Oh yeah, this was a personal online journal, too, right? I can, like, write about my life, and stuff, not not just write about work all the time? I remember when -and this was when I worked for someone else, see- I refrained as much as possible from writing about work. Except when I didn’t. (Definitely pissed off some bosses, now and again. Started doing friends-only LJ posts for those times…) And now, here I am, and most of my time, most of my life, is spent working – and most of my posts are about same. Must be the whole self-employment thing. Between that and the idea that the actual core of my work – the painting, the writing – is something I (mostly) enjoy doing, it seems to fill my time pretty well.
Not today so much, so far, which is what I want to write about here, today.
I guess I can start with last night (it’s part of today, on account of it started after midnight, right?), when I was playing Spore. I’d waited, like a good boy, to start playing until around 5PM – after working from around 7AM. And I paused for a couple of hours when Mandy came home from work to get dinner together & eaten and watch a movie with her and hang out a bit. Then it was right back to Spore. Played through from Cell stage until, at 2:30AM this morning, I clicked the button to advance from Civilization stage to Space Stage (actually, a bit past that – I designed my space ship, first), when my computer froze up, trying to load the Space stage. And by 3AM I had confirmed that … apparently I hadn’t hit save all afternoon. I guess I’m used to things just … working. I do most of my computing on a Mac, and although when writing a novel or working in Photoshop I habitually hit save every little piece of progress, I don’t remember the last time something crashed and made that habit necessary. I do most of my gaming on consoles, which seem to auto-save or just use checkpoints (ie: map-based auto-save), and even the PC gaming I’ve been doing lately has been similar. (Mandy and I have been playing through American McGee’s Grimm games every week, and although a level or two there has had a bug, I never had to click save and I never had to go back more than to the beginning of the scene I was on at the time.) Spore does do a fair amount of auto-saving along the way: Every iteration of my creature, from cell through civilized, was saved and shared online as soon as I’d designed it, along with every building and every vehicle. In fact, while I was playing, so as not to interrupt my play, Heath would just go to Spore.com and look up his account (because he paid for the game, and it won’t let me log in with mine), and he could look at what I’d been building. Yet the planet I’d played through on, the progress I’d made, all the bonuses and advancements I’d earned through roughly 8 hours of gameplay – all gone. The planet isn’t even named, right now. bleh. So, I went to bed, frustrated.
Not sure how long it took me to fall asleep (felt like a while), but I didn’t wake up today until Noon. Noon! That’s not right. If I’m not on vaguely the same schedule as Mandy, things don’t seem to work out very well around here. And not just in the husband-wife relations department. The best hours to record audio (for the audiobooks I’m working on – did you see the new podcast?) are between about 6AM or 7AM and 1PM, when thumping vehicles begin driving around the neighborhood. Weekends are out (there’s almost always a party or a lawn tool going), and night time is out (because my recording setup is in the bedroom, where Mandy sleeps). Waking up at Noon = no recording today. As I’m writing this, I’m uploading episodes 4 & 5 of Lost and Not Found to the servers that feed Podiobooks.com – I want to have them up way in advance, as I finish them, to maintain a “buffer” in case something else goes wrong (I just spent two weeks waiting on a replacement part for my audio setup last month, for example) – but that’s certainly not the same thing as recording Episode 6, now is it?
Anyway, up at midday, I tried to make breakfast. I won’t go into all the details, but I was trying to cook some sausage and managed to pour boiling pig fat over my right hand, burning several places across my palm and a few place around my pinky, even between my fingers. It didn’t blister (right away), so the burns aren’t that bad, but for the next couple of hours I just tried to relax, catch up on email a bit, and watch a movie – ie: to try not to think about the pain or to move my hand too much. It doesn’t hurt too much, right now, but … sigh. Not a great start to the day.
Then I tried to get a few little things done I’d been putting off. I needed to scan some documents for my father & email them to him. Fix some problems with the Episode 1 file of LaNF and re-upload it. Be sure 2-5 were correct and upload them (just finished). Take cash reimbursement from Mandy’s school (we sometimes have to buy stuff at Sam’s Club for student council and get reimbursed) to the bank, and as long as I’m going, Heath wrote me a check for last month’s utilities as well. That didn’t work out so well. I changed clothes (I had originally got dressed in clothes for painting, which I may still do today), took the cash & the check to the bank, and the woman at the bank wouldn’t accept Heath’s check. His handwriting isn’t the best, but everything was there and more legible than most every signature I’ve seen… anyway, she only deposited the cash and spent a few minutes trying to tell me how he should write out his checks. So the bank deposit didn’t even work out right. Heath wrote out a new check, I endorsed it, and he went over to the bank to explain to the woman there why she was wrong not to take it, and to deposit it into my account. Hopefully that worked out okay.
Anyway, so far, today: Not great. By 4:30PM, I’d basically not got much of anything done, and Mandy’ll be home relatively soon. Maybe I’ll get some more painting done (the big one isn’t dry yet from yesterday, but maybe I can work on ‘gaping’ (you’ll have to wait and see, I’m doing a video)), and since my schedule is off and I’ll probably be up all night, maybe I’ll get some writing done, too. My novel stalled out (sort of – I’ve just been working on other things) a week or more ago. I think I’ll be able to finish it in a straight day or two of hard writing, though. I’m thinking of heading out to a coffee shop some morning soon and trying to plow through this monster in a couple 8-12 hour days. Maybe. Writing a blog post is good, though. I don’t do nearly enough of that, lately.
