my mostly flat, hard target walk.)  I kept the same pace I usually do, but I didn't have to stop on the uphills.  Go me.  Weight: 178.2.  That pound I lost to stress mostly came right back.  :shrug:

No baking this week, but I'm feeling a serious need for cake.  Maybe today.

No fishing either, but they're predicting a cool down soon, so there's hope.  I definitely wouldn't be fishing this weekend anyway.  Labor Day.  :shudder:  It's all peopley out there right now. 

I'm up to 2.4 million in play money at the poker site.  Would that it were real.  And I made a straight flush yesterday.  It's all luck of the draw, but still.  The skill comes in trying to extract as much money as possible from your opponents with the hand you have.  (And trying to avoid losing as much money as possible along the way.)

Like I said, I spent a lot of time yesterday on spreadsheet stuff.  Loads of typing stuff in and comparing stuff to make sure the numbers are right.  More of that today so I can finish this project and put it behind me.  At least the typing part is done.  Whew.

Well, it's time to start the day here.  What went in on your worlds last week?

Thursday This n That

How did it get to be Thursday again? 

I work on spreadsheets, one per principle per month.  As I was doing one yesterday, I thought to myself 'didn't I already do this one this month?', which had me scrambling to make sure I wasn't doing the same spreadsheet twice.  Nope.  Just the feeling of time passing too damn quickly, I guess.

Bleh.

Last night, I made stewp.  One can of beef stew, one can of beefy vegetable soup.  Stir them together, heat, and eat.  Thins out the stew, thickens up the soup.  Dinner for the two of us, and lunch for another day.  Very yummy and perfect for the weather we're having.

Speaking of weather, we didn't get it nearly as bad as they were predicting, so once again, I have loaded up on household stuffs and didn't really need to.  :shrug:  Better to have and not need than need and not have.  Of course, there's still today for more weather stuff.  I hope the trend of missing us continues.

A few days ago, one of our bucks came into the yard limping.  I hate to see the wild critters get hurt.  There's nothing I can do for any of them.  If I could, I'd go all Dr. Pol on their asses.  Make the buck a splint out of bushel baskets and cotton and tape.  Then he'd get all better.  On the upside, yesterday, he wasn't limping as badly.  Here's hoping he just twisted his knee and it's on the mend.

Okay, that's it for me.  I know it's a short one, but it's morning and the coffee hasn't quite kicked in yet.  What's on your radar today?

Sunday Update - Week 2

Good morning!  I hope it's awesome wherever you are.  And if it's not, I hope it will be awesome soon.

The writing isn't going as gangbusters as I would like, but it is going.  I'm over 10K on Cinder Ugly now.  I'm not sure I like where it's at right now, which isn't helping, but I told myself to get over it.  Write through it.  Get to a place where you do like what's going down on the page and you can always fix the crappy parts later.

I contacted my cover artist and she's removing the cat from Ugly and the Beast's cover.  I'll miss it, but it was necessary.   I should have a new cover that's pretty much the same as the old cover, sans cat, in the next couple weeks.  Woohoo.

Yesterday, I set up sales into the first week of March.  Starting Wednesday with a sale on the Dennis Haggarty Mystery novels and running pretty much through 3/7, there should be something on sale or free from my list.  I'll let you know about the sales as they happen.  I haven't set up any advertising yet.  We'll see what the budget looks like farther down the road.

I also finally sat down with the spreadsheet that details income and outgo for this writing business.  I hadn't updated 2019 since last January's numbers, so I did that and then made a sheet for 2020.  I might talk more about that tomorrow.  It's kind of depressing, which is why I hadn't updated it.

In reading news, it was a pretty good week.  Three books read and a couple DNFs.  I'm ahead on my goal, which is always good.

No baking this week.  I should be making granola bars sometime this week, though.

On the activity front, I did something active 5 out of 7 days.  It was all housework of some kind - washing windows, scrubbing the kitchen sink, cleaning the light fixtures, dusting the ceilings, etc.  I've lost a pound since the beginning of the year.  Unfortunately, when I stepped on the scale after the holidays, I had gained some weight, so I'm now at 181.6.

I've been an entire week without ice cream now and I ate the last of the potato chips this past week, so I won't be buying anymore of those.  Instead of ice cream, I'm eating vanilla yogurt with canned fruit.  It's an okay substitute.  I'm also trying to eat smaller portions of everything else.  Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

Today, I'll be making chili, finishing the light fixture cleaning project, and washing the floors in the sun room.   ( I was just out there and it's too cold to wash floors out there today.)

The bucks are losing their antlers.  We now have one we call Half-Rack and one called No-Rack.  It's that time in the cycle.  As always, we hope to find a dropped antler or two somewhere on the property.  Haven't yet, but there's always hope.

Friday a storm blew through and dumped 3 inches of rain on us.  It also dropped a couple tornadoes within like 90 minutes of here.  Then Saturday, we got nano-hail.  Tiny clear balls of ice dropped on us for a while.  They were bouncing everywhere.  Maybe a half inch of accumulation.  What fun.  I stayed inside for all of it.  Actually, I haven't stepped outside since Wednesday, when I went to Wallyworld.  =oO

Okay, I think that's everything.  How did your second week of 2020 go?

Sunday Update - Week 52

That's it.  The last full week of 2019.  We just have to make it through three more days and slide into 2020.  Not that I really think it simply becoming 2020 will make everything magically better.  But it's a good starting point - new year and all that.  It's a place to try.  It's a hope for better things.

Laying in bed last night, I thought of some writerly things, enough so that I had to write the ideas down to get them out of my head.  I have a sort of plan for this week.  Not talking about it until it's set in cement, though.  I think talking about it could be part of what's harshing my groove, man.

I've been doing some online marketing this week.  Dying Embers was free Wed-Sat.  Fertile Ground and Early Grave are 99c still through tomorrow night.  No paid advertising, of course, so the numbers are low, but I did move some copies.

There was Christmas, of course.  It ended up being pretty much like any other day except for the turkey.  Copious amounts of turkey.  I made baked turkey subs last night.  So good.

Except for the subs, no baking.  I have to make granola bars today, though, because Hubs is out.

The day after Christmas, I drove up north to get license plates for the Jeep.  I'm not a fan of driving north.  It's all hills and curves going that way.  Anyway, before I hit the DMV, I had to hit the assessor's office because you can't get plates until the personal property taxes are paid on the vehicle you wish to have plates for.  Just as well.  They're due by the end of the year anyway.  Unfortunately, a lot of people were there paying their property taxes, so I got to stand in line.  Paid them, then stood in a shorter line at the DMV.  Luckily, they're in the same building.  Just a walk across the hall and then down a hall.  So, that's done for another two years.  Yay.

While I was up north, I stopped at McDonalds.  Not an odd thing in most people's lives, but I haven't been to a McDonalds in years, and I haven't been inside one in easily a decade.  And of course, their coffee was gross.   So I spent Friday recovering from that.  Got a lot of reading done.

Speaking of reading, I did a lot of it last week.  And as of last night, I am this close to meeting my reading goal.  One book to go and I'm 60% through that.  And it's a really good one.  Yay for finishing the year on a good book!

Spent some time working on spreadsheets for the new year.  Everything should be in place so that when I need them after Wednesday, they'll be ready.  With a few minor adjustments, of course.  Always there are adjustments.

Let's not talk about exercise and weight, eh?  We'll hit that again in the new year. 

I also spent time last week working on a wrap-up post for my reading in 2019.  You'll see that on Thursday instead of my usual this n that.  I need to work on some other wrap-up things.  Put 2019 to bed and all that.

Okay, that's it for my Week 52.  How were things for you last week?

Thursday This n That

I spent most of yesterday doing spreadsheets, so I was kind of a toad.  I stopped for a while to take a walk.  Then I stopped for lunch and a nap.  Then I took a break to watch some of The Chase and do dinner.  I finished up after dinner.  It's days like that that show me what I could do writing-wise if I put my mind to it.  Of course, spreadsheets use an entirely different part of the brain, but it's the endurance I need to work on overall.

Yesterday, I was thinking about NaNo again.  I even went to the site and logged in a book called No Freakin' Clue.  LOL.  And then I looked at the last time I did NaNo.  It was kind of shocking. More about that tomorrow.

There's a dog at the animal rescue I really want.  His name is Theo and he looks like a super cool dog.  But right now, I've got all I can handle with Geriatric Cat.  I'll just settle for rooting for Theo to find a nice home.  It's what I do.

For some reason, the fish aren't biting.  The local reports are that fishing is slow.  Some dudes we talked to out at the lake said fishing was slow.  At least it's not just me.

The World Series is going on right now.  I predicted the Astros in 5, but since the Nationals took the first game, I'm glad I didn't actually put any money on that prediction.  As of typing this post so its ready for you now, the second game was tied 2-2.  Maybe the Nationals just want it more.  Since the Yankees aren't in it, I don't really care who wins.  (Update: The Nats won game 2, too.  Whomped 'em.  So much for me predicting the future.  Of course, if I could do that, I'd be rich.)

Still no eagle sightings.

Okay, time to get your day started.  Go have some coffee or something.  I know I will.  And leave a little this n that on your way.  ;o)

My Reading Spreadsheet

I thought I'd share stuff about my reading spreadsheet today.  Yes, I have a reading spreadsheet.  Created it just this year to keep track of what I've downloaded, how much it cost me, where I got it from, and whether I actually read it.

Here's a screen capture of what it looks like:

Pink indicates books I've finished.  Blue is DNF.  Downloaded but unread is white, but you can't see it here.  I also use green for the book I'm currently reading.  That was on the hardcopy tab when I did this screen capture.  That tab also has gray rows for books I bought for research or books I bought in error (duplicates, etc.) that I don't intend on reading.  Here, I hid the title column to keep a measure of anonymity for the authors I DNF''d.  And I blanked out a couple things on the Source column that would've given away too much info - like the title of the first book in the series.

Most of my finds are from book newsletters I subscribe to.  Some are from FB groups I belong to.  If a person suggests a book or I picked up the book because I'm familiar with its author, their name would go there. :ahem, Silver:

I debated hiding the money column, but :shrug:  It is what it is.  I've spent just over $60 this year on books - 2/3rds of that on ebooks.  Pathetic amount, but things happen.  I do spent money where I need to.  The first book on the sheet there was $4.99 - a book 2 I really wanted bad.  So, I'm not a total Scrooge.  And I try to review the free books to help the authors sell more, so there's that. 

I probably should've filled in the dates of the books I read so I can keep track of how long it takes me to read a book after I've downloaded it.  Maybe next year.

So, as you can see, I've picked up 139 new books this year - 90 of which are ebooks.  I've finished reading 92 books so far.  I've DNF'd 42 books - 33 ebooks and 9 hardcopy.  And I have 7 unread new ebooks on my Kindle.  (Unread hardcopies?  Let's not be silly counting those, k?)

Yeah, this is probably way more information than any general reader wants to know or cares about.  I started this because figuring out how much money I'm spending on books at the end of each year was a total pain in the ass - going through receipts and trying to remember if I got a receipt and well, bleh.  It also helps me figure out which marketing sources are a better bang for my advertising buck.  If I'm not finding anything good on a newsletter, then I have to wonder how effective it is for selling my own books.  The same with figuring out if I'm consistently DNFing books from a particular source.  If readers aren't getting what they need from a source, they'll stop using that source, which makes them ineffective for my marketing purposes.  There are several sources I won't advertise with anymore based on this data.

I'll probably do a year-end wrap up of all of this data, but I thought this was a good time to look at it all.  Only 12 weeks left of the year, folks.  And I'm so ready for 2020 to start.

Do you keep track of how many books you read?  Do any of you keep track of anything else about your reading?  Or am I the only weird one?