I’m writing this on Tuesday to set to post on Wednesday, and after several months of watching 2022 speed by (How did it get to be April already? What do you mean, it’s May in a week?), I have now degenerated to “How the hell can it be Tuesday? It was Saturday a minute ago. No, wait that was Sunday and I missed the Happiness post. Crap.” But the book is going well, mostly because when I start to wander all over the place, Bob grabs me by the metaphorical neck in e-mail and says, “The story is HERE.” It’s still got a cast of thousands with a lot of gossip and conflict and a nice slow romance, but it’s a lot more focused now. So that’s what I’m working on.
What are you focussed on this week?
This week I’m focused on emotional detachment from my job. I applied to do the same job I currently do, but on a full time basis, and the available positions were given to two people who are objectively worse employees than me. So I’m really working on not being bitter about that. And I need to start working on a jumper for my friend’s greyhound, but at least that will be fun.
The ways of the working world are a mystery.
I’m sorry to hear that. I’ve been passed over many times here too.
I have been in that position. It is very difficult to let go of the hurt. Also, the way my boss told me by way of feedback how close I had been to getting the job did not help at all.
Thanks everyone. I’m sorry it’s happened to you too. According to the rumour mill the positions were allocated purely based on the interviews, and ongoing job performance was not taken into account (none of the supervisors or movement controllers seems to have been asked for feedback). So the jobs went to two lazy, less competent men who can talk themselves up instead of any of four very competent hardworking women who get nervous in interviews.
I could scream.
Sounds like a potential lawsuit to me.
It’s a decision that will likely be regretted, and hopefully rectified. I’m sorry for the disappointment.
This week, at work, I am focused on appreciating my current schedule because, next week, it gets turned upside down (until a position gets filled).
Also- Happy National Medical Laboratory Professionals Week! Over 70% of all medical decisions are based on laboratory results.
(from a proud Medical Technologist with 40+ years in the field)
I’m working on not being annoyed because my roommate is annoyed at how long it’s taking to get the honey mess cleaned up. It’s a lot of work and mess for very little honey this spring. Maybe I’ll have honey in July/August this year like normal beekeepers do.
Also working on not going home and going to bed until I can get a PT appointment to take care of positional vertigo that has been plaguing me for the past few months. It seems to be getting worse – I don’t have to actually change position for it to affect me. I wouldn’t wish this feeling on anyone. Except maybe Putin. I wouldn’t mind if he felt like this. He might leave the Ukrainians alone if he felt like barfing all the time. Or not. But one can hope.
There’s a maneuver that might help that. I can’t remember the name. Maybe you can find a doctor or chiropractor or someone who knows how to do it. Eply? Something. I hope it gets better soon.
I had vertigo once. That was enough for me. All the sympathy.
Epley’s maneuver. Works for me.
The Foster maneuver can work wonders. There are 4-5 out there, it can be just a matter of figuring out the one that works for you. I get BPPV every few months, usually right before I have to do something that requires bending, leaning forward, or moving in general.
It can be miraculous. It reminds me of those toys that you tilt to get the marbles in the right places.
I do work with a physical therapist who helps with these maneuvers that help with vertigo being mentioned in the comments.
Googling “Vestibular Therapy” may help connect you to a specialist in your area who could help.
I’m not going to lie that undergoing the treatment initially is generally no fun, but it can usually be a relatively quick process and once they get your inner ear bones in place, it’s like night & day for people.
Just call me Cecil B. deJordan. I’ve been shooting, reshooting, and editing video for gardening and other projects. I still suffer from shakeycam and flare. I do have a digital camera and tripod that may cure those problems.
Tomorrow is the dotter’s thi… twenty-ninth birthday again. I got her stuff. No cake. I don’t bake, her oven is full of gremlins, and she’s Keto-ing.
When I retired 2 months ago (how can it already be two whole months!) I said one of the first things I would do is start a major spring cleaning campaign…it didn’t happen. Today, I am going to try to force myself to start, at least with dusting and polishing the furniture.
I went through all of my clothes. I still have too many but am actually wearing most of them. I did some decluttering too but that didn’t last.
I detest housecleaning so much, but then the clutter and disorganization overwhelm and depress me. My new approach is timed cleaning–making myself focus on cleaning with no distractions, for just 10 minutes. Once the timer goes off I’m free to reward myself by doing what I want, but still feel a little satisfaction that I took care of some responsibility, even small. My hope is in the future to extend the timer.
I’ve been working in my down time on making some more blank journals. It’s soothing to plan them out and work with pretty paper.
Will it surprise anyone if I say I’m working on promo for the upcoming cozy? No? I will be happy when the book is out on the 3rd and I can just occasionally say, “Hey, did ya get it? Do you like it?” and go back to posting mostly cat pictures.
Also packing for my trip to California. I’m working at not twitching at the idea of getting on a plane.
Have you got an FFTP2 (or whatever the acronym is) mask to wear? I wore one for my day trip by train to Yorkshire last month, and it seemed to work – plus allowed me to wear glasses without them steaming up.
N95. And yes, multiple. Plus some KN95 (which go behind the ears instead of behind the head like the N95). And some surgical masks in case I can’t stand wearing the N95 for 8 hours (I have trouble breathing in them). Plus extras to hand out to strangers if anyone wants one.
You can take off your mask to eat and drink on the plane. I used the same mask for the whole flight, but you might be more comfortable if you switch every 4 hours or so. You are right that airplanes are stuffy, so wearing a mask can add to difficulty breathing. To be honest, I didn’t have a problem. It was just so much fun to be traveling that wearing a mask seemed on par with wearing the seatbelt.
I hope you have a splendid trip!
Enjoy your trip. I just came back from California. It was a bit breezy and a little chilly, but still beautiful compared to the cold, rainy NJ weather I had left. Hope your weather is better.
It looks like it is going to be mid to high 60’s, maybe 70 at the beach. I’ll take it.
Sounds like heaven to me. Enjoy yourself!
I’m feeling triumphant and confused: I’ve just finished clearing my allotment – dug out the last of the bindweed before lunch (it’ll pop up again soon, no doubt); and I’m havering over what to do about the shed there. I was all set to buy a new one from a local firm , but it turned out to cost more than half as much again as I’d been told (by a fellow plot-holder) it was. So I’m now researching all my options, and consulting my friend’s partner, who’s a shed obsessive – she’s volunteered him to come and help me, but they’re not local.
Also got to improve my cat-proofing of the back garden, since one had got in yesterday evening and was strolling around until I chased it off. I’m determined this garden won’t become a stinking cat toilet, as my London one did.
Received my finished copy of the book on roses I edited last year, which confirmed to me that I’m well out of editing. I think it could have been much better, if we’d had the time and expertise I remember from my time in house, back in the 1980s. Anyway, this is good, because I’m absolutely not yearning for more editing work.
It sounds like you have timed your retirement well. Congratulations on getting out before it gets even worse.
I’m still working the conference in Florida. Wore my rainbow watchband today as a silent political statement.
I love subversive efforts like that. I once attended an anti-gun protest with a couple of d*ldos – big ones – one bright purple and one beige, prominently dangling off my backpack, jiggling and wiggling with every step. I waited to be challenged by the rabid gun lovers, ready to claim my right to open-carry a weapon considerably less obscene than a gun. No one objected, alas. Maybe I should have hung them from my belt or waved them at the all-guns-all-the-time folks across the street. BTW, I live in Florida. Argh.
My condolences.
Thanks. I’ve become a bit of a recluse because I have to resist the urge to ram my grocery cart into a non-masked red hatted jerk. Or whacking them with a purple d*ldo. (Although the local headline might be worth it.)
Do it on a Saturday so the pictures in the paper will be in color.
Well done.
Welcome to the club. The days either blend together, or they fly by. I’m working on all the spring things that suddenly have to be done: weeding, preparing the ground for plants, getting out all the pots and preparing them for pretty flowers, planting the tomato plants and the pretty flowers, painting what peeled over the winter, doing the first mowing to get rid of any remaining leaves in the yard, and cleaning up both patios from the leaves and other garbage that got on them over the winter. It’s great to be outside, now that the wind died down!
Paul and I are working on finishing the baseboards, we only have one bedroom and the upstairs bathrooms to do. Our ensuite is a small 2 piece and it’s only going to take 2 boards so that won’t take long and the hall bath is not much more than that.
We did a bunch more work outside yesterday in anticipation of the 2-4 inches of snow we are in the middle of getting today. It’s supposed to be warmer later on in the week so the melting should resume shortly.
Tomorrow Paul starts his shift so I will be catching up with cleaning and laundry and all that good stuff. Oh, yeah, and my actual job.
Fred is working at feeling better, Hannah is working at being endearing and frustrating and cute and aggravating and learning how to be a good girl, and Jasmine is working on her beauty sleep.
Toodles is a cat, she doesn’t work at anything.
Yes she does. I’m sure she works hard at keeping the rest of you in line.
We’ve got a frost warning tonight in the DC area, which is bizarre for late April. Last week our temperatures had reached the high 70s/low 80s F. and we’d taken the pond heater out and put it away. Also, I had settled my three indoor plants in nice spots among the garden shrubs, so after work today I will have to scramble around to get them back inside before dark. At least dark is taking its sweet time arriving these days.
I thought I was the only one thinking this year was flying past!
I hit the final act (last 50 pages) of my manuscript, and it too is flying along after I got bogged down in the middle. I’m hoping to get the proposal to my agent by the end of next week, so it HAS to fly along at this point! I don’t need the end polished, just enough to be able to write the synopsis for feedback from my agent.
And I’m making progress on the quilt coat I’m making for a friend. Hope to be able to mail the “muslin” (sample for fitting) to her next week.
Evita tech week. So far the musical director quit/got fired (unclear on exactly which happened) for yelling at us, and some creep rode by last night to brag that he stabbed a bitch 37 times. And the costume changes are a pain in the ass.
Also, I’m extremely mad that apartment management decided to treat the place for roaches and I have to clean out half of the entire apartment by Friday morning. I ABSOLUTELY DO NOT HAVE TIME TO DO THIS (or the room to move everything out of every single cabinet and closet) AND I FEEL HOMICIDAL. I canNOT do this at 11:30 at night. And I have to go into the office already on Thursday.
Trying to relax enough to sleep. It’s not going well. And now I’m not alone. They too can’t sleep and not because I’m up wandering around. The only creatures sleeping well around here are cats. My usual “well if I can’t sleep I’ll get up and do -tedious but quiet task” is not working out.
I don’t even remember what I’ve been doing this week. Mostly work, and prepping for DH’s birthday (today). I found the best card. On the front it said “Happy Birthday’ Do you want 1. Sex, 2 a Cake 3. a Card?” When you open the card it said “I see you’ve chosen the card. Better luck next year!” I laughed and laughed, both when I bought it and when he opened it and got a disappointed look on his face. (I did get him a cake too, and, ahem).
Quilt retreat in a couple of days. Looking forward to hanging out with my quilt peeps!
Perfect card! 🙂
I’m starting to plot the new book. Well, I’m trying to start plotting the new book, but I keep finding other things that need to be done first. *argh*
I am trying to pace myself, so that everything gets done, I get to do everything else that I want to do, and I don’t panic. We shall see. I don’t really get much of my own projects done during the week, and there are lots of things coming up that I want to do on the weekends…Argh. Choosing between an arts festival and a little renne faire this weekend. Both on the same day, about an hour away, and in different directions.
On the other hand, it is nice to have choices again and the transportation to make at least one of them.
Very true, and I promised myself that I would do as many things as possible once I had the option again. I have a tendency to talk myself out of things…
I am working on recovering from emotional whiplash. Yesterday I received a very confusing letter from the State saying that the amount I have to spend to qualify for Medicaid has risen by $15-20 a month. Since I share my food stamps (which are based on the same income figures) with my sister, I called to tell her that there would probably be a big reduction in those once they came back online. Today she called to tell me that she didn’t know how much we were getting per month, but our account now had a $500 balance and she was going shopping. I am overjoyed because shopping for Passover without the food stamps cleaned both of us out, but I can’t help but wonder what other program will be cut to offset this one.
I am also working on getting a handle on my allergies. Even though the thermometer can’t commit to Spring, my allergies have definitely done so. I need to get a handle on them before I go to the burbs for a cat sitting gig next week. My insurance wouldn’t pay for any new testing when I went to see the allergist last week so the trial and error of adjusting my meds will lean heavily toward the error side of the spectrum.
The baseboard install is done. The house looks like a bomb went off but starting tomorrow I can work on that.
I’m off to pick up a couple of ROTC medals that have been engraved with the recipients’ names, to be awarded May 6. In Person, after a two-year hiatus. Otherwise scrambling because I probably should have some lab work before my doctor’s appointment next week, but the last appointment was by phone so I didn’t walk out with a printed copy of a lab order in hand, and it doesn’t look as if she created an electronic one, either. This mix of online medicine and paper copy medicine is slightly challenging . . . .
Finished up two sets of meeting minutes last night and need to set up for another marathon meeting this coming Saturday.
We went to buy patio furniture last Thursday, which were delivered Saturday. The saleswoman at the store told us it’d all come ready to use, buuut as it turned out, it didn’t. This time, however, Sven and I didn’t sit down and wait for someone else to come put it all together – we did it ourselves! He held the seatbacks and I screwed them together, and we did it all without sighted help or instructions, just by figuring out the wheres and hows as we went. It was a blast! Okay, perhaps it wasn’t very complicated work to most people, BUT still, we did it, and we did it well. (MIL came later and helped me with the last chair + sunshade because Sven had an esports tourney to play, but she only took over his lend-a-couple-of-hands-because-I-don’t-have-6-of-them-task, and I did the screwing-work.) I was so proud and happy, still am. Felt good to do things myself without help, put chairs and a sofa and table together and get the satisfaction of knowing this was something I could do. Then, Sunday, the weather was so nice we sat outside from 11am to 5:30pm and thus got to enjoy our selfputtogether-furniture. Lovely.
Today I’ve been cleaning kitchen and bathroom and toilet and folded laundry and cooked and whew, so tired. We’d also found something called a “sweeping machine”, which is a hand-driven mechanical thingy looking a bit like an oldschool lawnmower, but with brushes and things under it so it can sweep the patio when you push it in front of you. All mecanical, no cables or electrical things. All the leaves and sand and weeds and other random debree end up in a bin that you can empty somewhere proper once you’re done sweeping. Sweeping with a broom isn’t all that practical for blind people (not saying it can’t be done, just that it’s… not very efficient), so we thought we should give this a try. So I cleaned the patio today, and it’s much, much cleaner than before, so I’ll take it as a win.
I’ve also been very busy lately beta-testing for a company that makes smart-glasses for blind and visually impared people (Maybe you’ve even seen it fly past in the news some weeks ago, for Stevie Wonder visited their booth at an assistive tech-fair about a month ago and was very excited about this product). I keep thinking “They’ll never ask me for help again after today!” because I deliver such harsh critique on the beta-versions and dig up bugs they never saw coming, but they keep contacting me for extra testing sessions and feedback-bouncing, so I try to think they appreciate what I do. It’s fun to be helpful to my “own community”, and these people are such a good time to hang out with that I enjoy just being there talking with them.
I haven’t done much crafting at all since we moved here… I want to, but don’t really have the energy to.
Right, this was half a novel already, so hope you all have a great week!
I forgot to paste the link to the pics of our finished furniture in my message, so here it goes: https://twitter.com/shassmusic/status/1517914842048380933
I am totally impressed and delighted to hear from you again!
As for why they keep coming back to you for beta testing, I wish that more companies would do that. One of my biggest complaints is that most products are not tested by the people who actually use them and are then released on the market with major flaws in them. It made Bill Gates enormously wealthy, but it really didn’t help anyone who bought his products. I would be extremely loyal to a brand that I knew fully tested their products before releasing them.
That furniture looks great and I’m really impressed you put it together. Heck, I’m impressed when sighted people manage that, I’m incredibly impressed you did. And it’s lovely to hear you.
Great to hear things are so good with you. And you sound an invaluable tester! Hope they can make those glasses really useful, with your help.
Oh, this was wonderful to hear. Feel free to write a half-novel any time.
As someone who absolutely relies on and values beta testers for my job – let me reiterate that the fact that you’re finding & reporting bugs and providing thoughtful feedback about what does/doesn’t work well for you from a user perspective is 100% what they want.
Never feel bad about it…you finding the issues in testing so they can be fixed is crucial! Providing honest feedback about what does/doesn’t work is important. Especially when a team has been in the development weeds for awhile, getting a fresh perspective from people who’ve never dealt with the device/application before is extremely helpful – it’s like trying to edit your own writing…there’s things you’ll always miss without help because it all makes so much sense in your head already, because you created it and because you’ve already been through the thing so many darn times sometimes your brain is autofilling gaps.
Ultimately, what you are doing is increasing their likely long term success…so no one’s feelings are getting hurt by criticism in this case, they’re professionals and if they’re good at their jobs, they’re grateful to find and fix things now when the stakes are lower.
FYI Bob Mayer’s Independence Day which is part of his Time Patrol series is free on Kindle today.
I’m in my last three days of my tech writing contract, and I’m trying to give good value, but I am also so ready to be done with it. What I’d like to be doing is putting dirt in pots and then adding seeds.
The thing I need to be doing is researching applications that aid communication for someone with aphasia.
Sometimes I can’t tell if I’m doing OK or if I’m a flakey screw up. Or maybe I’m even doing well enough.
Once again, most of my non-Day Job energy has gone to the garden. Seven new things planted and planning/infrastructure actions taken for next phase. Also gave the wisteria a haircut, because shade my windows = good, infiltrate the attic = bad.
The WIP novel has received very little attention this week. Lack of progress is probably 50% demotivation (no visible results with books vs the garden) and 50% wanting to get garden things Done so we can have people over again. There is only so much time, and after a few hours of yard work I’m too tired to compose.
I said this in the happiness post but I’m so pleased about it that I’ll say it again: I’ve been trying for 3 months to get a plumber to do a few hours of work and today it got done!
Other than that, day job and a sore leg have been sapping my energy. But the leg’s improving (the job isn’t but hey) and I got some garden work done at the weekend. And went for a short steep walk tonight, so I can feel all virtuous.