Disassembly of Reason

What went before Thursday: So, I bought a stability ball today -- also known as a Giant Yoga Ball -- on suggestion of PT, and by doing so I learned several things.

Thing One. I had to go to Wal*Mart to obtain this item. Now, I haven't been in a Wal*Mart for at least 8 years, and at that time, I was in the Augusta Marketplace store and it was filthy and ill-kept, misfiled, and nerve-wracking to be in -- you know, like all the stores are now. The Waterville store, today, was -- spacious and well-lit, the shelves were stocked appropriately, signage (with a notable exception, which I will share) plentiful and easy to see. The gentleman in the red vest and ID tags who I stopped to ask where I should look for a Giant Yoga Ball told me that I would be going to the back of the store, to the Sports section, and then he used his phone to tell me that Giant Yoga Balls could be found in Aisle I-15.

Thing Two. Being as I had to walk to the furthest corner of the store to find Sports, I did have plentiful opportunity to look about me, and discover those things reported in Thing One. When I got to Sports, however, I found I-14 and I-17, but not Aisle I-15, which would be my luck. I asked a young lady who was stocking shelves, and whose face immediately said she didn't want to have anything to do with me why there was no Aisle I-15, and the young man who was her partner said, "Oh, no, I'll show you," which he did (I-15 is, in the Waterville Wal*Mart, where they file the bicycles), and when I said, "There are no Giant Yoga Balls here," led me to the exact shelf, which is where I learned Thing Three, which is!

You have to inflate the Giant Yoga Ball when you get it home. It comes with a cheap, plastic, manual air squeeze, and it will, conservatively, take me three days to inflate this thing. However! I have the ball in house, and have started on the inflation project, and I'm calling that progress.

I am now needing to get to my backlogged email.

Tomorrow Sarah comes in the morning to do the cleaning, and I believe I will be blocking out the rest of the day, which will give me 4.5 days to concentrate on reading/writing until I'm next needed elsewhere. I may, in fact, make a weekend of it, and order in, so I can keep focused on the WIP, with short breaks to blow up the stability ball.

So! I have what passes for A Plan. I note that this Plan may mean that I will be not much around the Internets. It's OK; I'll be working.
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Friday. Cold and intermittently sunny. Sarah changed her hours to Saturday.

Woke up at 5:30, got up at 6, sat with the Happy Lite, ate breakfast and was reading the WIP before 8. Read 200 pages, did a couple loads of laundry, broke for lunch -- chicken Alfredo from ... I have no idea, actually. Pasta Americana? It was good and I have leftovers, which is also good.

The story is not nearly as terrible as I had feared. In fact, it's pretty good. So that's a relief. I have 68 days until I have to hand it in, and even though I have to Really End It, excise those 9,000 words, and probably write ... two? more fill-out scenes, I should be able to make that deadline.

Beta Readers! If you are still reading, do not despair! My Method is to do my read, then read your comments, once I have the story in my head in its present shape. You are, in a word, Still Relevant -- very much so! -- and I look forward to your notes with anticipation.

The stability ball has been inflated, and the cats are of the opinion that nobody needs a ball that big.

Dead River, after assuring me yesterday that my delivery was scheduled for today -- has not yet delivered. I'm in no danger, but I would very much like to know why it's suddenly become difficult to deliver oil to this address.

I still need to finish my Remarks and choose something(s) to read for my Event on the 21st.

The missing 1099-MISC arrived today, which would be my luck, because I wrote to the issuing party regarding its whereabouts yesterday. I now have to block out the better part of a day to enter everything into the accountant's portal, because the thing is purposefully designed to force you to fill it in All At Once. In former years, when I was working from paper, I would have been filling the forms in as columns were added, and paperwork arrived, and the manifesting of the last 1099 would mean that I filled in one final line, reviewed, and took the whole packet down to Oakland on Monday morning.

Stoopid portal.

What else? The now-called Business Office, formerly Sharon's Office, looks like a bomb hit it again. I used to write and do business in here, and . . . I can't figure out how I did -- oh, no, I do know. By this time in the Proceedings, the manuscript would have taken over the living room, and Steve would be reading it while I did the taxes, and I would have been able to keep up better with the day-to-day paperwork because Steve would have picked up the laundry and the cooking and the dishwashing, because he would rather do those things than the taxes.

deep breath

Nope.  Still Not Preferring this timeline.

Last night, I collapsed into bed earlyish and asked the Boox to read Cuckoo's Egg to me. Now, I have read Cuckoo's Egg manyManyMANY times. It is, in fact, one of my favorite books. I know this story. But listening to it is a Whole Nother Experience. I have not had this particular sensation of . . . newness . . . with the other books -- all old favorites, because I'm still learning -- I've listened to, so that's interesting.

And that I think catches us up. I'm going to take some time to excavate my desk.

Ah.  Today's blog post title brought to you by Rocky and Bullwinkle.

OK, let's see...

Thursday. Sunny and cold. Feeling much more the thing than yesterday, which -- just let's say that it was a day when you drink peppermint tea and honey because your stomach hurts and that turns out to be a bad idea.

Got in an early four hours with the WIP this morning, and have verified that I'll be removing about 9,000 words. This is not a surprise; I kinda sorta knew I was going to hafta do it, unless I Thought of Something. Which I haven't, so -- into the Pull File they go, and maybe they'll be useful later.

I have a doctor's appointment at 2:30, and need to verify where I'm going. Also, I have emails that I need to answer, and! I need to tell Draft2Digital that, yes, I do want Pinbeam Books to be listed with Bookshop.

Still waiting on that one outstanding 1099-MISC.

I see that the judge overseeing the Anthropic Settlement has extended various deadlines for opting in, out, and sideways, which will likely put back the expected payout schedule, originally projected to begin in August. Granted, I never expected to see any money from this "settlement," but the whole thing's so infuriating that even reading the subject line kicks up the blood pressure.

And FedEx has just arrived to deliver a letter, so it looks like the range for hitting my house really is between 11:15 and noon. Which is actually useful information.

Trying to figure out if I want to try to see John Mellencamp's off-Broadway fine-tuning of his play at Ogunquit in October. I expect if I want to do that, I'll have to reserve a room at Ogunquit realsoonnow. Must lookout prices.

For now, I need to do my duty to the cats, and then heat up the soup I didn't eat yesterday, ref stomachache, and -- oh, yeah, find where the heck I'm supposed to be at 2:30.

How's everybody doing today?

Those who are interested in the Liaden Read-Along, the summing up of Conflict of Honors may be read here

6   Getting Rid of Bradley, Jennifer Crusie (audio first time)
5   *Carpe Diem ((Liaden Universe® #3), Sharon Lee & Steve Miller
4   *Conflict of Honors (Liaden Universe® #2), Sharon Lee & Steve    Miller
3   *Agent of Change (Liaden Universe® #1), Sharon Lee & Steve                 Miller
2   A Gentleman in Possession of Secrets (Lord Julian #10), Grace             Burrowes (e)
1   Spilling the Tea in Gretna Green, Linzi Day (e)

________
*I'm doing a straight-through series read in publication order

And a blessed Imbolc to all who celebrate.

I celebrated by changing out the cat boxes, and vacuuming the basement.

Because my roommates are not good with telephones, nor, frankly, with understanding when I might need them to use the telephone, a couple years ago, I upped the population of Google Nests in this house, making sure I had one in more or less every room.

I have at last count 7 Nests, and when asked all will give me the current weather in the city in which I live.

Except for the Nest in the bathroom -- you know, the room in the house where people are most likely to fall?  Yeah.  Well, for the past two years the Nest in the bathroom has operated under the persistent illusion that I live in Portland. Or at least that the bathroom is in Portland.

I have today -- I believe -- repaired that delusion. I will of course test this multiple times, but just now, after the fix and the reboot, when I asked it what the weather was, it gave me local conditions in this, my own, city. And when I asked it where I was located, it gave me the correct zipcode.

Other things accomplished today -- books pulled and boxed and ready to go to the bookstore, where they will be entered into The System, and brought to the library on the day of my event.

The aforesaid changing out of the cat boxes and vacuuming of the basement, moving clean dishes from the washer to the various cabinets where they belong. I still have to wash the pots and pans and then? It will be Coon Cat Happy Hour.

So, yanno, not an earthshaking kind of day by any means, but I got through it, and that counts.

Tomorrow, PT first thing, then I have to stop at the bank for the first time in at least a year, then home again for work on the WIP and revising the Remarks. Oh, and I should write my wrap-up for Conflict of Honors, seeing as I'm halfway through Plan B.

Everybody have a good evening; stay safe.

I'll check in tomorrow.