Category: Day by Day

Personal details; life, time management, work, cats, and sleep.

Settling on Sundays.

I want to say it’s been a long day, but it really hasn’t.  It’s been mostly a very pleasant day.  I’m just tired drained.  I’m anxious about work, and hoping it’ll be done soon.  And I ache, and I don’t know why I’m still hungy.  I made a decent dinner, even if it ended up taking nearly two hours from start to finish, and I was getting upset at trying to juggle everything.

I just want a day to stay home and sleep.  Instead I’m going to turn in early enough for a full night’s rest, show up cheerful and enthusiastic about the job tomorrow, and quietly count down the days until I’m done.  I believe this is called being a grown-up, or something, and is closely tied to finding work and making people not curse your presence.

(Meantime, the friend I’m writing a story with has been busy lately (which is fine!) and so have I, but from the time we’ve had to talk I can’t help but feel that while being busy she’s getting more actually done.)

Despite coordinating schedules, I am actually too worn to pay attention to American Horror Story or Walking Dead, so we’re catching up on Supernatural.  It’s nice to sit back and watch characters deal with a monster of the week, and I like the openly fake psychic who is pleasant and reasonable about her job.  It’s still clever rather than creepy, though, and I can’t remember when it last managed to be creepy–

(That said, the meta-commentary about brothers working together made me laugh.)

I suppose it’s hard to sustain tension, which is an essential element of creepy, when you know characters are either going to survive (Winchesters, Bobby) or else can’t be expected to be there for longer than an episode (everyone else).  Should keep that in mind when writing, I suppose.

I’m rambling, I know.  I think I’m about due to turn in.

Losing ground

Yesterday morning I finished my first assignment for work; at least I thought I did.  Late this morning I actually got a chance to go over it with people who have been there a while, and it turns out that no, I didn’t.

Some of it is pure detail; I’m used to working in a small shop, so my issue notes were the kind of thing I’d write to myself.  This is fine for me, but since someone else will be taking my notes and going through them to determine what exactly to fix, it isn’t actually very useful.  I managed to rework most of those, and I think the new versions are actually pretty helpful.

Some of it is the hours- and document-tracking software, and that bit was mostly a case of straightening out what should and shouldn’t be done when and where.  Practically speaking, not too bad since I hadn’t had a chance to get formal training.

Some of it is… well.  I look at the work, and I can’t shake the feeling that I’m missing something huge.  I don’t know what it could be, and since the coworkers and supervisors who looked at it don’t seem to have found it I’m not sure it’s a warranted reaction, but it’s very hard to get rid of.

Plus?  It’s code.  So I get sucked in, and I didn’t actually make it outside today.  With the time change, it means Im getting out after dark, and it throws me for a loop.

Monday morning.

It’s probably been said before, but what gets me about buses is the way the segments of the trip are so distinct from each other. You go on the first leg of it, and it doesn’t matter how quickly the trip went our didn’t go; the next leg of it will go on its own schedule. There’s no way to save time, no way to have a quick trip in one part… carry over, I guess?

What would you call that? Granularity?

All of which is a way to say that while I ran out of the house this morning in such a hurry that I had to ask John to feed the cats for me, I am currently on the fourteenth minute of a scheduled ten-minute wait at the highway bus stop, and I would much rather have spent this time at home. Also, I do not have coffee and it’s chilly, so I am a bit grumpy.

I sit and watch the clouds go by…

Someone I know just got published.  It’s actually (I think) quite a good story, and you can read it here, at the latest issue of On the Premises.

I think this is teriffic for her, and I am happy to pass along good things I have heard people say about it.  And it’s paid-published, which I suspect adds an extra element of awesome to the whole thing.

I can’t even feel properly jealous, and someone I’m writing with said something that had me figure out why.  I’m not jealous because I’m not in the same situation.

Because Rachel Verkade?  She actually finishes her stories.  And then she sends them out.

If I did that, I could feel jealous.  As it stands, I read her stuff.  And the things some of my friends write.  And I follow the people I know about who are getting their stories out, or getting a collection out, and I just look at the progress they are making, and I think…

I don’t know what I think, actually.  It’s not very detailed or coherent, it’s sort of a slow sad wishing that I was there.

That I was focussed enough to try to get there.

What the hell am I doing with my life and my time, anyway?

A weekend, now that that means something.

The first day at work went fairly well.  I believe I can do the job they want me to do, everyone seems pleasant, the number  of transfers on the commute is annoying but manageable.  I may see about angling for earlier hours after a week or so; we’ll see.

That said, I am stress-tired in a way I haven’t been since the last fiscal year end I was working in government.  Got home and ordered pizza on the cheap deal in the mailbox and then curled up and unwound.  There was a fire.  I am very glad we have a fireplace.

(…for reasons besides the fact that if we didn’t, it would be very very hard to be glad about there being a fire in the house.)

Thought the cats were going to be quiet, but turns out there was evening squabbling.  Managed to get half a glove right after reknitting it four times.  Trying to get through the last of the House of Fear anthology and sort of quietly gleeful about how AHS handled Tate and Hayden.  Can’t wait for the next episode; in the meantime, may catch up on Misfits or try Bedlam tomorrow, when I have the TV to myself.

Sudden employment.

Five o’clock came and went today, and no word from the temp agency.  I figured I could look forward to maybe a Monday start date; looking over the SOW, the start date was October 17, and this kind of delay is not atypical.

Five thirty-four rolled around, and I got a phone call.  The temp agency said the client wanted me to start tomorrow, if I could.  I said that’d be fine, got the address, agreed I’d get them a void cheque tomorrow, all the little perfectly normal paperwork fusses that come along with this.

I’m ambivalent about it, and a bit unhappy to find myself so.  I mean… employment!  Employment is a good thing.  I’m just worrying about whether it’ll be a good job, if I should have kept looking, whether or not they’ll realize I’m a horrible fraud and should never have set foot inside the building as soon as I actually need to start working…

All the little perfectly normal fusses that come along with this.

They’ve seen my resumé.  It is a decent resumé; more, it is an honest resumé, and I suspect that matters more.  I’m hoping thatit’ll all be fine and by this time Monday[1] my biggest problem with the job will be that it’s 20 minutes from downtown so I can’t meet people for lunch.

Just wish I’d had a little more notice, you know?

—
[1] Not Friday.  I probably won’t stop worrying that fast.

(stasis)

We have been sitting in the doctor’s office for an hour and five minutes now. It is boring. For the record.

Apparently we’re next in line, but I don’t know when that line is next moving forward. For the moment, this is largely a chance to practice typing on Swype.

There is one bonus; there is some kind of pseudo-Scrooge romcom movie playing on the waiting room, and John has said that he takes back everything bad he has ever said about my taste in the movies he watches with me.

And as soon as he starts editorializing on the movie, a get called in. Onwards!

This is Hallowe’en, this is… uhm… wait, what again now?

Yeah.  Just realized tomorrow’s Hallowe’en–not that I’d forgotten, but it keeps slipping my mind.  I’m not exactly getting into the spirit of the season this year.

We’ve picked up candy for trick-or-treaters; I’m hoping we actually get a decent number coming by this year.  Last year there were some, but not a lot.  And John called when he was doing the groceries to ask if I wanted a pumpkin, and I said yes on impulse, so we’ll at least have a jack o’lantern.  (I am not sure if I’m going to carve a face or try for one of the pictures that people do sometimes.  Probably a face.  That seems easier.)

Maybe I’ll make popcorn and make a movie night out of it.  I’ve started watching Bedlam and The Fades; I like Bedlam better，but it’s early days.  I can’t really do that with anyone, though–John’ll watch some stuff with me, but has pointed out lately that he is really not a big horror fan, and TV shows tend to have lower budgets[1] than movies.  So I’d basically be watching them alone and maybe talking to people online, but needing to look at the screen tends to cut down on how good the shows are.

…man, looking at this, I sound kind of down.  I feel kinda down.  Trying to keep an eye on that.  It gets lonely out here sometimes, and the not-working isn’t helping.

—
[1] Actually, he said lower budget and worse acting.  I dispute this.