Traveller's Tales

There are lots of reasons to love the wintertime: snow, fires in the fireplace, lots of excuses to eat awesome food, and hot cider with rum. Mmm.

Leaving the house for work while it’s black outside, and coming home in the same visual state, however, are not reasons to love the winter.

So today, I’m pleased to announce we had a sunrise before I left the house.

To hell with the groundhog, I say. Winter, have your last big snowstorm this weekend, and I’ll toast your timely departure with one last hot cider and rum.

(Edit: as ever, the Dee does a much better job of capturing these things than I do (though, to be fair, she’s also using a much better camera and not bumbling down the road while she’s shooting): check this shot out for a better idea as to what it looked like.)

I should really pay more attention to the weather.  Dad warned me a week ago this was coming, and Shelly still had to remind me last night.  Although I’m a bit pissy about not having been able to take actual vacation time this week, I admit today I’m feeling at least a little thankful that I don’t have to take the bus in today.

Also, I’m thankful that my driveway is little more than a slightly elongated square between my house and the teeny little windy road that connects me to the rest of the world; if I had Mom’s driveway to shovel with a six to ten inch snow forecast, I’d…

…well, I’d do what I’m going to do anyway, which is have a nice hot coffee with a shot of Baileys, write a bit in a comfy chair and watch the snow fall.

Gee, I really hope the cable is sound against the weather.  Would be a real crime if it, you know, got disconnected or something, and I had to spend the day unavailable.  Man, that’d really, um, suck…

Spent a bit of time this weekend putting parts of the house into a semblance of, if not actually ‘order,’ then at least ‘less entropy.’  Boxes went to the loft, so now I can actually get to my exercise equipment again, though I didn’t really need to use it this weekend after moving all those bloody boxes up to the loft.  Funny how that worked.  Now, at some point I’ll actually have to open the boxes to see what’s in them and where they should be going, but in the meantime just having them out of the way is a big plus.

Found myself a new local karate school; they sound like they’re the kind of place I like (Okinawan derivant, triple-focus on kata, kumite and waza, tonfa is one of their weapons forms), so once I’m back in some kind of shape I’ll be visiting to see whether it’s a fit.

No writing done.  Bad me.  So much stress and involvement from work, the brain’s just empty. Blood, rock, stone, same thing.  I’m going to need to set up better ground rules for engaging the muse, because I’ve been blowing her off a lot lately.

And that’s why this post is about rearranging.  That time thing, there’s just not enough of it to screw around and do things on the fly anymore.  Time to set aside actual chunks To Do Things With.  Dunno how that’s going to net out yet, but it’s something I’m thinking about.

Meh.  I want a summer vacation.  June to September, remember what that was like?

Yeah.  Me too.

Huge, catastrophic change tends to disrupt habits, whether they’re long-established, like finding a way to always slack at work, or whether they’re developing, like attempting to make a regular go at blogging.

As it happens, huge, catastrophic change has been going on at work for me.  Mainly good things — you’ll notice that my last blog entry had to do with intense dissatisfaction as regards the workplace, so in theory we’re going to stop making muffins soon and start supporting the business in meaningful ways.  I’ve learned so much in the last six months that the proper term to describe my progression is more “evolved” than”graduated,” and I’m not entirely sure I’m happy about all of it, but by and large I’m now being asked to help fix everything that’s broken, and on the whole this is a far better situation than smugly watching it devolve into chaos from my hidey-hole in the corner of the building.

There are writing things afoot, now, as I begin to adjust to both the new work environment and the new house, which I’ve written pathetically little about but love dearly, despite the unmeasurable multitude of Things That Must Be Done to the place.  I’ll mumble more about those writing things later, but for now suffice it to say that I’ve been taken by creative development fits twice now, both as regards the first book, and I’m pleased with the direction they’ve gone — pleased enough that I’m writing them in now.  I’m also seriously stinking tired of the lack of forward momentum, and something is going to happen, soon, to rectify that situation.  I don’t know what, yet, but I know what my options are, and I’m getting ready to exercise them.

It’s been one seriously strange year so far, but I think the fodder I’ve waded through in the first half is going to make for a very interesting second half.

By the way.  Art, if you’re out there, when the hell is the next game and why the hell haven’t you told me about it?

Wow. Yeah. That’s a long time in between posts. In my defense, I had the house I was renting sold out from under me and had to both find a new place to live and to move in there; my boss of 6 years flew the coop and left utter chaos in his wake; and, lastly, I’m a lazy negligent bastard anyway and have a hard time writing blog posts regularly even under the best of circumstances.

It’s a lovely 2-story converted log cabin complete with fireplace, spiral staircase, a loft for sunbeams, a balcony for drinking coffee (or scotch) and watching the sun rise (or set).

(Pictures courtesy of my wife, who’s much better at blogging than I am.)

It’s in a great place, not far from friends and very far from the things I didn’t like about my previous home, specifically the ‘urban environment’ thing and the ‘zomg my house is seriously old lol’ thing. There are still way too many boxes to unpack, but it’s starting to shape up. Yes, my desk is already a mess. No, I’m not posting a picture of it.

Speaking of messes, the job has entered a bit of an interesting period. I work at an ad firm, and the part of the agency I belong to is undergoing catastrophic change at roughly double the rate that the agency at large is undergoing catastrophic change, which is to say, quite quickly. Strangely, my job is not at risk; in fact, I’m more in demand now than I ever have been as people struggle to rebuild the organization and realize that not only do I have a clue or two between my ears, but I actually have a metric crapton of well-considered clues to offer. Add to this there are several outside influences who are, purportedly, interested in my roughshod, bum-rush methods of creative management, and suddenly it’s nice to be an ad man again. Go figure. I’ll post more once I have actual details I can share, but it looks as though I’m going to get to work with one of my favorite people again, and that makes me excited to go to work again. Hey, it beats waking up and having a hard time figuring out which excuse I haven’t used for a while to play hookie with.

Lastly, and this is quite exciting, there may be exciting news on the very near horizon with regards to the book. Now I have to figure out where the hell the latest manuscript is — more specifically, which box the laptop is hiding in.

Boxes. Ugh.