Busy Weekend

After two days of hard work (afternoon Friday, Saturday, and this morning) the garage is somewhat cleaned out and more organized. With our upbringing both Bette and I are hoarders. Sure, there's better names for it, but we tend to buy for the long term, buy on sale, and store up for the lean times. This past spring things got a little out of control as our storage strategy wasn't up to our needs. So now we've replaced our metal shelves that we strained under the loads with our wooden bookcases that we replaced with the shelving units. Now we only have one prefab bookcase inside the house and that one is probably here to stay. Most of the dry goods are up. This summer is going to be a lean time (Bette doesn't have a class this summer, overtime is down, the cost of everything is up), so it's good we're stocked up.

I also finally went through all the office detritus from my former job, that only took three and a half years. It wasn't all of it (much of it has already been gone through), but it was the last two boxes. It was mostly design magazines, which will be recycled. There were a few monitor toys/decorations, most of those will go to the thrift shops. There were a few technical manuals I've been limping along without (do you know the size of an A2 or #9 Remittance Envelope by heart?).

Right now things are tight but workable. Lots of plans we had are put on hold. We had a discussion about Viable Paradise, and I'm not sure we would be able to afford it this year. I don't have enough of the novel (and as Tobias once told me, he learned the hard way not to workshop an unfinished novel), but I have enough short stories in shape to apply. Part of me thinks that if writing is what you want to do, go ahead and go for it, figure out how to pay for it later. The other "I'm a survivor" part says that if the money isn't there, or it doesn't look likely, save the money for better things, get to writing the novel, and go next year when you can workshop the novel (maximize the investment). So in a week, I might just apply this year, and then see if something changes by July 15th (when the money is do) to see if I even would be accepted. This year's guest instructors are a great line up.

Plans for conventions are down. I'll probably only be going to two this year (Confluence and Confusion). We still want to have some sort of vacation (after more that two decades of being together, we would like to have our vacation count go high enough that would would need both hands to count).

The day job last week was more "normal", but that was mostly because of one client making revisions to stationary. Plate count is down, but I think some of the other work product is up. Still not anywhere near last year's work. The village stuff is absorbing more time, but I don't get OT for that. Before going to bed it's what I'm thinking about, when I wake up I'm still working through issues.