Warhead On Legs

Okay, that was a semi-productive morning. Day jobligations were met, signups for panels were done for Dragon*Con and now I really do have to watch Sense8. And god knows if I'll get on anything but Haven, given how popular the other shows are. But hey. Amazon Prime sale has been investigated and found deeply wanting, so at least there's that. And some writing was done. Notes were copied over from Stephen Blackmoore's twitter in the event that I end up writing this short story, otherwise I suppose I will quietly let him forget about that.

I still don't understand how this became my life. Being an Authority, however small, on TV shows. Talking casually with authors, some of whom I've read and loved since my youth. What the hell.

Productive morning turned into an exhausting day at work, dear god, one of our usual production weavers called up with an order, which meant hauling down bins and bins of yarn and packing it all up and shipping it out. And I don't mind so much but oof, exhausting.

Which turned into an exhausting but very fun capoeira lesson, we did some warm-ups and then put some moves together into a set of actionable sweeps and kicks and more kicks. Which is to say we paired off and took turns just standing there and being tapped by feet. It was fun. Puck, which I'm calling the one teacher because he fucking is, I would not be surprised if in some AU of my life he turned out to be nonhuman, kept pushing me by pretty much dancing around either to try and infuriate me or just to present a more difficult target. Weird. But things felt like they were happening more smoothly, so I'm happy for that.

I am so falling behind in Nano. I might try and catch up over the next several days and even get ahead some, but still, so falling behind. The last week's word count, yet, is 17, 289 which is not damn bad. And my exercise routine is pretty solid, though I might add some releve to the barre work.

Wednesday Reads! (On a thursday, oops. I never did post this, did I.) Tam Lin continues, because of reasons and also because of talking with Pamela Dean about it. Which is really kind of cool, it's like having a director's commentary on the book. It's a lot of fun, even though I need to catch up with two entries tomorrow, but still. I also finished Pyramids and gave up on the Kevin J Anderson book, it's just not catching me. Which means I need to finish the rest of the shorter material and do my damn Hugo's voting. Over the weekend and the next week, I guess. Um. What else did I read... oh! Yes. Hawkeye vol 1 and Captain Marvel vol 1 by Matt Fraction and Kelly Sue DeConnick respectively, because they were on cheapass sale at Amazon because of comic-con. Hawkeye amused me and Captain Marvel made me cry in the good way. It was good. I also picked up another book at the library because of reasons, and I need to finish that probably pretty soon.

If stress caused ulcers I would have so many of them right now, let me tell you. (No, stress doesn't cause ulcers. From what I vaguely remember stress causes shitty eating habits which exacerbate ulcers. Bacteria causes ulcers. I think.) Work Shenanigans still have not resolved, I remain ready to throw up at a moment's notice and resisting both comfort buying of comfort foods and comfort eating of what things I have available. I still hate everything.

(I will sum up Work Shenanigans when it has an end date in the interests of only doing it once, but let's just say it amounts to a threat to financial security.)

(.... OH HEY THAT'S A PHONE CALL ALL RIGHT I will start summing up.)

So, starting about a week ago the boy was told not to come in to work, he's on suspension pending an investigation. Then bits of information start dribbling in, whodunnit (someone in a more individual position of responsibility who he's already fought with) and what the specific accusation is, and what the range of seriousness of consequences are, assuming they find him guilty. The last time this happened, since it has happened once before, they dismissed for lack of evidence and because if I remember this right someone came up and went "Uh, dude fell, and [boyfriend] almost broke his back trying to catch him." If I'm not conflating incidents. This time, though, it lasted for days. And days. And his entire shift is making dire pronouncements about how this is fucking railroading, even the co-workers on his shift who he doesn't get along with say it's railroading, his boss is fucking livid and ready to raise hell on his behalf, and he's pulling his stuff together to see if he can go get hired at the VA or a different place.

Well, they finally told him he can go back to work tonight. Sweet Mother and blood. So we continue to be a two paycheck household, I have no idea if he's still on the same floor or shift or if they're moving him or if all of this was some behind the scenes stuff that has more to do with whodunnit than him and we just got our nerves racked and spitted for nothing. And he's going to continue to look for a job elsewhere because everything about this place says it's going straight to hell. He was talking earlier today about a guy who tried to stick it out and get his retirement pay because he had another year to go till his retirement and his pension and about two years of life expectancy, thanks cancer, and they fucking forced him out early so they wouldn't have to pay his pension to his widow. Yeah. The boy said he should have seen the writing on the wall then, but. I don't know. Anyway. That is the Work Shenanigans that have been going on. And now I will have less imaginary ulcers and real stress fevers and exhaustion, and more comfort food, which is in this case sushi. And capoeira.

Seriously, it's amazing how much better I feel NOT being ridiculously stressed. And it's also kind of funny how the boy texts me with updates, I text back "ok mac and cheese for dinner?" and I get home and am all "Yeah, I need comfort food." and he's all "I figured that when you said mac and cheese for dinner." It's like he knows me well or something. (For the new crowd, we've been together for... thirteen? fourteen? years.)

Okay. So, and in the line of a small victory to go with my big victory, I learned how to bend conditional formatting to my will in Google spreadsheets today. It's a small thing, but as tied up in knots as I've been I'll take it. Capoeira was good (can you tell I'm writing this over the day as I have room to breathe?) and sushi was tasty, and now I'm eyeballing things online and in my budget to see what types of cloth pads I want to get and sizes and things. Because that's coming up way too fast. Meh. On the plus side, still on the drugs that make the periods very light. And short. I can live with light and short.

I'm so tired right now it's amazing I remembered to do my languages, and I don't know if there will be a full day's Nano after all, but we'll see. At least one source of stress will hopefully be off the shoulders for the duration by, oh, I should know by tomorrow morning? Maybe by bed tonight. We'll see. This whole past fucking week, I swear. That's not even touching on what I heard from Mom when I called her to sob on her metaphorical shoulder. Nothing that touches the overall family but she's been having a shitty week, too.

Wednesday Reads: I'm... I may actually abandon this Kevin J Anderson book. I'm going to give it till maybe 20% in (since I'm reading on Kindle lol what am page numbers) but so far I've done three and a half chapters and I have no real attachment to anyone. Artemis Fowl was entertaining, though. And probably a good thing to have during a week of stress.

This week's word count is yet to be determined as I haven't finished writing for the day yet. Superhero training is coming along, I think I may have the one kick who I'm not even trying to spell here down enough to practice on my own! Woo! But oh god I need more upper leg strength. And core strength. I need it yesterday, ideally, but I'll keep working on that.

Weekly Word Count is 10,237 oh god so sleepy.

There's about 1/4 of an ounce of blue felting wool on my desk. Bright blue, like Cookie Monster. I have no idea what it's doing there.

So, okay, I did not get as much sleep as I wanted to last night, thanks to a 4 am sneezing fit, but I did manage to roll over and get back to sleep relatively quickly. The end result being while I don't feel as rested as I like, my traitorous brain is not attempting to convince me I'm unwanted, unintelligent, or fat. Which is kind of a feat considering I bolted down two slices of pizza for lunch, which should have made me feel fat but instead made me feel like I could haul around 25lb boxes of basket supplies. (And then again I was hauling around 50lb bags of manure this weekend with surprisingly little difficulty except that they're very big and I am very small. So maybe it's less made me feel and more gave me energy to. Something.)

The upside to this is that even if I didn't get as much sleep, I was still up at about six after some weirdass vivid dream I don't remember but there was action, and I was able to get a good almost 600 words written before I went to work. And then another 400 at work and after a bit of a struggle I'm finishing out the week at 7,040, which is just on target. And then I need to finish out the month at least even, but that's 5k over the next three days, that's way do-able.

I also may have inadvertently started another story in a whole fucking separate world, and I have no idea what that's about. Something to do with an Archer and a Magician who end up in a relationship, both of them men, the Archer was hired to protect the Magician and something else is going on under that that I don't have the energy to untangle tonight. Hell with that.

So, Wednesday Reads is a bit sparse this week, I finished the first Ransome book and am on the second, while someone *cough*lireavue*cough* read ahead of me and devoured the whole thing. Not that I can really blame her, but still! ;) So hopefully over the next week I can finish that and maybe read a couple of these books of folklore that I have. Most of the folklore should hopefully be quick.

Exercise is going well, making me routinely sweaty and achy and exhausted, which is a good sign that I'm working the muscles and not just going through the motions. I do need to put in a couple extra exercises because at least one of the ab exercises I put in wasn't doing so well. And remember my stretches. Better the last night than the last several weeks? But still. Other than that... no, that's pretty much it, I think.

Okay, judging by the fallout just on Twitter, I'm rather glad I've had my head under a pile of work for the last few days with regard to this Daily Show and now Patton Oswalt kerfuffle. I have no idea what happened apart from a comedian tweeted a number of stupid, hurtful things that he may or may not have grown and changed for the better from a while back? And said comedian is now going to host the Daily Show where at least he won't write his own material, which is not to say he won't have to occasionally ad lib. And somehow Patton Oswalt is involved.

... the part that's lodging itself most in my head about this is, 1/53? Did he actually type that rant up, break it up into twitter chunks and COUNT how many tweets he would need? Seriously? That's way more effort than I would have put into it.

I did sadly discover that no, the Khan Academy notes and the edX physics notes are not compatible in the long term, mostly because the edX physics notes were much more algebra heavy and less concept heavy, and there's no good way for me to integrate them in any kind of orderly fashion. And it has to be an orderly fashion otherwise my brain goes nuts trying to make sense of the data. So, cutting those pages out of the notebook and starting fresh it is. Not that that's a hardship, just where do I find the time.

She said, while eyeballing the chemistry lessons and pondering starting that up. Heh. At least there's no deadline here. At any rate, more notebooks. The frugal, careful courtesan in me is suggesting ways to pretty up my cheap composition books in which I'm taking my notes. The shiny fucking magpie is going get all new notebooks if you're going to start fresh, you deserve it. I think what I really need is spangly blue contact paper, in the end. Because I'm a ravenclaw, I demand blue for my schoolwork.

I will treat myself to maybe a new set of pens, though. The boyfriend keeps stealing mine.

Wednesday Reads

I still haven't finished or even much gone back to The Anteater of Death, which is sad because I think it'd be a quick read once I do. But first I have a pack of library books to get through. This weekend was more home improvement than library books, though. Also crawling my way through a new laptop and a pile of sleep deprivation for no apparent reason. But I did finally finish Shadow Gate by Kate Elliott, yes, still working my way through her back catalog, and all I can say is NOOOOOOOO YOU KILLED [REDACTED] YOU HEARTLESS WENCH. I liked that snarky fucker. Poop.

Project Paint the Bedroom is not going nearly as fast as anyone had hoped, mostly because the paint over wallpaper over god knows what is slow as fuck to peel off. Unlike in the craft room and the downstairs where it was coming off in strips. And after that comes the sanding and the replastering and then we can paint, and we only really have time to do it on the weekends and ugh. So much ugh. Alternate weekends, mind, because the boy works nights. Oh well. Once we get it done, it'll be done, and then we can put color up and forget about it for the next twenty years or however long it took Mom to repaint my bedroom. Though that was probably because I'd painted it black-with-skeletons, red, and white-with-multiple-graffiti. I'm not even kidding, she let me write all over the walls, and at one point I distinctly remember because I had Christmas lights permanently strung on my room, we had one graffito with an arrow pointing to one of the light bulbs and the words "that light is a sub-standard marine." No, I do not know. No, we were not drunk. Just very, very punchy.

Anyway. And writing continues apace, and so does editing really, but this week's word count is 8,969. So, damn. Thank you, Camp Nanowrimo? Now I just have to keep up that pace.

So, okay, despite yesterday being an incredibly sleepy day, what the hell self. The sleeping in made sense given that near hour long spate of wakefulness in the middle of the fucking night, but then there was the drowsing on the couch in the middle of the day, followed by the two hour nap, on a day when I was supposed to be getting things done despite not going into work. Ugh.

Despite all that, today I managed to get the shipping backlog dealt with, a couple outstanding emails dealt with which is harder than it sounds because each of those required digging and research and looking at things and ugh. Stuff was checked in, the store was minded, I even got some friendship bracelets worked on, I got caught up on my Memrise and my Duolingo, I got close to 2k words written which given this week's total is nothing to sneeze at, and I got dinner made and inks ordered and advertised myself on Twitter, which took no small feat of nerves. Did my exercises, did the daily house chores of plant watering and cat caring for. Did Japanese, did a bit of Arabic because why not. (Realized the Arabic letters book of a more advanced kind was out of my price range for the next two weeks. Gnashed teeth. $45 for a textbook isn't that bad, granted, and that's only new because I want the DVD that comes with, I might cave and go for a used version. But still and fucking nonetheless.)

Tomorrow, more edits, maybe more working on the same strange things, and definitely needing to make some more progress on other projects and write some damn promo copy. Finish edits on Beauty Kincaid like I meant to and haven't done yet, and do up a cover for that, hopefully get that set up for publication. Which would mean, in fact, that I get another dime novel published this month! So see, self, you haven't been horribly neglectful of everything. And at some point I should put more fiction up on my web page and format those for people to download to their e-readers. If I haven't already. Ugh, more for the to-do list.

Weekly Word Count: is 4,190 because I took the weekend off for reading books and things. Superhero training is coming apace, I do think I need to just up the times I hold poses rather than change that up just yet, but I'm not sure about ballet exercises. I need to change something. I'm just not sure what or how.

Oh! Wednesday Reads
Okay, I'm going to admit it here because I don't think anyone's going to dogpile me and shake me and bounce all around me about it, but I finished the last two Raven Cycle books by Maggie Stiefvater. And I did love them! Even if I want to shake everyone for being reckless with greater magics. And my god they are so fucked right now. SO FUCKED. Which, to the author's credit, has more to do with them having wandered into deeper waters than they expected, rather than their inherent teenage stupidity.

I also read David Eddings' The Dreamers, first in his Elder Gods series, and my god that man has not had an original story since his first one. I liked it well enough but I don't think I'll pick up the rest, I think I'll stick with reading the things that have nostalgia value for me, because it's becoming increasingly clearer.

Still working on a Kate Elliott book, and Sanctum which at some point I should get back to. It's all right, it's just... very young in places. Most of the places. And I have that Women of the Golden Dawn book I need to get through and get back to the library. So it goes.

The donuts are definitely fueling it, but I am so gratified to have all the adulting for the immediate future, bar tax filing because no W2s yet, done for the time being. So gratified. I cannot begin to describe. My IRA is all fixed and happy, my general investments account has been reset so I can actually log into it online. With single goddamn word security answers because the last one had a security answer with at least 5 possible permutations and I couldn't remember which one I had entered. Let this be a lesson to me. If at all possible, security questions with one word answers. Or at the very least one possible permutation for a multiple word answer. Jesus. And all of my banking is under one roof, and my credit score is fucking ridiculous, which means I am leaving all of my credit cards open till the ones I'm not using anymore get tired of me and close themselves because I like my credit score at Fucking Absurdly Ridiculous Here Have All The Monies. Even if I don't use All The Monies. I like being credit score-ly virtuous.

I have a clean bill of dental health, I have a clean bill of medical health, I do not have to go back for a thyroid check like I usually do (this has happened at least the last two years, I get my thyroid checked because every other female in my family except my baby sister has low thyroid, it comes back borderline, I get it re-checked, it comes back fine), I have done all my financial shit, I have adulted like a fucking master this week. I even got my minimum 1k words done yesterday! Like a fucking master I tell you.

About the only thing that's a downside to the last few days' worth of productivity is the numbers on the scale are trending upwards rather than downwards. Still down from where I was a year ago, but that is the opposite of a trend I would like to continue, literally. On the other other hand, it's not exactly a mystery why that's happening. A week of migraines and head colds preventing exercise, plus brownies, cookies, and donuts, and crappy mac and cheese will do that to a person. Do better, self.



Oh god, Wednesday Reads:
I read Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China. Fascinating, heartbreaking in a lot of places, definitely a good look at China through the Japanese occupation and rise of Mao's Communism. Well written and engaging, too. Also now I want to go read the Communist Manifesto just so I can go "You're doing it wrong. You're doing it wrong. You're doing communism wrong." But I want to do that a lot of the time. I also read and finished The Raven Boys which I absolutely fucking loved. I have many thoughts on it, but nothing immediate or urgent, if anyone wants to discuss in comments. Except NOAH. Oh Noah. Nobody listened to you, did they. And I re-read Children of the Night, which I discussed yesterday.

Up next: Women of the Pleasure Quarters and a book called The Last Madam about a madam in New Orleans that, what the hell, it looked good. No idea how either of them are going to be, but they look like relatively quick reads for non-fiction. And currently I am working my way through Sanctum by Sarah Fine. I'm on balance enjoying it so far (Kindle says I'm only 12% in) but I cannot actually recommend this book. If only because of what it says about people who commit suicide, whether deliberately or inadvertently. So... take that for what you will.

Weekly Word Count: 3,966, the best week of the year yet.

Superhero Training: Well, so far I've managed two consecutive days with ballet and yoga exercises? Glad, on the other hand, that I cut things short to go do things like doctor's appointments or contacting investment places. So, tomorrow, will try to add in the bellydancing exercises and maybe a round of one of those superhero exercise things. Maybe. We'll see.

Today is marginally better, except for the fact that I'm consuming way too much processed sugar right now. I suppose as far as stress eating goes it's better than consuming vast quantities of sugar/butter/flour, which is the other thing I tend to do. It won't make me gain five pounds which I then stress over that, but it still needs to fucking stop. Come on, self. (We're also not discussing how much red velvet cake I've eaten over the last week. I mean, it's not been that bad, I've been eating healthy apart from that, but I'm pretty sure I'm not supposed to have a slice of red velvet cake a night.)

(I have two more slices left unless the boy's finally eaten some, so nyah.)

Fucking physics. Which actually wasn't so bad today, but there was one problem where I stared at it and was all "I have not yet learned how to solve this what the fuck are you making me do." Then I got fed up and threw logic at it and it turned out most of those answers were right, which just goes to show you that logic does in fact solve a lot of things. Or maybe just goes to show why physics was always my favorite science. LOGIC. You can tell I never got into advanced levels of physics, either.

Came home, watched Peggy Carter, it is the MOST FUCKING AMAZING AND I WANT MORE. I want so much more, I want more commentary, I want more action, I want more of the massive amounts of meta and Peggy having all the typical male hero events, except for the women in fridges I want less of that. I want more of Jarvis. I wanted more of Frain but he had 'mook of the week' written all over him, alas. I want more of this entire show.

Speaking of fucking physics, not that I was, but good god it's cold today. And the wind makes it worse. And I can't wait for this winter to be over already. Ugh. We've only had a handful of days of proper winter and I'm already ready for it to be over. Definitely ready to get the curtains done, not sure when that's going to happen. Over the weekend? That ought to help any and all draft at the windows quite a bit though, both the lining and the curtain material is really heavy. So that ought to cut down on some heat loss. And we've got the blanket up by the utility room door, and fucking brr anyway.

Ah well. Okay, checking in. We're not discussing the state of my workout routine right now, or the lack of routine in it. I did get a full workout in this morning, inexplicably. It's the first Wednesday of the month, isn't it? Yes. So, house tasks for this month are, again, get the damn curtains up. Though this time it might actually happen. Toss tree and wreath into the back backyard for nature and animals to take care of. The doorknob thing turned into a door replacement thing, which at least solves the sanding down issue too, but after that I'm not sure what other house tasks we have that we can do right now. Maybe replace some outlets.

Oh! But I did get my stuff reset for the investments so I can do all that shit online now, so that's good. And I went back through and dug up my reading list for Courtesan School that we created... god, ages ago. And started mixing those in with some of my other stuff to do. I think I might do that and slow down on the online classes once this current chunk is over.

And the Weekly Word Count is 2,488, because of a slow start on the holidays. Still, not bad.

I am not fucking touching the Eric Garner case, because if I do I will say things that should only be yelled out loud to people physically present in the room. No, I will say one thing: fucking egregious miscarriage of justice and contravention of what is plain and visible for everyone to goddamn see. Grr. Dishonor on the grand jury, their families, and their ancestors unto three generations.

Breathe, Jag. Breathe. You are not in fact queen of the world, nor do you have smiting powers.

Nor are you an evil fairy who can curse people. Stop that.

Happier things. Happier. I'm having some sort of thing whereby instead of writing all the time I need to clean and fix up the house all the time, no, I don't know why. I just got through a 10 item to-do list, maybe more like 12 or 13 items long, over the last couple of days and now I have a brand new to-do list around the house that's only 11 items 'cause I accidentally deleted the last one. I'm sure I'm going to come up with something more. And given that Haven is about to go on hiatus which will free up my weekends from this to maybe late January, I have no idea what the hell's going to happen after that. It's going to be interesting. Very, very interesting.

I also have no idea what prompted this sudden, massive burst of nesting, but it rather amuses me. And hey, if it keeps the house looking good. And encourages the boy to do his part on cleaning things because I'm clearly hard at work cleaning things and things are clean and, really, we're both best motivated when at least one of us is motivated. So, yeah, whatever. Nesting. I'm actually cutting some damn curtains tomorrow. Ugh, which means I do need to set up my sewing machine. Bleh. Now that I have working outlets in my craft room! I need to calm down. I do want to paint. And write. That's the other thing, all this urge to clean and fix and prettify is getting in the way of my other hobbies. Grr.

Okay, there's going to be a yearly check in with my girls at some point, but right now while I'm outlining over the last couple days, I did come up with a list of things I want to check in weekly (or monthly) with.

Weekly Word Count: Zip. Zilch. Or I didn't keep track, I finished Nano over the weekend, that's good enough. Edit count: Also zip.

Monthly House Projects: Get up the freaking curtains, especially since it'll help keep the heat in. Replace the damn doorknob on the bathroom door. Clear out all the dead shit from the garden, which at this point means the things that weren't properly garden to begin with and the flowerpots. This is going to be interesting when it comes time to either plant all the things next spring or put away all the things next fall/winter. Also, put up Christmas decorations.

Weekly Exercise Check-in: (This needs a better name) (Superheroing progress?) (Superhero training, evidently, was already a tag.) So far: arm positions, tendus, plies in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd position. Torso circles for bellydance, hip sway, hip drop, butterfly arms. Cat-Cow, cobra, plank, should add mountain in there, should add downward dog, should add pigeon again, mountain pose.

Last Week's Total Word Count: 14,233

Fics Completed
Library of Winds

Big Damn List

100 Prompt Communities

Prompt Communities
shewalkssoftly
oldestbeloved
demonbastard
almostaprince

Misc
Warren smut prompts
Suil A Ruin (Dresden Files Fic)
Essay for excellent_words


Novels worked: None

Summary: Not too bad, even if the only thing I actually really worked on was the Dresden Files fic. And I figure I'm probably about halfway through. That's kind of scary.

The Week Ahead: Lots of sewing, but fitting in writing when I can. Less work and more GenCon should help with that.