Fresh Start Monday

*Snort* It sounded so doable yesterday. Course that was before I couldn't fall asleep on time last night and ended up waking up late this morning. Abbreviated morning routine, bought breakfast and lunch, and then discovered getting off the Interstate was the only way to get to work.

Welcome to Monday, folks.

Goals for the Week

• Using the allotted chore time, clean up the sewing debris.
• List Big Rocks.
• Decide on Zy's novel or Strix's novel.
• Exercise.
• Primal eating.

in all honesty, I should start on the Tin Man Adora uniform for Halloween, but I just made my shoulder angel and shoulder devil burst into tears with the suggestion. So a break while I improve the sewing environment is probably necessary.

Improving the sewing environment: I discovered that moving the sewing machine to the living room so the extending table in the back room is free for cutting works, but not on my mother's six-foot-long folding table.

My idea is to modify a rolling kitchen cart to be a rolling sewing machine cabinet with panels that fold down into table tops for the fabric. I haven't gotten any further in the planning process than that.

Big Rocks self-explanatory.

June is almost over and I haven't worked on either Zy's or Strix's novels. I may end up flipping a coin.

Exercise & Primal Eating: two hundred sit-ups starts this week along with removing grains from me diet lifestyle. I've been following Mark's Daily Apple for a while now, and my health is not getting better according to Conventional Wisdom's way to treat metabolic syndrome. I had planned to go more cold turkey into primal eating this morning, but this morning left me unprepared for breakfast. My foraging included an English muffin.

Primal Blueprint 101, if you're interesting in reading more.

I think that's all for today. I'm off to find a kitchen cart to modify.

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The BookWorm

Wedding pictures!

What has consumed my life for so many months, making this outfit:


Best shot I have of the flower girl and ring bearer:


The happy couple:


Maid of honor, me, and the second best man, Chris:


The sewing odyssey will eventually go up at the Garb Closet; I just have no idea when.

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The BookWorm

The wedding is done

Suzanne and Eric are off, finally. I'm home. I left only my pillow and the Byetta pen in New Orleans. *headdesk*

I'm going to bed. You may here more from me tomorrow or Monday.

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The BookWorm

"Boom" from GQ

Boom from GQ explaining impartially what went wrong with the Deepwater Horizon.

BP should be prosecuted for 11 counts of murder just to start.

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The BookWorm

Big Rocks or Scheduled Tasks?

Today's the day to review if the schedule works or if it needs more tweaking. So far the only thing to tweak is my ability to stick wih it. If I don't go to bed on time, I don't wake up on time. Nearly everyday but Tuesday, I've had issues with this. The nice thing about this schedule is I jump right into what I should be doing after a minute of making the bed.

After too many days of missing my Byetta dose, I've decided to move it to breakfast instead of supper and eat before leaving the house.

Yesterday, I found this post on setting a minimum standard: Thinking Small without the Guilt. The daily To Do list is my minimum standard now, and I felt pretty good about that. Then I took a look at my Big Rocks. Big Rocks is a concept from Zen to Done at Zen habits. I've been using it for nearly two years now to plan my week.

Only without me realizing it, the Big Rocks list has become everything I want to do on ongoing projects instead of what I can and will finish this week. See. I know why I do it; I have an overdeveloped sense of fear of being bored. Mom related a story of how one of my teachers in elementary school berated her at Open House because I was bringing college-level books to class to read and when she took the "too old for me" books away, I colored my fingernails with crayons. My mother answered "Kindra's bored silly, so let her read the books we're letting her bring from home."

So it's no stretch when I'm doing my weekly review to jump in with "what are you going to do if you finish that?" and the next thing I know twenty-three slots are filled. *headdesk*

First step: move the items that have a scheduled day to the daily schedule. That opened up four slots.

Second step: identify what items have a deadline.

• Steampunk story - pen
• Bridesmaid dress - H
• TM_Challenge 12 entry - pen
• FFGarret WT #13 - web
• FFGarret EL #13 - web
• Edit Hyrueliana - pen

So this takes me from twenty-one items to six. And keep me from getting lost in the sea of projects. Everything not on this list needs to move back to the projects lists and wait for an opening.

That was pretty painless once I actually looked at things rather than just carry the items forward a week. See the new version.

The A-Team this weekend and the last of the sewing! *Crossing fingers.*

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The BookWorm

At least I don't have tires under my eyes*

Declaring to test the schedule last Thursday and Friday was treated like a joke by my body. If I had paid attention to the smudges under my eyes, I would have recognized I hadn't been getting enough sleep. I regrouped this weekend; not enough to get up on time today but no tires in residence on my face* either.

So Thursday will be schedule evaluation day. Tuesday will be two hundred situps exhaustion test, pegging to start the workout next Monday. And if the wedding schedule messes it up for any reason, they built in 'stay at this week longer' tests so taking longer than six weeks isn't unheard of.

In not fixing the daily routine news, I got the shoes to go under the bridesmaid gown Saturday!

And I wore them a good chunk of the time I was sewing Sunday to get my body used to heels that high. Today, I decided to wear the black high-heeled sandals that were bought Saturday also. My feet currently think this was a bad plan.

Alan Cumming has discovered Tin Man fanvids. "But there are loads of them up there [YouTube]. Where do you all find the time?" Sheesh, I ask myself that nearly every day. :p

And the shoes went off at noon, stayed off until I had to go home.

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The BookWorm

* = "Tires under my eyes" is a reference to my Biker Mice From Mars fanfic Put Me Back Together in the Wars Are Won By Those Who Dare series.

June Already

It’s gotta be better than May, right? We have oil spewing in the Gulf, hurricane season has started with predictions of a repeat of the 2005 season, and we’re supposed to go live with a new system at work by the end of the month. Positives: making tweaks to the schedule, Suzanne and Eric are getting married, I think I can make the deadline for the steampunk story.

Tweaking the schedule: it is good to follow my To Do list, but chores make a lousy reason to get up in the morning. Stepcase Lifehack asks Do you have a morning ritual? and I had to answer "not really as such."

And as hard as it is for me to get up most mornings, I think I need to heed their advice and find something I want to do. This ties into my To Do List actually.

Step One: Draft a short list of the things you do each morning and what you'd like to add. I already have this list as my Daily Chores on my To Do list.

• Exercise
• Writing hour
• Website Hour
• Make bed
• Wash dishes
• Empty inbox
• Empty Gmail and LiveJournal Inboxes
• Budget
• Weekly chores
• Get dressed
• Pack breakfast, lunch and snack
• Commute

Granted, if I don't finish this list before going to work, I can finish it through the day. But out of these items I can see what I'm not crossing off consistently or what I can add.

What I'm not hitting consistently list is much shorter:

• Exercise
• Writing hour
• Website Hour
• Empty inbox
• Budget

Too often, I'm using the weekend to catch up on what I missed during the week and skipping exercise altogether.

I got rid of the inbox by adding a “budget” and a “needs filing” folder to my box of 42 folders. The plan is to empty those every day and not keep a basket full of paperwork I just keep on my desk.

Step Two: Figure out how much time it'll realistically take to do everything on your list. This is where I think I fall down badly. I have no clear time of how long things should take in the morning, and let's face it trying to wake up doesn't help remembering how to do things.

Julie Morgenstern recommends timing yourself doing routine tasks because you probably don't know how long it really takes. When I read that advice, I realized I had no idea how long anything took to do, so I timed myself over a few days and took averages. The results:

• Make the bed = 1 minute
• Washing dished = 30 minutes
• Empty folders = 23 minutes
• Weekly chores = 45 minutes
• Budget = 30 minutes
• Getting dressed = 26 minutes
• Getting food = 11 minutes
• Exercise = 15 minutes
• Writing = 60 minutes
• Website = 60 minutes
• GRAND TOTAL = 301 minutes = 5 hours 1 minute

I get up around 3:00am and try to leave the house for 5:45am. So here I was trying to squeeze five hours of stuff into less than three hours, and then beating myself up for not doing everything. This hammered home how easily I can over extend myself.

Step Three: Adjust your wake time to accommodate your new ritual. This is the fun part. My first draft had me waking up at 2:30am. I’ve tried and it doesn’t happen, so 3am is the earliest and that means 8:30pm is the latest I can go to bed. That should be a big enough window to get everything done, right? If only I didn’t have to go to the paying job.

First thing to face: I can’t have a full hour of writing in the morning and clean house. But I can have thirty minutes.

June A.M. Schedule

• 3:00 = Wake up, Make bed, Wash dishes for 15 minutes
• 3:16 = Exercise
• 3:31 = Writing for 30 minutes
• 4:01 = Get dressed
• 4:27 = Get food
• 4:38 = Empty folders
• 5:01 = Weekly chores
• 5:46 = Leave for paying job

While at the paying job, I’ll clean out email inboxes, write and work on website projects as much as I am able. The evening schedule has to have more flexibility built into it because if I work late, getting anything finished is just a dream. I’m basing it on my usually and preferred habits.

June P.M. Schedule

• 5:00 = Arrive home, Take medicine, eat supper
• 5:45 = Wash dishes for 15 minutes
• 6:00 = Budget
• 6:30 = Finish writing hour, website hour, or special project
• 8:15 = Set stuff out for tomorrow, Get ready for bed
• 8:30 = Go to Bed

That only thing inflexible is the bedtime and that I need to do what I have listed. If I end up running late, I can borrow time from the one hour forty-five minutes section before starting the bedtime routine.

Step Four: Go through your list each morning for at least two mornings before making adjustments. So by Friday I should know if this works or not.

Read Free!
The BookWorm

Life Update

I've been quiet on the personal front for a while. A busy spell, getting my finances in order so I didn't lose my house. Long story in short form: I was making partial payments to the mortgage company but didn't talk to them. They served me with foreclosure papers. So I've been in a scramble to find more money ever since. I managed to get less than half of the reinstatement fee together with the loan modification came through. My house note is now about half of what I was paying, which means I'll have money to pay on other debts now.

The snowball method vs. pay off the highest interest rate first is a non-issue; the loan with the lowest balance is the one with the highest interest rate. And I think I have a system in place to make sure I don't get complacent and forget the important bills. Because when head goes into sand is when I get into trouble.

The stress has been killer on the steampunk story and house cleaning naturally. I have a three-day weekend thanks to Memorial Day. Mom has already booked Monday as a spa/getting ready for the wedding day. So Saturday becomes cleaning day mixed with a little writing, and Sunday will be sewing day mixed with a little writing.

May 7th the Bachelorette Party: It was fun. Renting a hotel room on Bourbon was a great idea. I managed to have fun even though I was still reeling from having just been served with the notice of seizure. The only bad thing was it was a hotel right on Bourbon. I don't remember anything after then boom-booms from the clubs finally stopped, which means that's when I passed out. But I had been trying to sleep for a long time before that.

If we do that again, I'm packing the air mattress too.

May 11th new medication: My doctor put me on Byetta, otherwise known as the prescription that scared me silly last visit. My taking it has been spotty, thanks to late hours at work. What will help the most is regularly scheduled exercise and I know it. :p

May 15th High School Reunion: It was a lot less awkward than I feared it would be. I even managed to have fun for over three hours. Judie and I caught up, and I found out what many of my classmates have been up to in the fifteen years. We should do a better job getting the word out for the next one though.

Work aggravation: My hours are 7:30am to 4pm. I try to get in around 7am so I have some time to settle, eat breakfast, check email, etc. Thanks to traffic, I usually get home somewhere between 5pm and 6pm.

You wouldn't know it with all the overtime I've been clocking. I don't mind the overtime, if it's our busy season. I DO mind--a lot--when it is happening every single week for multiple days. It makes me irritated and I don't do anything when I get home hungry and irritated. And my old routine of just have supper in the city and wait for the traffic to go away is now kaput. You have to take Byetta BEFORE supper and I keep it at home in the fridge.

Happy camper I have not been over this.

Sewing progress: I'd be a lot further along if I would stop coming home too late and tired to work on the bridesmaid dress. :p I'm fairly confident that I can finish most of it this weekend and turn over what I can't do to Mom.

To Do List Progress: I need to get back to this. I started to analyze what was going wrong and then foreclosure crisis put a halt on the introspection.

Current shoulder pain: I have no idea what I did, but the right arm and shoulder hurt to the point I'm having trouble reaching full range of motion. I've ruled out lifting anything heavy or differently, so that leaves sleeping on it wrong or now that I have dealt with the financial stress my body is letting me know just how bad it was for me.

Exercise plans: I've been trying to find something uncomplicated to do. I really miss the old days where walking was as easy as just leaving my dorm room. I got pointed to One Hundred Push Ups and I really like how you just concentrate on one thing for six weeks. Hopefully my arm and shoulder pain will clear up so I can start on this next week. If not, I may started with one of the other exercises: Two Hundred Sit Ups or Two Hundred Squats.

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The BookWorm

NARNIA!!!!!

I have posts of more substance that will have to typed later. This news is too good to pass by.

Out of the whole series, Voyage of the Dawn Treader and the Silver Chair are my favorites. I think because Eustance and Jill overcome more in their journeys. And I was more than a little annoyed that the Prince Caspian movie didn't have an Easter egg at the end referencing the next book. They could have focused on the picture of the Dawn Treader and got in tighter until it came alive. *Sigh* That missed opportunity would have been so cool!

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The BookWorm

Wednesday Progress Report

Monday: I only crossed of four of the ten daily items, but I crossed off four Big Rocks for the week and put in forty-five minutes on the bridesmaid's dress.

Tuesday: Crossed off three daily items and one Big Rock. Working late killed my concentration for more creative pursuits. But I did enlist my mother's help on the sleeves on the real dress.

Wednesday: Looks better than Tuesday. I already have four daily items crossed off, but I will be late arriving home because of the chiropractic appointment.

Usually this is a great opportunity to catch up on writing hour time. I just have to find something that doesn't require a computer. :p

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The BookWorm

Big Plans

I have big plans for today. I plan on crossing off everything listed for Monday!

It's really not polite to laugh like that.

Seriously, I need to reestablish order over the chaos and that means following the list with actual rewards. I have earned quite a bit and still haven't watched them.

The Oil Spill: Mix of good news and bad news.

Good:

• It's Louisiana sweet crude which doesn't act the same way the heavy crude that the Exxon Valdez spill was made up on. So we probably won't see a black tide event.
• The weather and currents has been making it hard to clean up in the open water, but it has kept the bulk of it offshore.
• We've got great facilities like the Audubon Institute to take care of the injured animals.

Bad:

• This is not a spill; it's a spew. They've given up trying to calculate how many barrels of oil are leaking into the Gulf now. Until we plug the source, we have no idea how bad it can be.
• The source is a MILE under water. That's 1.60934 kilometers for you metric readers.
• Seafood is a renewable resource, but it will be hit hard. Worse, the bans keep the commercial fishermen from earning a paycheck. Yeah, BP is going to pay restitution but you can't count on a check you don't have.

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The BookWorm

Facebook *Snarl*

It's done and I hate it already. It doesn't understand HTML code, there's no place to put the links for what I actually use, and did I mention it doesn't understand HTML codes in posts?

I've been building my own frakkin' websites since 1997, have a basic understanding of creating and maintaining Drupal powered websites (even though I can't make them as pretty or as user friendly as the head model is), been on Blogger since 2003, forget how many damn years at FanFiction.Net. < SARCASM >Yeah, I LOVE it when you computer social network places/corporations decide I am too stupid to know what I'm doing.

Hells bells, I put HTML coding when I write stories longhand so I know what I wanted to do with that text when it comes to typing it.

Okay, I took my medication and I'm going to bed now. Tomorrow's Friday, should automatically be better, only we're looking at an ecological disaster happening in the Gulf of Mexico. The oil spill will probably hit land tomorrow. And that land will be our fragile and necessary wetlands. *Sigh*

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The BookWorm

Got a new monitor at work

We got new monitors at work and ours is not to question why, but to say thank you instead. Max resolution is now 1920 x 1200; I set mine to 1920 x 1080 and then had to drop all the applications to the smaller windows rather than stretched out to the full screen. This is a lot of visual real estate to get used to.

I still need a better home for my earphones. Maybe I could hang a hook off the cubicle shelf?

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The BookWorm

Thursday was Better

Felt better when I woke up so I actually went in and continued to be a good little worker bee. Found out that fifteen minutes was enough to make a dent in what had to be done for the day but not the dishes. Guess what I get to do when I get home? *Whimper* It has to be done and tonight.

And bill paying with other budget work. Odd sensation actually having money to pay bills without having half the paycheck go to pay overdraft fees. Now my best bet for May is to not have any overdrafts. That means being proactive with my money, something that always makes me anxious. Why does being responsible with my money make me anxious? Pulled Money Demons off the shelf to see what it has to say about it.

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The BookWorm

Should I Take a Personal Day?

I'm in the stop-and-go traffic seriously wondering why the hell didn't I call in? I don't make a habit of it, and it wouldn't really be hooky because I would spend the day on chores and other must do projects.

Too late to turn around, more's the pity.

I made headway into getting pieces of the bridesmaid dress laid out for the mock-up. I have to make sure I have enough fabric for the second front piece and then I get to see what is left for the sleeves, which are coming out of a different pattern. The vest is last, mainly because it will fit on the sewing table instead of needing the living room floor.

Chores: I've been getting enough sleep, but I haven't wanted to drag myself out of bed in the morning and confront them. I don't think there's really that much, just my brain in freak-out mode because I haven't done (chore in (time frame). Yes, it changes depending on the chore under consideration.

I'm think I should spend 15 minutes on getting the house in order before starting on the sewing project for the night. I won't finish the chores but I can make a dent, I hope. I have company coming this weekend so I have not catchup time.

This afternoon my stomach has not stopped rolling. What I will find totally ironic if I am sick enough to stay home tomorrow.

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The BookWorm

Over-Scheduled Weekend

So how much did I accomplish on my list?
Stuff to finish:

• Bloodwork
• Corset
• Cutting out the mock-up for bridesmaid dress
• Mock-up for bridesmaid dress
• Dishes
• Budget
• Empty inbox of all financial papers
• Catch up on website hours
• Catch up on writing hours - edit LJ header file with proper word counts

Instead of feeling all giddy that is done, I'd rather pull my hair out that I didn't finish everything. It's a big mess of can't win.

Anyways, bloodwork did not make me faint and I rewarded myself with Doctor Who. Major thoughts: I just saw a giant eyeball go "oh shit" and run away. "I've put a lot of work into it." (The Doctor referring to Earth.) And a kid raised by the Doctor in the TARDIS. Oh, I know the powers that be won't do it. The Doctor deals with too much potentially scary stuff to subject a child to, but still. Think about it for a while.

Evidently, I'm going to have to work on the rest of this list during the week. No matter how tired I am. No matter how I don't want to deal with the items on the list. No matter how late I have to stay in Baton Rouge, though I'm hoping that won't be necessary this week. I still have my rewards in place. So onto facing Monday!

Rewards for finishing a project:

• Watching Castle: The Last Shaft
• Watching Castle April 19th episode
• Watching V April 13th episode
• Watching V April 20th episode
• Watching the Good Wife
• Watching NCIS: Truth or Consequences
• Watch Doctor Who April 24th episode
• Watch SGU April 16th episode
• Watch SGU April 23th episode
• 30 minutes of video game play for each finished project once I run out of TV shows

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The BookWorm

A fire alarm is great way to start a Friday

So in the office with my supervisor trying to solve a problem with the online payments statement and the fire alarm goes off... at 8am. Spend the next 45 minutes outside waiting for the all clear. It wasn't a drill but the building didn't burn either.

I had to stop at Wally World before work this morning and bought two pairs of jeans in a 16. Going up instead of down. I'm not happy with weight gain, but the concept of watching what I'm eating flew out the window a few months back. I'm stressed over money and I run to my cravings when I'm stressed.

Next week I really start five minutes of exercise every day.

Amazing how a simple thing like getting more sleep can make you feel so damn good. This week has been filled with irritants and I have been sailing above all of them. Now I still haven't caught up on doing stuff at home, so this weekend will be fun attempting to do just that.

Stuff to finish:

• Bloodwork
• Corset
• Cutting out the mock-up for bridesmaid dress
• Mock-up for bridesmaid dress
• Dishes
• Budget
• Empty inbox of all financial papers
• Catch up on website hours - edit Ref. Wiki images
• Catch up on writing hours - edit LJ header file with proper word counts

I'd like a clean slate of a house to start next week off with. That will be a novelty.

Rewards for finishing a project:

• Watching Castle
• Watching V
• Watching the Good Wife
• Watching NCIS: Truth or Consequences
• 30 minutes of video game play for each finished project once I run out of TV shows

Budget needs to become a daily item on my To Do List. Basically because I am a stupid twit and will ignore it until I'm in trouble. Hopefully daily reminders will keep the accounts balanced.

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The BookWorm

Castle experiment failed

It's been so long since I used the timer recording function on the VCR, I forgot that the VCR has to be turned off for it to work. So I didn't get any Castle. *head desk* I'll remember to turn it off for V tonight.

Now I'm going to see if ABC.com will let me see the episode I missed and if my computer's sound system will be nice about it.

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The BookWorm

SiteGround is mad at me

Why the Library is offline: my account is suspended until I take care of (in their terms get it off our server!) my songs directory. So they finally caught up with me. And I'll deal with it, good sport that I am, but I can't do anything until I get home.

So now I get to figure out what to do with the embedded songs. I really like having that feature in my stories, but apparently the music industry doesn't.

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The BookWorm

Sunday update

Side effect of waiting until the television set dies before buying a new one, I'm stuck with a heavy-ass TV. I did get the wires switched and lost a little video quality going through the VCR, but the timer should work to tape Castle and V. So Monday night I'll be in bed at 8pm. :D

Dixie Carter dies. Julie "The Terminator" Sugarbaker on Designing Women was a role model, fictional role model but nonetheless, Dixie Carter was a wonderful woman and actress. I need to get the series on DVD.

So I need to change the headlight that burnt out in the car and then all my dirty jobs will be finished and I can sew.

Poor Mustard is shedding like crazy. I'm wearing black jogging pants with orange calves where he has rubbed against me.

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The BookWorm