Posted on No Comments on Sunday already

Sunday already

Work on Friday was a bit of a long day.  One of the people I worked with last time is thinking she might want my help for summer, so that could be useful.  The hour and a half commute each way is very annoying; John has suggested a few things.  Heading in early, hitting the gym or a coffee shop, and working out or getting writing done.

Both would be nice. Either would be nice, honestly, although I admit I am lacking faith in my carrying through with either.

Reading Sarah Monette makes me hopeful.  Sone of the things she writes are like the kind of things I would like to write.  It is just nice to see that it can be done, although its a leap from there to my being able to do it. The words I got out yesterday are annoying me; I’m trying to work myself up to finishing the damn thing. Maybe I will come across a tone or style that makes sense for it and then I will at least know how to pare down and shape up what I have.

I know what I want it to be about. It is just a near-impossible jump from there to plot, apparently.

Still. Better done than not done? And if I make progress I can celebrate by taking an hour to go find Harold or something. Fallout 3 is not as good as New Vegas, I am finding, but Harold and Dogmeat help a lot.

Posted on No Comments on Happy endings.

Happy endings.

Tired, and busy–work is done in seven days (work days), and the crunch is really coming down.  But I found some happy things, and thought I would share.

I shall plan my cousin’s escape from that Canton madhouse, and together we shall go to marvel–shadowed Innsmouth. We shall swim out to that brooding reef in the sea and dive down through black abysses to Cyclopean and many–columned Y’ha–nthlei, and in that lair of the Deep Ones we shall dwell amidst wonder and glory forever.
– H.P. Lovecraft, “The Shadow Over Innsmouth”

There were faces at the window and words written in blood; deep in the crypt a lonely ghoul crunched on something that might once have been alive; forked lightning slashed the ebony night; the faceless were walking; all was right with the world.
– Neil Gaiman, “Forbidden Brides of the Faceless Slaves in the Nameless House of the Night of Dread Desire”

For now, they had simpler concerns. Keeping the children from the roofs at night; the bereaved from crying out too loud; the young in summer from falling in love with the human.
It was a life.
– Clive Barker, Cabal

Well.  Endings that make me happy to read, at any rate.  Good stuff.

Posted on No Comments on Settling on Sundays.

Settling on Sundays.

I want to say it’s been a long day, but it really hasn’t.  It’s been mostly a very pleasant day.  I’m just tired drained.  I’m anxious about work, and hoping it’ll be done soon.  And I ache, and I don’t know why I’m still hungy.  I made a decent dinner, even if it ended up taking nearly two hours from start to finish, and I was getting upset at trying to juggle everything.

I just want a day to stay home and sleep.  Instead I’m going to turn in early enough for a full night’s rest, show up cheerful and enthusiastic about the job tomorrow, and quietly count down the days until I’m done.  I believe this is called being a grown-up, or something, and is closely tied to finding work and making people not curse your presence.

(Meantime, the friend I’m writing a story with has been busy lately (which is fine!) and so have I, but from the time we’ve had to talk I can’t help but feel that while being busy she’s getting more actually done.)

Despite coordinating schedules, I am actually too worn to pay attention to American Horror Story or Walking Dead, so we’re catching up on Supernatural.  It’s nice to sit back and watch characters deal with a monster of the week, and I like the openly fake psychic who is pleasant and reasonable about her job.  It’s still clever rather than creepy, though, and I can’t remember when it last managed to be creepy–

(That said, the meta-commentary about brothers working together made me laugh.)

I suppose it’s hard to sustain tension, which is an essential element of creepy, when you know characters are either going to survive (Winchesters, Bobby) or else can’t be expected to be there for longer than an episode (everyone else).  Should keep that in mind when writing, I suppose.

I’m rambling, I know.  I think I’m about due to turn in.

Posted on No Comments on Balancing out.

Balancing out.

And having written that title, I immediately want to read it as “coming to a point of balance that involves going out of my current position”. Clearly early-days job stress is still with me.

Apparently I managed to double-post yesterday, due to updating the time setting while I was the middle of writing a post. Will see about updating that when I’m not trying to write from my phone.

Finally got a chance to watch the first episode of The Walking Dead last night, although I don’t think I gave it the attention out deserved. It send to have handled the (unfair, ill-advised) budget cuts pretty well, though, and holy god was that episode grim. I don’t think that killing a kid in horror fiction inherently gets you any cred, but the first instance seemed well-handled and miserably bleak, and the second… I caught myself doing that thing where you go looking for reasons it couldn’t have happened. “But someone would have seen… Dammit, he’s wearing a camo-print t-shirt.” That kind of thing.

I realize he might not be dead – that technically neither of them might be dead – but it was still pretty affecting.

Posted on No Comments on Losing ground

Losing ground

Yesterday morning I finished my first assignment for work; at least I thought I did.  Late this morning I actually got a chance to go over it with people who have been there a while, and it turns out that no, I didn’t.

Some of it is pure detail; I’m used to working in a small shop, so my issue notes were the kind of thing I’d write to myself.  This is fine for me, but since someone else will be taking my notes and going through them to determine what exactly to fix, it isn’t actually very useful.  I managed to rework most of those, and I think the new versions are actually pretty helpful.

Some of it is the hours- and document-tracking software, and that bit was mostly a case of straightening out what should and shouldn’t be done when and where.  Practically speaking, not too bad since I hadn’t had a chance to get formal training.

Some of it is… well.  I look at the work, and I can’t shake the feeling that I’m missing something huge.  I don’t know what it could be, and since the coworkers and supervisors who looked at it don’t seem to have found it I’m not sure it’s a warranted reaction, but it’s very hard to get rid of.

Plus?  It’s code.  So I get sucked in, and I didn’t actually make it outside today.  With the time change, it means Im getting out after dark, and it throws me for a loop.

Posted on No Comments on Monday morning.

Monday morning.

It’s probably been said before, but what gets me about buses is the way the segments of the trip are so distinct from each other. You go on the first leg of it, and it doesn’t matter how quickly the trip went our didn’t go; the next leg of it will go on its own schedule. There’s no way to save time, no way to have a quick trip in one part… carry over, I guess?

What would you call that? Granularity?

All of which is a way to say that while I ran out of the house this morning in such a hurry that I had to ask John to feed the cats for me, I am currently on the fourteenth minute of a scheduled ten-minute wait at the highway bus stop, and I would much rather have spent this time at home. Also, I do not have coffee and it’s chilly, so I am a bit grumpy.

Posted on No Comments on A weekend, now that that means something.

A weekend, now that that means something.

The first day at work went fairly well.  I believe I can do the job they want me to do, everyone seems pleasant, the number  of transfers on the commute is annoying but manageable.  I may see about angling for earlier hours after a week or so; we’ll see.

That said, I am stress-tired in a way I haven’t been since the last fiscal year end I was working in government.  Got home and ordered pizza on the cheap deal in the mailbox and then curled up and unwound.  There was a fire.  I am very glad we have a fireplace.

(…for reasons besides the fact that if we didn’t, it would be very very hard to be glad about there being a fire in the house.)

Thought the cats were going to be quiet, but turns out there was evening squabbling.  Managed to get half a glove right after reknitting it four times.  Trying to get through the last of the House of Fear anthology and sort of quietly gleeful about how AHS handled Tate and Hayden.  Can’t wait for the next episode; in the meantime, may catch up on Misfits or try Bedlam tomorrow, when I have the TV to myself.

Posted on No Comments on Sudden employment.

Sudden employment.

Five o’clock came and went today, and no word from the temp agency.  I figured I could look forward to maybe a Monday start date; looking over the SOW, the start date was October 17, and this kind of delay is not atypical.

Five thirty-four rolled around, and I got a phone call.  The temp agency said the client wanted me to start tomorrow, if I could.  I said that’d be fine, got the address, agreed I’d get them a void cheque tomorrow, all the little perfectly normal paperwork fusses that come along with this.

I’m ambivalent about it, and a bit unhappy to find myself so.  I mean… employment!  Employment is a good thing.  I’m just worrying about whether it’ll be a good job, if I should have kept looking, whether or not they’ll realize I’m a horrible fraud and should never have set foot inside the building as soon as I actually need to start working…

All the little perfectly normal fusses that come along with this.

They’ve seen my resumé.  It is a decent resumé; more, it is an honest resumé, and I suspect that matters more.  I’m hoping thatit’ll all be fine and by this time Monday[1] my biggest problem with the job will be that it’s 20 minutes from downtown so I can’t meet people for lunch.

Just wish I’d had a little more notice, you know?

—
[1] Not Friday.  I probably won’t stop worrying that fast.

Posted on No Comments on Oddly awake.

Oddly awake.

Yesterday I was up until four in the morning. And then I was up and functional by eight. Somehow I’m still not tired. Admittedly there was a nap in there, but…

One of the people I write with a fair bit of the time is doing NaNoWriMo. It’s rough going so far (mind, that doesn’t mean much yet), but she’s doing it. I, meanwhile, have written the hundred words of fiction in trip fragments this week.

I mean, it’s just been Hallowe’en; I practically feel guilty about not trying. It’s the time of year for (proper Lovecraft) ghouls and curiously meaningful scratches and shapes standing in the dark in the still of your room and just watching you.

You think.

You can’t see their eyes, after all.

(Oh yes, this is absolutely going to help me get to sleep. Because I needed a chaser after reading a third of the way through the House of Fear anthology. It’s a nice mix; part actual ghosts and part haunted houses (which are subtly different, but I fear I repeat myself), with a side order of the weird.)

Beginning to get sleepy, at least.  The nice thing about the phone is that I can post in my room and don’t get distracted by the joys of the internet or the horror of the Sierra Madre. Much easier to lie down and go to sleep if you don’t need to tear yourself away from a computer motor.

(That’s the Sierra Madre from Fallout: New Vegas – Dead Money. Which is a quite well-done little horror story set in a haunted house… one which both corrupts its victims and is inhabited by ghosts, now that I think of it.)

Tomorrow I’ll try and get my books sorted, I suppose. And maybe I’ll hear back about work. The estimated start date just keeps creeping forward; at this point I’d be surprised if anything happened before Monday.

Posted on No Comments on Unenthused, unsurprised, unemployed.

Unenthused, unsurprised, unemployed.

Wednesday, I got a call from one of the temp agencies.  I’d applied for a job while I was on vacation[1], and the client wanted me in on Monday, so they were checking to see if I was still interested.  I said yes, they said excellent, there’d be no problem as long as I had an enhanced reliability security clearance, and I should be able to start on Monday.

I do have that clearance.  They said excellent, they’d just get the number from PWGSC, and all would be good.

Apparently something’s gone off with that, since I got an e-mail at 3:30 this afternoon asking me to fill out, scan, and e-mail them paperwork.  At the moment they want to see if I can start Wednesday, and I still haven’t gotten an address.  An address would be very useful.  Just saying.

I’m tired.  Tired and unhappy and at that stage where I am really worrying about whether or not I should take the job, and not sure if it’d be up to me, anyway.

Watching trailers with John and trying to improve my mood.  Knock on wood.

—
[1] Bless the wonders of IMAP servers; my computers are finally set up so that I can send and receive e-mail from either one and it’ll still show up on the other.  Even Sent items.  This is a vast improvement over not checking my e-mail on my laptop so that I can have it all in one place.  Now it’s all in two places.

…sometimes I think I have too many files in my life.