Miscellany

A Miscellany is a collection without a natural ordering relation.
— John Edensor Littlewood

A river cuts through rock, not because of its power, but because of its persistence.
— Jim Watkins

Never give up on a dream just because of the time it will take to accomplish it. The time will pass anyway.
— Earl Nightingale

Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.
— Neale Donald Walsch

Well that was interesting, trying to come up with quotes for this post title. Originally I was going to title it “This ‘N That,” but that really got me no where fast, quotes wise. Then I searched for “quotes about miscellaneous,” and ended up taking my title from the very first quote that popped up.

The state of my mental health has been really up and down lately. And it’s a little wearying. It really doesn’t help that the time change happened last night, where we “spring forward” and hour. I really needed that hour!

Kids everywhere have a whole week to get used to the time difference, seeing as this week is the March Break. I have just a few days and then I’m leaving to go on my writing retreat to Kingston. Had I realized this weekend was the time change, I would have booked an extra night at the hotel so I could drive up Wednesday. Instead, I’ll be getting up early Thursday morning and driving into the sun the whole way. *sigh*

But the good news is, this time I registered for the event early enough to reserve a room in the hotel it’s being held in. Theoretically, once I get there I don’t have to leave the hotel for the four days I’m there. All the seminars are going to be there, my room is there, and they have a restaurant.

That’s not to say I’m going to stay inside the whole time. Weather permitting, I’d like to take a daily walk, and I definitely want to go to that coffee shop with the amazing almond croissants. But I’ve looked at the line-up and I’m pretty sure I won’t be skipping any of the workshops this time. And you know what that means, lots of fodder for blog posts!

Speaking of blog posts . . . As I was filling out the Wordage Report of this blog, I was thinking I need to do a little house-keeping. Maybe come up with a title for the part where I just ramble about the past week. And the Goal Review seems a little redundant because I kind of do that as I go along in each little section. And maybe instead of the goal review, I can look ahead to what’s going to happen/what I’d like to see happen in the week ahead.

Obviously, none of these changes are happening this week. And probably not next week either, seeing as I’ll be writing next Sunday’s post while I’m still in Kingston (there’s no way to write it ahead of time because I won’t have written any words yet).

But soon, my pretties, soon.

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

WORDAGE REPORT

I really like the new set up for my office. Too bad most of the work I got done in there was cleaning up, and personal correspondence. I got my table from Amazon and spent Monday morning putting it together. Have I mentioned how much I hate using allen keys to put furniture together?

The table is perfect for the typewriter, and is the perfect size. But Monday was just one too many in a series of grey days, and putting the table together was pretty much the only thing I got done.

Then Tuesday I went to a long, early lunch with a friend, so it wasn’t until Wednesday that I spent any significant time in the office. But it was quality time. My new set-up is really working for me.

I spent the entire morning on Thursday in there, and it would have been longer, but I had a bunch of errands to run in the afternoon. It left me with a good feeling though, and I’m actually looking forward to seeing what I can accomplish in there.

NEW WORDS:
1856+0+286+618=2,760
DOWN – 396 words from last week

Goals For Next Week:
Get some words written besides my blog posts.

EDITING:
0 hours
I’m actually looking forward to getting some editing done this week. Wish me luck!

Goal For Next Week:
Start work on An Elemental Spirit.

TECH & TRAINING:
Once again, the TV came to my rescue for learning. This time it was Netflix. I went through pretty much the same rigamarole I did with Paramount +, only I didn’t have to go through the Roku. I signed up for both services at the same time, but I didn’t try to access Netflix until yesterday. Anyway, I ended up having to change the password for it, too, and after jumping through a bunch of hoops for it, I discovered that I can get into it by simply pressing the Netflix button on the TV zapper (instead of going through a bunch of menus from the TV). I can do that with Amazon Prime, too. *rolls eyes*

For the tech part . . . my trusty Neo has one stuck key and one key that’s missing altogether. So I thought it might be time to replace it – I like using it for letter-writing, if nothing else. A few years ago I bought a back up Neo and stashed it in my closet (after removing the batteries). I hauled it out, put the batteries back in, and immediately got a message about the batteries – I think, probably, because it had been sitting without batteries in it so long. I kept getting error messages for a couple of different things, until finally I shut it off and replaced the batteries with the ones from my original Neo.

Turned it on again and it seems to be working fine. Of course I wasn’t going to take the chance of writing the letter to my sister on it, so I did a couple of test files and then shut it off. I’ll check it this week to see if it’s still okay, although I’m not sure if I’m going to be trusting it any time soon.

Meanwhile, the Freewrite Traveller is looking pretty good, if I could justify the price. Although . . . it would make a good incentive to get An Elemental Spirit finished. It could be my reward. :-)

Goal For Next Week:
Learn something new.

POETRY WEDNESDAY:
I don’t seem to be having much trouble finding forms these days, but finding ones I’d like to try is another story. Remember high school English class where you were forced to work on poetry? It never ended well, did it.

A couple of years ago I was doing forms I didn’t particularly care for, just for the sake of presenting a new form every week and I kinda burned myself out. Forcing myself to work on it took all the fun out of it. It took a long time before I remembered that I actually liked poetry.

Goal For Next Week:
Find another new poetry form to share.

CRAFTING:
Well, the whole point of going through all that rigamarole to get Netflix set up was so that I could start watching it while I work on the cancer blanket. I got a bunch done, and I’m happy to say I only have three colours to go. Whew! And seeing as there’s a stitchery guild meeting this week, I’ll be able to knock off a bunch more.

The theme for this years father/daughter ball is Disco, so I’m just waiting on some direction from the daughter and granddaughter before I start looking for material for the dress. Should be lots of fun.

Goal For Next Week:
Push to get the afghan done so I’m free to work on other stuff with a clear conscience.

WHAT I’M READING:
I’m about halfway through a paranormal romance anthology called Moon Shadows. The stories all revolve around, you guessed it, the moon. The first one was about a woman who was bitten by a werewolf and is looking for a cure, and the second one was about a moon witch. Not far enough into the third to see what it has to do with the moon.

Goal For Next Week:
Maybe try to increase my reading just a little.

GOAL REVIEW:

I really dropped the ball last week by skipping Monday’s post. Once again, I just didn’t have anything to say. My other posts got up on time, though.

Technically, I think a 5,000 word letter to my sister should count as new words, even if they were personal words, not fiction. But these words were written in my office, which is a big step forward. Just think what that could mean if I was at my desk to write fiction?

No editing, unfortunately. It’s not that I’m not ready to get back to it, it’s just that I had a busy week with other stuff, and I wasn’t in the best of mental health early in the week. Probably won’t get any editing in this week either, but it is what it is.

I’m not sure it was what I had in mind for tech and training, but figuring out how to access all my streaming services on the TV takes some learning, and getting the back up Neo to work I think should count as technical.

The one thing I can count on is poetry. I guess that’s because I started out as a poet before anything else.

The probably with crafting is that I prefer to do it while watching TV. But I also tend to have my laptop on my lap while watching TV. Now I did spend one morning catching up on a couple of my Netflix shows, so I got some work on the afghan done. Hopefully, I’ll get more writing done in my office so that my evenings are freed up to do some crafting.

Very little reading last week. Half a book – what’s up with that? I do have a couple of books to take with me to the retreat – maybe I should take my Kindle with me too and figure out how I’m supposed to access my books. And its charger because I haven’t used it in months.

I’m keeping my attitude status to myself this time. Last week I said it was getting better, and then the next day was a complete write-off. While it did improve for a couple of days, by the weekend it was right down in the crapper again, as you may have guessed by the lateness of this post.

But attitude or not, it’s going to be a busy week this week. Let’s hope I can get ‘er done.