Snow at the End of a Strange Week

It snowed today. It was rather unexpected but also rather delightful.

Two days ago, we had a day where it was 71 degrees. We didn’t wear coats. Two days later, it’s snowing. This is actually quite typical for Ohio but it’s still rather fascinating.

This whole week has actually been a little bizarre. Workwise, it’s been very uneven. Some days have been so slow and have dragged on for what seemed like forever. Other days were so busy they flew by before I got everything done.

Aside from work, it’s been a strange week. I signed up to participate in National Novel Writing Month again. I’ve found it’s an excellent way for me to, you know, write. Lately, I haven’t been writing so regularly. I don’t know why. I still love it. It’s just that I haven’t really felt like it. I don’t know if it’s laziness or my brain has just not wanted to write anything since last year at this time when I wrote “Emmy Goes to Hell.”

I’m not writing another book in my demon series. I need a break. I know there are a few people out there wanting a sequel but I don’t think the demand is enough that I HAVE to write one for a while. I don’t really want to at the moment anyway. While those books are entertaining, I’d like to think I’m a better writer than that and I’m capable of something more interesting and better written.

The ironic thing is that I really don’t know what I’m writing in this current book. I have a few vague ideas but I’m returning to my old habit of just letting the story come out on its own. My past few books including the demon ones have felt forced to me. They haven’t felt like my writing. I like it much better when I find my characters and connect with them and they guide the story. I like being surprised and I’ve got into the habit of not being surprised.

Thus, since I’ve written every night this week, the story I’m writing has become quite interesting. I rather like having no clue where it’s going next. As I said, I have a vague idea but, to me, that’s the best way to write.

I think the weirdness of the week is partially due to the time change too. Ever since we “Fell Back” an hour last weekend, I’ve felt a little out-of-sorts. The pups have too. I’ve noticed they still seem to like to get up at the same time as last week which is all very well but the same time as last week is actually an hour earlier this week. Did you follow that. To put it more simply- Rory Wrigglebottom Gilmore now becomes a wide-awake Rory Wrigglebottom Gilmore at 5:45 a.m. instead of 6:45 a.m. For the past few moments, I’ve awoken to find a doggie nose inches from my face, big brown eyes wide and staring, just waiting for me to open my eyes. The minute I do, I get pounced on. I suppose it’s good that they don’t pounce while I’m sleeping but both dogs tend to be a little restless a lot earlier than they used to be.

The problem is that they’re going to bed earlier too. They haven’t figured out that humans feel the need to change the clock an hour backwards and thus their internal clock is still telling them it’s ‘bedtime’ at the same time it was last week. This means they’re passing out on the couch, legs sticking up on the air, flat on their backs at 8:30 p.m. instead of 9:30 p.m. This probably explains why they wake up earlier too but it’s a little hard to sleep at the moment.

Now, it’s snowing. I’m quite happy. It’s not the type of snow where I’m inspired to go home, make hot chocolate and enjoy it since it’s rather furious flurries that are over in moments and it’s still far too warm on the ground for it to do anything other than land as wet splodges. I do, however, have Hungarian goulash in the crockpot which I think might make the perfect meal on a cool, snowy evening.

I’m just hoping that I actually get to relax a little with my TV shows tonight. The last time I furiously wrote to get my word count for the day, I did so with the promise to myself that I could watch “Glee,” “Ringer” and “Parenthood” after as my ‘reward.’ Then I discovered that DirecTV was having trouble with their HD channels. The non-HD version of each channel was working, however. This would have been fine if I’d have, you know, watched the shows live rather than rely on my DVR but, alas, my DVR didn’t record anything and thus, I missed all three. Hopefully, tonight, I will get to watch “Vampire Diaries” (remember: NO MOCKING) and “Grey’s Anatomy” with no problems. I’m also watching “Person of Interest” because I love Michael Emerson who endeared himself to me as creepy Ben Linus on “Lost.” Unfortunately, “Person of Interest” is becoming one of those shows that I don’t feel like I really want to watch until I have nothing else left on my DVR to watch. It’s…ok but it’s a bit….boring.

Ah well, perhaps I’ll watch it over the weekend. I think it’s supposed to warm up this weekend again. Knowing Ohio, it’ll probably warm up to 90 degrees and we’ll be sweating in our thick coats and gloves that we got out to deal with this snow.

You just never can tell.

Happy Friday and have a great weekend!

Accidental Early Starts...DirecTV and Other Weekendness

This has been another of those weekends that has just flown by. It was one where I had few plans other than to stay home on Saturday morning and wait for the DirecTV man to come. Since it was time to renew my contract, I called them up to cancel with a secret hope they'd lure me to stay by offering me some free goodies. Since I bought an HDTV after I'd subscribed to my original service, I was hoping for a free HDTV upgrade. Lo and behold, my threat of leaving their service guaranteed me a free HDTV receiver and free service for 24 months.

Thus, that was my plan for Saturday morning- to stay home and wait for Mr. DirecTV to come. My window of time was 8 a.m. to 12 p.m. I was pretty sure they wouldn't be there at 8 a.m. but, just in case, I planned on getting up by 7:30 a.m. to be ready. Well, that was a fine idea. I set my alarm for 7 a.m. so I could doze for 30 minutes. When it did go off at 7 a.m., I changed the alarm so it'd go off in another 30 minutes. At least I thought I had.

I dozed. Then my phone rang. It was an automated message from DirecTV reminding me that I had someone coming at 8 a.m. I glanced at the clock- it was almost 8:15 a.m.! I flew out of bed and got dressed quickly. I didn't fancy the DirecTV man coming while I was still in my pajamas.

I let the pups out and ran around and cleared up. Then, finally, I sat down. I glanced at the clock in my living room. I blinked. It appeared to say it was not quite eight a.m.

Well, it turned out that Silly Captain Monkeypants had accidentally adjusted the time on her clock rather than the alarm and my dozing which I thought had lasted an hour had in actuality only been about five minutes of dozing. Yes, i had been up since 7:10 a.m.

Mr. DirecTV came at 9:30 a.m. He had a bit of trouble with my old dish. Apparently there was a hornet's nest up there and he was deathly allergic so he didn't want to take it away like he was supposed to. Instead, he put a new dish up and left the old one so now I have two dishes. I think when the weather cools and the wasps die off, I may have them come and remove it just because I really don't want two dishes.

The installation of HDTV took quite a while. By the time he left, I was quite glad. He was a nice enough technician but he had been working outside in the heat and he was a little stinky. Also, he put those plastic footie things over his shoes so he didn't mess up my carpet and he ended up wearing right through the plastic so his shoes were only covered at the top. I didn't care but i thought it was a little pointless wearing the footie things. Also, the dogs were penned up in the kitchen/Tuscan room area and they don't like strangers in the house. Sookie likes to have a good woof. I call it her "STRANGER DANGER" bark.

I finally freed the dogs around noon. I immediately headed off to a local farmer's market. I'd made the mistake of spending the morning reading Bon Appetit and it had a ton of recipes for fresh veggies, particularly tomatoes so I really, really wanted some fresh tomatoes.

In the end, my Saturday ended up flying by and it was Sunday. Today, I spent most of the day getting "Emmy Goes to Hell" ready to be published as an e-book. It's a lot of work because you have to be very, very specific regarding format. The format for e-books is pretty much the complete opposite of print books so it's all rather tedious.

I perservered and the book is in the final approval status by my publisher. Once it gets approved, Emmy will be on sale for the low price of $2.99 on every electronic device out there. It's also available from Amazon as a hard copy, just in case you don't own a Kindle, Nook, etc. And yes, that was another shameless plug.

All in all, it's been a good weekend so far. The girls and I are currently enjoying a thunderstorm that brought some wonderful, much-needed rain. It's been pouring for a while and I can already see that my parched garden is drinking it up and appreciating every drop. Even when you water with a hose, it's never the same as organic rain. I expect my vegetables to grow a little more quickly for a while.

I love weekends like this where I have no real plans. I only really had the plan of waiting for DirecTV and possibly seeing "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2" again. I didn't end up seeing Harry but that was intentional. I do want to see it again quite badly but I decided that if I wait another week, I'll appreciate more again because it won't be quite so fresh.

For the rest of the weekend, I plan of spending some time with the neglected pups. They hate it when I sit at my desktop and work because I'm ignoring them and despite her best efforts, Sookie is just not a lapdog. I love having her on my lap but the length of a dachshund is not really conducive to comfort or convenience while trying to simutaneously type on a keyboard.

I also plan to go outside in a few minutes and spend a little time dancing in the rain because it's been so long since it rained and it's just so pleasant to feel those drops falling down and cooling everything down. I think that sounds like a lovely way to wind up a weekend, don't you?

Thanks, as always for reading. I hope you had a great weekend. Happy Monday!

Elephants,TV's and Terminator Eyes

Today was quite a busy day in many respects. It started out much the same as usual except instead of having to drive to the office, I pretty much rolled out of bed, went to my computer at home and logged on. I actually got permission to work from home for a few hours because I had splurged and ordered a new television from Amazon.com and I had to be home to accept delivery.

The nice thing about working at home is that...you're at home. The bad part is...you're at home and the last thing you really want to do is work. Still, I actually did work while the puppies were good little girls and amused themselves for the morning. Of course, given that they're used to sleeping all morning in their crate and they didn't even nap before I left for work around nooon, they were pretty tired when I left.

I actually had a nice productive day at work too which made the afternoon go pretty quickly. After work, I had an eye appointment because my eyes have been very red for the past three weeks and will not allow me to put contacts in them. I've been looking like the Terminator whenever I try. It turns out that I might be allergic to my contact solution which I didn't consider. Silly me switched brands because I didn't think it would make a difference but when I think back, that's pretty much when I started my zombie-eye phase.

This evening, I managed to get a prescription filled, mow the lawn and hook up my TV. I have to admit, I'm quite pleased I managed to do it by myself. The problem with being a single woman is that sometimes, you have to be resourceful. Take for example, the fact that I bought a TV stand from a furniture store. I didn't want to pay delivery because it was literally right around the block from my house. However, the stand- a sofa table, really- was far too heavy to be carried and far to large to fit in the boot of my car.

I told the saleslady that I'd find a way to pick it up. I knew a couple of people at work who would be nice enough to help and, sure enough, a friend with a convertible was very kind and willingly volunteered her car's back seat. The TV stand fit very well and we got it to my house with no trouble at all.

The thing is, even though I usually find a solution, there are times when I do feel a little helpless being alone. There are things which really require two people- like assembling a TV stand and mounting the TV on it. Except I've grown used to doing things by myself and I managed not only to get the TV on the stand but also to relocate my old television. This, I'd like to say, was no mean feat. It's a 27 inch regular old TV and compared to my new flat screen weighs roughly the same as a small elephant.

(Speaking of elephants, I had a HORRIBLE dream last night- I was at a farm and the farmer-lady told me I could see all the animals. For some reason, I really wanted to see the little piglets so I went to check them out. Except the piglets had tusks and weird sewn-up-mouths and looked a bit elephantine. Well, turns out that their mother WAS an elephant and I was attack by an elephant. It was terrifying. I managed to get the elephant to stop attacking me by using some dog-training techniques. Then, just as I thought it was ok, I found out Sookie had been hit by a car. Like I said, horrid dream. Aren't you glad I shared my weird subconscious with you?)

Anyways, I did manage to move my elephant-TV as well as the old stand that it's been sitting on. I also managed to get the TV working which turned out to be quite easy. The only sad thing is that it's an HD TV and I don't yet have HD television coming in through my cable box. According to Direct TV, I have to pay $200 to get a new receiver. We'll see about that. I'm going to try the old, "my contract is up soon and I'm thinking of switching to Time Warner Cable- can you counteroffer" technique. It's actually not that much of a fib. I could probably get a pretty good package deal from them.

So, now I have an nice new TV on a nice new TV stand and my living room looks a little like a herd of elephants went through.

(I must be on an elephant kick. I wonder if there's any meaning to that?)

Having a messy living room is not good because I spent forever cleaning in anticipation of Saz's visit this weekend and now I have to do it all over or, at least, vacuum.

Still, it's been a productive evening even if Sookie and Rory didn't get their walk. I don't think they minded. Since I had to drive by Larry's house on the way to the pharmacy and he was out in his front yard, chatting. I noticed that Larry was using the up-close-and-personal chat method that he uses with me and I felt slightly better. Also, I noticed that the neighbour was clearly trying to back away. Again, that made me feel better.

All in all, this has been a weird day and I know the puppies are confused at their change in routine. They've been following me around all night and are currently clamouring to get on my lap. I better go attend to them. I think sitting down with a cuddly pup or two might be just the way to unwind after a day like this.

Thanks, as always, for reading. Happy Thursday!