The Signs of Spring
Apr. 9th, 2018 10:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hrjI spent the weekend working on various rituals of springtime: cleaning up the garden, pruning trees, doing taxes. I even cleaned off the top of the dining room table for the first time since Christmas. (I know that based on the strata of non-critical mail I found in the bottom layer.) Given that I tend to approach my tax returns as a computer game, you might wonder why I left it until nearly the last minute, but the deep dark secret is that I haven't been keeping my financial database file up to date and had a lot of data entry to do before I could extract the numbers for the returns.
I've slipped into that awkward space where I don't need to keep my accounts up to date to know if there's money in my account, but I still have an irresistible compulsion to track every receipt and make sure the books balance to the penny. The one aspect I've decided to let go of is tracking cash expenses. I so rarely pay cash for anything these days anyway, and when I do it's usually meals on the go or farmers market shopping. So I can just mentally categorize it as "food/groceries" and be close enough.
After a couple weekends of not getting yard work in, I'm back to hacking at the vegetation until the green can is full. I'd meant to do the ceremonial First Mow Of The Lawn this weekend, but then said, "Why don't I just do some pruning on the ornamental plum tree to make it easier to work around" and the next thing I knew the green can was full of chopped up plum prunings. (Or is that "prune plummings"?) I keep saying that I really need to have professionals in to do some yard things: deal with a few trees, overhaul my ad hoc garden irrigation system, etc. But time-saving projects require time to arrange for them and there never seems to be enough. I planted some new strawberries in one of the corner beds of the formal garden (the ones that have the damask roses) but decided to wait on the tomato extravaganza until I've worked out what I'm going to do for watering this year. The drip system I had last year didn't supply enough water and my yield was way down. I need to find the balance between supply and waste.
I did get caught up on my Podcastle reviews for Short SFF Reviews, though not on my pending book reviews. I'd like to get all of the current LHMP publication notes written up and on the website in one chunk so that I can slack off on that for a while. And I have a podcast interview recording session of some sort on each of the next four weekends. (This doesn't include recording my solo shows--I need to write the script for the end-of April show and at least get the outline worked out for the beginning-of-May show.)
And then there's my writing. Argh. Top priority is actually a brand new short story to submit for an anthology with a May deadline. Technically this is an optional project, but I have a concept that will work for it and would be fun. And currently I'm feeling like getting my work out in more different venues is critical to my long-term success. So I work on the things that I can get out there. Also on immediate schedule is the next mini-story in the Lesbian Book Bingo series--talk about self-imposed workloads! But doing them keeps me interested in continuing to help promote the reading challenge. (Although it's feeling more and more like the Bingo Challenge is mostly designed to promote the organizer's own work and to rope other people into helping that goal. I think I'm going to be wary about such things in the future. I don't really think it's been any particular benefit to my own work.) But after some initial interest, I don't think anyone is really following the Bingo stories, so I may just drop it.
At least the day job has had some ice-jams start breaking up and my four oldest investigations are all moving more clearly toward closure. We also finally got the official word that the current system of having investigators assigned to individual departments is going to revert to the previous system (from nearly half a dozen years ago) of a single unified investigation department. The organizational details have yet to work out completely.
I've slipped into that awkward space where I don't need to keep my accounts up to date to know if there's money in my account, but I still have an irresistible compulsion to track every receipt and make sure the books balance to the penny. The one aspect I've decided to let go of is tracking cash expenses. I so rarely pay cash for anything these days anyway, and when I do it's usually meals on the go or farmers market shopping. So I can just mentally categorize it as "food/groceries" and be close enough.
After a couple weekends of not getting yard work in, I'm back to hacking at the vegetation until the green can is full. I'd meant to do the ceremonial First Mow Of The Lawn this weekend, but then said, "Why don't I just do some pruning on the ornamental plum tree to make it easier to work around" and the next thing I knew the green can was full of chopped up plum prunings. (Or is that "prune plummings"?) I keep saying that I really need to have professionals in to do some yard things: deal with a few trees, overhaul my ad hoc garden irrigation system, etc. But time-saving projects require time to arrange for them and there never seems to be enough. I planted some new strawberries in one of the corner beds of the formal garden (the ones that have the damask roses) but decided to wait on the tomato extravaganza until I've worked out what I'm going to do for watering this year. The drip system I had last year didn't supply enough water and my yield was way down. I need to find the balance between supply and waste.
I did get caught up on my Podcastle reviews for Short SFF Reviews, though not on my pending book reviews. I'd like to get all of the current LHMP publication notes written up and on the website in one chunk so that I can slack off on that for a while. And I have a podcast interview recording session of some sort on each of the next four weekends. (This doesn't include recording my solo shows--I need to write the script for the end-of April show and at least get the outline worked out for the beginning-of-May show.)
And then there's my writing. Argh. Top priority is actually a brand new short story to submit for an anthology with a May deadline. Technically this is an optional project, but I have a concept that will work for it and would be fun. And currently I'm feeling like getting my work out in more different venues is critical to my long-term success. So I work on the things that I can get out there. Also on immediate schedule is the next mini-story in the Lesbian Book Bingo series--talk about self-imposed workloads! But doing them keeps me interested in continuing to help promote the reading challenge. (Although it's feeling more and more like the Bingo Challenge is mostly designed to promote the organizer's own work and to rope other people into helping that goal. I think I'm going to be wary about such things in the future. I don't really think it's been any particular benefit to my own work.) But after some initial interest, I don't think anyone is really following the Bingo stories, so I may just drop it.
At least the day job has had some ice-jams start breaking up and my four oldest investigations are all moving more clearly toward closure. We also finally got the official word that the current system of having investigators assigned to individual departments is going to revert to the previous system (from nearly half a dozen years ago) of a single unified investigation department. The organizational details have yet to work out completely.
