Sunday Update - 2026 Week 26

 Halfway through the year.  Woot.  It's been a better year so far than a lot of years, even with the Iran thing, so I'm calling it a win.

Writing last week wasn't great, but it was better than the week before, so yay.  I ended up adding 2218 words to Shroudlands #2 (Song of Dream and Dragon?  Dream of Demon and Shroud?  Song of Mage and Shroud? Meh.), putting it at 40970 words total.  I'll try to do better this week.  I really need to stop overthinking it and just get the damn dirty draft done.

Marketing was lame.  FB started the week by being turdy.  And it didn't help that this week sucked for sleeping, which meant I woke up last every damn day, which makes getting those important first-thing-in-the-morning posts impossible.  Anyway, I moved 19 copies of Thicker Than Water.  :sad trombone:  I don't think I'll do any marketing this week.  

Don't ask me about reading.  

In baking news, I made a batch of Outrageous Chocolate Chip Cookies on Sunday.  We tore through those by Friday.  Yesterday, I tried a different recipe for cookies.  I tried halving the recipe, fucked it up, and ended up with what I'm referring to as Retard Cookies.  They're tasty and we'll eat them, but they're kinda like a cross between a regular cookie and a florentine.  I also made a pizza yesterday and the crust was not right. Not as far off as those cookies, but still.  It must've been brainfart baking day.

On the activity front, I did active things on 4 days - yardwork, cleaning, gardening, groceries.  (And making pizza counts as exercise, so there.)  Weight: 178.4 - yep, lost a pound last week.  Imagine if I could lose a pound a week.  I'd be at my target weight by the end of the year.  Heh, like that'll happen.

Hubs just came in from feeding the deer and informed me that we have 4 fawns down by the pans.  Yay.  I love fawn times.  

Gardening... I harvested Pedro this week.  He produced 6 small potatoes.  (We ate them, sliced thin and sautéed with chicken and mushrooms. Yum.)  I checked the other potato plants and no more potatoes.  Several of those plants got pushed back into the ground in hopes they'll continue to grow.  Fingers crossed.  Nothing else is ready to harvest.  Nothing is blooming at the moment.  I think I need to re-dirt the tomatoes or refeed them.  The peppers and the carrots are doing good, so yay.

My path project is coming along.  I'm about halfway through weeding the front rock path than runs along the flower bed.  Meanwhile, Hubs has been weeding the whole driveway and he's almost done.  He works harder than I do, but then again, he's a dude.  He said he'd finish my project when he gets done with the driveway.  ENABLER!  Anyway, that usually gives me the kick in the ass I need to get 'er done, so expect to see that in my update next week.  

And speaking of that, the day's not getting any cooler.  Time to get dressed, get covered in bug spray, and get digging.  Have a great day and an awesome week.  See y'all soon.  Peace out.

Thursday This n That

Hey, it's still Thursday.  

I actually thought tomorrow was Thursday and I was stopping to set up my post for tomorrow all proud of myself... until I realized that it was already Thursday.  Derp.

Tonight, I was really good and made fish for dinner with a side salad.  About 30 minutes after I ate, I made myself a chicken salad sandwich (on a hot dog bun because that's how I roll, baby) because no way was I going to make it through the night on tilapia and salad.  I am satiated now.  Yay.  On the upside, I don't feel like eating a bowl of ice cream tonight.

I think the eagles have gone, but the exchange is songbirds are arriving and the air is filled with happy.

Another think... I think wrens are building a nest in a work van that hardly anyone ever uses anymore.  I hope it gets driven before the birds lay any eggs.

My neighbor used to leave his mailbox open so he'd know when the mail got delivered.  Wrens decided it would be a perfect place to build a nest and we watched them fly back and forth all day delivering weeds and sticks.  The next day, the neighbor had to clean all that stuff out, which was pretty funny.  Even funnier was that the wrens starting rebuilding almost as soon as his back was turned.  Day after day, they would work on the nest and later, he would take all the material out.  The wrens finally got the hint and left.  The neighbor never did learn to close his mailbox.  One day, a woman moved in with him and she started closing the mailbox. 

I love Amazon.  You can get all sorts of disparate items in one place.  Tonight, I ordered a new bra and a 22-pack of Carnation Instant Breakfast.  I wonder what the person putting that package together is going to think.  ROFL

Carnation Instant Breakfast - chocolate flavored - is perfect in a cup of coffee.  Screw milk.  Dump the packet into the bottom of a large coffee mug and fill it with java.  If you've been here long enough, you may remember it was my beverage of choice years back.  I called it 'Breakfast of Champions'.  I'm going back to drinking it because I don't think I'm getting enough nutrition and by the time lunch rolls around I'm so hungry I could eat my shoes.

By the way, the low-salt diet thing?  Screw that.  I thought I was putting a lot of salt on my food until I actually measured a 1/4 teaspoon of the stuff and dumped it into the palm of my hand.  And thus, I learned that's about how much I put into a pot of water for noodles.  The minuscule amount I shake onto a burger is piddlin'.  And I don't even use straight salt for that.  I use Lowery's which has less sodium than salt anyway.  Piffle.  

I'm hovering around 160 now.  Sometimes a little over, sometimes a little under.  And I'm okay with that.  It's 22 pounds gone since last June.  Hell, it's enough of a weight loss that I needed another new bra, so win-win.

Okay, I think that's enough out of me for one sitting.  What's on your radar today?

Sunday Update - Week 9

 Well, here we are again.  Thanks for continuing to stop by even though I am quite possibly the most boring person on the internet right now.

Let's see what I did last week...

I did our taxes.  I wasn't going to actually submit them until April, but I wanted to do them to get an idea of how much money we were going to have to scrape together this year.  Turned out it was nowhere near what we feared it would be, so we just went ahead and finished them.  

The low-salt diet thing?  I think I went too far, so I'll be slowly adding sodium back into my diet.  No major issues, just a 'huh, how about that' kind of thing.  It's all good, baby.  For the record, you actually do need about 1500 mg of sodium a day at least.  It was an interesting experiment, though.  I was unaware how much sodium is in everyday things - like breakfast cereal, for instance.  Oh holy night, that's a lot of salt and it seems like there's more salt in the sugary cereal than in the non-sugary stuff.  Blerg.

I didn't do hardly anything in the activity realm this past week.  I did a smidgen of cleaning and junk like that.  Now that the weather is getting warmer, I really need to start walking regularly again.  Anyway, weight: 160.2.  I've lost 21.2 pounds since I started working.  And 4 pounds since the start of the year.  I'm up about a pound and a half since the last time I did my weight, but I think that previous low weight was due to the salt thing.  I'm back to retaining some water.  Which is okay.

At work, I have switched almost entirely to coffee and water.  No more sodas.  Okay, maybe a soda every now and then.  And hey, coffee and water are free.  Yay.

In case you wondered why I didn't do a Reading Wrap-Up again this week, I'm still reading the same book I was reading before.  Nothing to see here, folks.

My hyacinths are getting ready to bloom. The lilac is covered with tiny leaves.  Spring is a comin', folks.

And that's about it for me.  What's up in your world?

Sunday Update - Week 4

 Fair warning: I don't have a whole lot to talk about today, so this might be boring.

I spent last week laid up for the most part with a head cold.  I'm still not 100% over it.  It's lingering.  And now Hubs has it.   Weee. 

Sick or not, things had to be done, so I ran errands yesterday.  Walmart was Walmart.  I picked up necessities and stuff to combat this cold.  Then I stopped at the feed store and picked up supplies for the critters.  I got home and unloaded the groceries.  Hubs unloaded the feed.  Then we spent the rest of the day laying around.  

A brief thought on Robitussin Honey... not worth the extra money you pay for better tasting cough syrup.  And yeah, that's the only reason I bought it.  I took some last night to try and kick the last of this stuff in the ass.  Now I have medicine head like you wouldn't believe.  I could've gotten the same for about $5 less a bottle. 

If you checked in yesterday, you saw I didn't read much last week.  I got about 138 pages into a book that I DNF'd.  One would think that since I was home and sick, I would've been reading a lot.  Nope.  Wearing glasses was not an option.  They sat on the bridge of my nose, weighing on my sinuses and making me sneeze.  Which was part of the fun during that short span I was at the office.  

Don't even ask about activity.  Bleh.  However, being sick has reduced my weight.  Weight: 160.0.  Yep, lost about 4 pounds in 10 days.  I do not recommend this as a weight loss plan, though.  I expect that I'll go back up again after this.  We'll see.  On a brighter note, I learned yesterday that despite my lack of activity, I can still heft around a 40 pounds bag of birdseed.  Go me.

I worked about 20 hours last week.  Monday, half of Tuesday, and Friday.  Friday was playing catch-up for the days I missed.  And there are still things left undone which are running around in my head like a hamster on crack.

The big snowstorm they predicted last week ended up dumping about 2-4 inches of the white stuff.  So, totally not the 4-8 or 6-12 they'd predicted days earlier.  It was mostly gone by the time I went to work on Friday. Yay.  

My month of Ancestry ended on Wednesday.  I learned a lot this time around - mostly about people closer in the tree.  Cousins and whatnot.  The best part was talking to Mom and hearing her stories about people.  (Might not have been the best part of her... me rattling on endlessly about genealogy.)  I got to hear about the guy who worked as a clown, marketing cookies in the metropolitan Detroit area.  And the great aunt my grandmother hated, who apparently stunk.  And how my grandfather built the addition on the house she grew up in.  (I googled the address, so I could see it, and then we talked about her growing up there.)  Dudes, if you still have older people in your family that you can talk to about this stuff, do it now before it's too late.  I don't have my dad to talk to and I lost all his stories.  Thank goodness, Mom remembers his stuff as well as her own.  Also, thank goodness Mom's memory is still as sharp as a chef's knife.  

Okay, I think that's about it.  Maybe this post wasn't as boring as I thought it would be when I started.  And the medicine head is going away, too.  Yay.  Have a great day everyone.  I need to hit the Dollar General today because, wouldn't you know it, I forgot to buy Kleenex.  Derp.

How was your week?

2022 - A Year in Review

 Yep, 2022 is over. Time to go over what happened. And yes, I still have a flair for stating the obvious, so that didn't change with the new year. LOL

Let's see... 

I started out 2022 working on getting my 17th book ready for publication.  Song of Storm and Shroud hit the electronic shelves on 3/21/22 to a chorus of crickets.  Huge thanks to the 3 people who bought a copy.  

In all of 2022, I sold 30 books in 2022 for a whopping $54.  I would've sold more if I'd had the money for advertising, but I had no money. Which leads me to...

The big news of the year, of course, was the fact that I went back to work full time after an 18 year hiatus.  I am an office grunt.  I answer phones, file stuff, provide general backup for people whose jobs are more important than mine, etc.  The rented mule. The corporate mushroom. A busy bee.  The job is accomplishing it's intended purpose and that's all that matters.  I like it about 90% of the time, which is more than I've liked several other jobs I've had in the past.  

I had hoped that once I settled into my job, I'd have time to write.  I didn't count on the fact that once I get home, I don't have the energy or the will to write in the couple hours I'm home before bedtime.  My brain has entirely shifted away from anything creative.  I still hope to write again, but I wouldn't hold my breath while waiting on another book if I were you.  You'll turn blue and fall over.

In weight and activity news, I started the year at 182.2 pounds and ended the year at 165.2 - 17 pounds lost.  I wish I could say that was due to being active and eating less, but it's due to stress and eating less. I'm not home to graze.  I eat lunch - usually yogurt, a cheese stick, some ham chunks, and grapes - and then dinner and a bowl of ice cream.  I keep a bag of mixed nuts and a bag of Hershey's minis in my desk, and munch on those from time to time.  (I hand out candy bars to co-workers more than I eat them, though.)  I did have this great idea that I would walk on my lunch break (30 minutes), but I've only done that once.  Thus, my walking for the entire year was only 33.65 miles.  No biking at all.  My biggest activity these days is cleaning the office at work, once a month-ish.  I really need to up my activity level for 2023 so I don't turn into an atrophied lump of meat.

Tomorrow, work is having a big in-house thang wherein they go over the year before and address ways to improve and goals for the year ahead.  I had to fill out a sheet on my goals, etc.  I'm a grunt.  I have no goals except to do the best job I can do with the limited resources and control a grunt tends to have.  I mean, I'm 52 years old and post-retired.  What goals am I supposed to have?  Try not to fuck anything up too bad so I can keep my job.  (No, I did not put that on the form, but my bosses knows where my blog is at, so they're probably reading this anyway.  :waves:  Hi, guys.  Don't worry, no one around here reads this blog except you.)  I think I wrote 'continued improvement in all aspects of my work' - or if I didn't write that, I should've.  

Okay, I think that's it.  Not a whole lot of action in my year.  As for the year ahead?  Well, I don't have any goals or resolutions for the new year.  Keep working.  Keep breathing in and out.  Keep progressing toward Hubs' and my combined goals. I think we're thinking we can put in a wood stove by the end of the year.  

How was your 2022?  Do you have goals for 2023?  

Sunday Update - Week 47

 At least I think it's Week 47.  :shrug:  Anyway...

How did the week shake out?  Hmm...

Well, we started out last week with a walk in the woods.  First time since the Spring, so yay.  Nothing major to report down in there.  All the paths are leaf covered.  Not much new deadfall.  

I read some last weekend and finished two books.  I finished another one yesterday.

I didn't bake anything, which was weird because, for the first time, we had Thanksgiving with no dessert.  :sadface:  Well, I did have ice cream, but I always have ice cream.  Hubs roasted a most excellent turkey, though.  

In addition to our walk in the woods, I got active on Friday when we cleaned and decorated the office.  Total exer-cleaning day there.  I haven't weighed myself since Thanksgiving, but at last check... Weight: 158.8.  I haven't been in the 150s since like 2006.  

Speaking of weight loss, my new sweat pants arrived.  They fit.  But it's weird wearing sweats that fit now, so they seem too tight.  What I really need is a pair with a large waist and XL legs.  Ma legs need room to breathe, doncha know.  And before you remind me about the drawstring, there comes a point when no matter how much you pull on the drawstring, your pants still fall down.

Okay, so cleaning and decorating, I got to work at 7:30, slapped some Christmas music on, and got right to it sweeping.  I started on the right, and swept every room but one.  (And that's because the other gal was doing her own office.)  Then I dusted damn near everything.  I took breaks to answer the phones (they weren't ringing that much) and to do a few actual office things that needed doing.  After lunch, we decorated.  Then I went back to work on that big box of filing.  Then the mail arrived, so I dealt with that.  And then I got back to filing - which I finished with a few minutes to spare before clock-out time. Yay.  The office is so merry and bright.  And tidy!  (I still want to wash the windows, but cleaning time is over.)

I spent yesterday reading and relaxing.  And recovering from my exer-cleaning. Who-waa, I found muscles I'd forgotten I had.  We're also working our way through all those turkey leftovers.  Yay.  Today will be more of them same.

How was your week?  Did you have a nice Thanksgiving?

Sunday Update - Late, Too. Oops.

In my defense, I was working on fighting off the crud yesterday.  Since I seem to have won, it's was worth it.  I didn't actually have it yet, I could just feel it coming on.  The best offense is a good defense and all that, doncha know.  

Now, let's see... what did I do last week?  I worked.  That's a given.  I read some.  Naturally.  The rest is a blur.

As for the weekend, I read a lot.  Finished two books.  Yay.  You'll read more about that on Saturday.

I also went into the woods.  Yay.  We were looking around at what may have occurred in there since the last time it was cold.  The good news is that not much looks different.  Not that many newly dead trees.  Not much more new deadfall.  We were also looking for the back neighbor's property pin.  We know where it's supposed to be - 30ft south of where our old pin is.  It wasn't there.  Perhaps it wasn't surveyed when she bought that extra stretch.  :shrug:  

That's about it for activity for the week.  I have now lost 23.4 pounds since the beginning of the year (22.6 since I started work).  Hubs says he can really see it, especially in my face.  I attribute this to stress and eating a whole lot less than I used to.  This has happened before.  The job I had in Florida, where I got down to 110 from like 150.  And, of course, after my accident when I went from like 160 to 120 and then had a devil of a time putting weight back on.  

Of course, I'm getting to where none of my pants fit.  

Speaking of pants, I ordered two pair of new sweat pants.  I only have one pair that doesn't slide off anymore.  Drawstrings and elastic can only do so much.  =o\  Thankfully, I bought plenty of work pants in smaller sizes so I'm okay there, but I need to hit the thrift stores again before these start wanting to drop around my ankles.

And that's about it for me.  Pretty boring week here.  How was yours?