Why oh why is it only 8:30? Time goes too fast for me, generally speaking (for instance, who authorized it to be nearly the end of March? Wasn't it January yesterday?), except for moments like these, in which I desperately want it to be later in the day.

Two thefts and one recovery this shift. Not bad. The recovery was made in less than an hour, and the other car's boomerang wasn't answering, which means we can't track it. So.

Otherwise? Deadly dull. Very little to do.

I got some writing done. If I can muster the energy when I get home tonight, I shall transcribe the two instalments of BTP that I have and put them up. Otherwise, it will happen tomorrow morning. I'm aiming for five instalments a week, instead of one per day. My weekends tend to be write-offs (no pun intended), even when I don't have band practice.

The new guy is researching hand guns on the internet on the computer beside me. This appears to be a favourite pastime of his, though I can't for the life of me figure out why. It seems to me that researching handguns is not all that appropriate when you're working for a security company. It has already raised a number of eyebrows among his colleagues. Then again, he worked for the American consulate before coming here, so maybe that explains it. ;)

The deck of cards I have is too slippery to make for a good game of solitaire. All the cards keep sliding around and messing up my game. The computer I'm on doesn't have a copy of solitaire on it, which is very sad, as it means I'm bored. Miaow!

I am looking forward to going home, maybe watching some Babylon 5, and then hitting the proverbial hay. I am stupidly tired.

I love my new Sesame Street icon, in unrelated news. :)

::Stuff about writing follows, uncut. If you don't want to read it, you may want to skip this whole post.::

I started writing again last night, after doing No Writing At All since the end of November. NaNoWriMo kind of burnt me out. Remind me never to produce 100,000 words in a month again unless I'm getting paid for it, okay?

Right. Onward.

So now that I'm writing again, I'm going to try and maintain my momentum. Writing for me is always about momentum. An author in motion will tend to remain in motion, and all that. I chucked about 3,000 words of Crisse, des Zombies! last night (shoved them unceremoniously into another word processing document, where they will likely stew for all eternity), and wrote nearly 4,000 more last night and this morning to compensate. I feel less like I'm going backwards now that I've "made up" those 3,000 words, and I'm hoping that I'll be able to move past this difficult bit with which I'm having problems.

I also hand-wrote a new instalment of Beyond the Pale while at work. i have no idea how long it is, but I know that 6-7 pages of handwriting usually gets me to roughly the right length for an instalment, and I've brought it to an appropriate cliffhanger. I'm looking forward to finishing this story arc and moving into the next one, because there are exciting things up ahead.

Question for author-types on my flist: For the first time in my life I'm facing the very real possibility that I might finish a novel that I'm working on. Trouble is, I am not at all good at the whole revision thing. I have a very, very rough first draft on my hands, and no idea how to go about turning it into a second draft. Any tips/techniques/answers concerning the meaning of life?

More writing tonight when I get home, I think. It's all about momentum, after all.

Work is, shall we say, very very quiet. This is a good thing and a bad thing. Good because it means no alarms and no thefts. Bad because it means I am BORED. This is a post nattering about my writing, so if such talk bores you, feel free to move on.

So I've pulled out my writing notebook, and I've planned out the seven missing instalments of Conflation and the next eighteen instalments of Beyond the Pale, which I will eventually get around to writing up. I just realized that, had I stayed on top of BTP the way I'd planned, I'd actually be at a crucial juncture in the plot, yet again. I hope elanya will forgive me once she reads it. ;) I'm also very close to introducing one of the main characters in the story, for whom I've been waiting for over two years. I hope I can do her justice, now that it's only about ten instalments before she makes her first appearance.

I have worked out what I don't like about Crisse, des zombies!, and this weekend I shall be heading out to the Godforsaken Howling Wilderness, where I shall consult with fearsclave about an important plot point involving getting from Point A to Point B without getting torn apart by zombies. It's kind of paramount that I figure this out before I can continue. However, after that I should have enough of a handle on the narrative that I may well be able to finish in a timely fashion. I would still like to finish before the end of February. We shall see.

That's about it for now. I have a pirate story set in the Conflation universe that has no plot right now and on which I'd like to work, but nothing is springing to mind just yet. If all goes well, all my writing projects should be back on track by the end of March. I hope.

I don't get it. Twelve hours of sleep later, and I'm still tired. No, it's not the ick-I-slept-too-much kind of tired, either.

Is LJ going to keep the Valentine's Day banner up all week, or what?

I am entirely caught up on Bluebook. Yay!

Now, if only I could wrap my mind around writing fiction. One step at a time, I suppose. I really hate the last 2,000-odd words of Crisse, des zombies!, and that's proving to be a major stumbling block to getting the thing finished.

This is the Post Of A Thousand Paragraphs, because I honestly don't remember what I was going to say. Poor joane was talking to me yesterday on Y!M about conversations we had around New Year's, and I had NO idea what she was talking about. Once she reminded me (with explanations and examples and flow charts) then I finally got a vague notion that yes, maybe we might have discussed that at some point.

On the plus side, this whole memory thing seems to be restricted to short-term memory only. Anything that happened before September is okay. Otherwise, though, I'm sunk.

What I need, I suspect, is a month's vacation somewhere sunny and warm which includes a beach. I actually wouldn't mind going back to PEI for a week or two in the summer. That's obviously not going to happen this year, but maybe next year.

...

I forgot what I was going to say again. *sigh*

I am unreasonably tired today. Work was stupidly busy all day, with three or four thefts, and 211 alarms at last count. We had TWO newbies today, apart from one of my usual co-workers and myself, which meant that while the long-term guy handled the thefts, I had to hand-hold the newbies. That was interesting, since I'm pretty much a n00b myself, though less so.

n00b #1 left, and n00b #2 was supposed to be handling the alarm page, but she freaked out at one point and so I took it over, only to realize that she was about half an hour behind on all the alarms. So I spent about two hours trying to sort that out until the little Italian guy from St. Leonard came in. I've never been so happy to see him. With his help, we cleared all the alarms in about twenty minutes.

I'm learning to get along with him, as it happens. He still has opinions that make my teeth itch, and I refuse to discuss anything in depth with him, but we've reached something of an understanding about how things are going to work between us. I am cautiously optimistic.

I thought for a while that the tiredness might be due to the fact that I didn't eat until late, but it's been 45 minutes since dinner and I'm still tired, so it can't be that. I hope I'm not heading back into the Mysterious And Unexplained Case of Tired(TM) that I had in August, when I was completely wiped all the time and couldn't figure out what the hell was going on. I started work at DAH after that and was genuinely exhausted by the job, then exhausted myself again in November for NaNo, but was doing pretty well here at Boomerang. Maybe this is a case of delayed new-job-related tired.

Anyway, enough about that.

I am going home in less than three hours. Tomorrow I shall finish writing my script for Capricornucopia, and call the little man from Paradoxe to finalize the details. I think I shall also sleep in a bit.

I think I forgot my wallet at home. I hope to God that I have, because otherwise it means that A) I forgot it at toughlovemuse's home (not a bad thing, but inconvenient), or B) I've lost it somewhere, along with my brand new driver's license, all my cards, and essentially most of my financial life. Gah.


In other news, I really wonder what it is about being safely on the other end of a phone line that makes people think it's okay to be abusive with those unfortunate enough to be on the receiving end of their frustrations. Seriously, folks, we're just trying to do our jobs. We are not actively trying to make your lives miserable: if you're dissatisfied with the service, kindly express it in a non-abusive fashion. Your customer service representative will not only appreciate it, but will likely go the extra mile to help you out. Cross my heart.

A warning for those of you who don't like NaNoWriMo: I'll be discussing it in this post, though on a level which I don't feel belongs in my writing LJ. Feel free to skip this entry as a result of that.


Okay, disclaimer over. I'm in the middle of a very, very serious quandary. I am currently at roughly 83,000 words. I could, theoretically, make it to 85K tonight, and that would put me in a strong position to reach 100K by the end of Thursday. I could then bask in my own awesomeness for quite a while, which is always a nice thing.

On the other hand, I'm tired. A bath sounds really nice right about now, and the last few episodes of Season 1 of Babylon 5 are calling to me.

I've made popcorn. The popcorn will be useful both for writing and for watching B5 (though not for the bath).

*sigh*

Ambition or comfort? You see my problem. Clearly one of those life-and-death situations.

I think I shall continue writing for now. I shall review my options at 8pm, and see if I'm in the middle of a gripping scene which won't leave me alone, or if I'm struggling with the story and the bath sounds even more tempting. One more hour of writing. That's not too bad.

I wonder if it's worth running out to the dep to get myself a fizzy drink with which to have some Amaretto. Or I could make sour mix. As I recall it's two parts water to one part sugar to one part lemon juice. I have all these things.

Hmm.

1- There was no writing. I hit 50K yesterday, and wrote 2,300 words for the Mutopia game this morning, so no NaNo. I deserved a break.

2- Spent a very restful afternoon with the lovely and talented curtana and, of course, Arthur. It was fun but blissfully quiet, and we went for a walk to the store and had sandwiches and watched four episodes of "Fawlty Towers." I needed this, badly.

3- Spent the evening playing Rummoli with baronscartop, ai731, luvenditti, miseri and sandman7. There was booze, screaming, yelling, swearing, and throwing of pennies at people. So much fun. Must do it again soon.

Now I am going to bed. Tomorrow there will be band practice, then writing, and then more writing. Did I mention writing?

Now that I'm sort of used to getting up at 5am, I'm a little appalled at how quickly today went. I awoke at 9:30 and stayed in bed until 10:00, but now it's nearly 1:00 and where the hell did my day go?

So starting tomorrow I'm going to start getting up earlier again. Maybe not 5:00, but 7:00 seems reasonable as long as I don't go to bed too late.

Today I am determined to be Productive!Phnee. I am working on the principle that I have very few free days left before November, and if I get a job before then (hey, you never know), then I'll have even less free time. So far I have done a cursory de-cluttering of the kitchen and emptied out most of the refrigerator. I am mildly appalled by some of what was around the kitchen, but now it's being dealt with.

This will be of little interest to anyone but me, but for my own purposes I'm going to make a to-do list for the next few days:

( There is nothing to see here. We are a bush. Move along. )

I'm probably forgetting any number of things. They'll be added as I remember them.

I haven't been updating this thing properly lately. In fact, I haven't been doing much at all that involves the computer at home. Mostly, I've been too tired to do anything in the evening before going to bed other than read through the day's LJ entries, post something short and pithy about cleaning, and then collapse in a tired heap. I've been writing at work, so the August Writing challenge continues apace, even if I'm not posting the results every day.

Everything else has pretty much gone by the wayside.

( cut for length )

So this is what's been going on in Phnee's world of late. As you can see, dear readers, you're not missing all that much. Mostly it's cleaning and cooking and cats, a little bit of writing, and a lot of seeing friends and generally being all sociable-like. Nothing earth-shattering, just domestic tranquility.

I have been reading LJ, as mentioned, but just haven't had the energy to comment on most entries. My apologies for that. Once I get used to the new schedule I've imposed on myself, I shall doubtless start commenting more.

This is just Phnee whining. Nothing to see here, move along.

I'm on vacation! I'm not supposed to get a migraine! Waaaah!

Thus far today the only position that has not resulted in my feeling completely awful has been horizontal. This sucks. I was supposed to get all my cleaning done today, and I can't even sit up. Bleah.

I'm going to go take another nap. Maybe that'll do it.

On the plus side, I'm at least able to read the stuff from august_writing in short bursts. With any luck I'll be able to post mine by tonight. It's Tuesday, so that means Beyond the Pale. I'm contemplating posting Conflation once a week during the challenge as well.