wickedwords

 I have one more thing I think I need to fix, and then yuletide will be done.  As usual, I am insecure and will find someone to do a final proofing pass, but Gwyn has already given me great comments on the structure and characterization. I think the story is a lot stronger now than it was when she saw it.  If I weren't so exhausted, I would finish that one thing tonight, but as it is, It will need to wait until tomorrow.  I still have three days left.

In other news, we are having Christmas-y holiday stuff at work.  It was the cookie competition today, and I was so concerned about not enough people submitting stuff that I made eggnog sugar cookies from a mix last night, not putting much effort into it at all.  

So, yeah, you guessed it. I won. 

Don't tell anyone, okay? 

Every quarter the company picks a charity to support, based on submissions from the employees. This October it was Northwest Hope and Healing, which I insensitively think of as "the one that gives out the 'welcome to cancer, sorry it sucks' baskets". (Understand that I loved my basket with all of the little goodies in it -- the lotion, the chap stick, the little journal, etc. It gave me a lot of comfort.) In addition to the baskets, the group also helps pay non-medical bills -- food, rent, electricity and so on -- for women going through breast cancer treatment. So I signed up to help. I donated a bunch of body lotions, hand sanitizer, and shower gels (as I have a hoarder's urge to buy tiny bottles of that kind of smelly stuff) plus I helped assemble about 100 gift baskets. (The company as a whole donated about 6K in money plus the stuff for the baskets. Go team!)

Everyone that participated either with donations or in assembling the baskets got put into a drawing for a kindle fire. You see where this is going, right?

Yeah, you got it. I freakin' WON! I won a kindle fire! I am massively excited. I have no idea where I am in the queue, but I am hoping by the end of the month. Wooo!

Tomorrow is the last day for one of the contractors, and I'm really excited. Not because we're going out to lunch, but because I get his tabletop of a desk (which faces a wall and is on an aisle so everyone can stare over my shoulder as they walk past.) Even though it's a crap location, I will be out of the set of 4 cubicles that contains one of the big bosses of the group. *That* is what is thrilling me. I'm hoping I'll finally be able to breathe.

Thanks for all the good thoughts, everyone. I got word back from the recruiter about the one position I was very hopeful about, and unfortunately the company has decided to re-org the group, and that position is gone. I also got email back from a second recruiter about a different spot at a completely different company--and that one's been put on hold too. So I'm back to betwixt and between, and I'll need to regroup, but it is what it is at the moment. I can salve my ego with the thought that if there was a position, they would hire me, but I'm still rather annoyed.

The project of long frustration is taken another little break to let the IT guys work on fixing things, so that means no testing for the next three days--so I don't have to get up at 5 am tomorrow, yay! I may sleep in 'till 6, and I am very excited about that.

I didn't work out the last couple of days, and I'm going to try to fit in something tomorrow, but given how tomorrow's valentine's day, I don't know how that will go. I guess I'll just have to see.

I'd also like to write again, but I've been blowing that off because the job has left me so zapped. Hopefully getting regular hours will put me on an even keel again, and I'll feel more like writing at night. Early morning or late evening usually works for me, but I've been cutting myself a lot of slack lately, as I have been too tired to stay up past nine. I'm thinking a 9:30 bedtime tonight, which should give me a chance to pull a file open.

In fact, why don't I do that right now...?

ETA: 110 words! I am so going to bed.

Hiya! On Monday, I changed projects at work, and things have been crazy as I try to ramp up and get familiar with the new systems while still babysitting the old ones. We're bringing in someone to replace me on the old stuff, but until then, I'm doing double project work. I'm a bit miffed that I finally got a new cubicle that I like in a building that I could easily bike to from home, only now I am back in the dungeon of Building D with a 20-some mile round trip. The new-old commute really isn't as feasible as the commute to the old-new one, and I have to be on-site a lot more than I did on my old project. There are fixed meeting that I have to attend in person, plus an actual lab I have to go to in order to be able to access the software, and just...argh. It is cutting into my slacker time a whole lot.

In fact, so much so that I'm not sure if I will be doing yuletide this year. I may have to drop the multiplicity of seasonal challenges I've done the last couple of years and only pick one to focus on, as I am just not sure I'll have time to write. I haven't done that well with the editing on the novel--I hit page thirty and stopped like I hit a brick wall--and I just don't know if I'll have time to write once this project really gets going. There's some overtime associated with it, and I can't predict how it will affect me, so I'm fretting about that.

Oh, and huge apologies to the people who have emailed me or commented on one of my stories to whom I have not yet responded. I'm going to try and catch up on some this weekend, and sorry it's taken me so long to get back to you. Same with the fic recs that I owe for stargateficrec too.

To the good, we got the letter from the state saying that Ev has passed his WASLs! He hit the 75% mark on everything, including the writing, which is just awesome. He did have a scribe for it, but he still had to type up his answers, and the scribe then re-copied everything (including typos) to the official forms. He has to take them again in 9th grade, and if he passes those, then he's done. I'm really hoping that will be the end of it, as these things are incredibly stressful.

I have been using my free two week pass to Gold's Gym this week, which has been fun. I took a pilates class that just killed me. As I was leaving, I overheard a couple of women talking about how "this was the most intense pilates class I have ever taken", which made me feel good. My hamstrings and glutes still hate me for taking the class.