Book Meme

Life has changed a lot since Gavin was born. And at the same time it hasn't. Things are starting to get back to the way they were before. I'm figuring out how to find time for myself. I'm back at work full time. And I want to get back to blogging regularly.

My biggest regret of the past couple of years is how infrequently I've updated this blog. A lot of the day to day stuff and some small milestones have fallen by the wayside. And now I find myself wishing I had more of a record of the beginning of Gavin's life.

But I'm rusty. I don't know how many times I've sat down to write only to be distracted by something else. I compose entries in my head only to have all the words flee as soon as I get to my computer. Writing has gotten hard.

In an effort to jump start this blog and get me back in the habit, I decided to do another month-long meme. These have worked well for me in the past. Having a set of writing prompts and a set schedule to post them should help me shake out some of those disused writer muscles. And hopefully I'll find my way back to writing about more mundane things.

Bookriot (somewhat) recently published a list of 31 bookish prompts, which is what nudged me in this direction to begin with. So every day in July I'll post about one of those questions. And by the end of the month I'll see where I am. Ideally I'll have written about other stuff in there as well (like taking Gavin to Boston on my own or his growing awareness of gender or returning to work full time or everything I want to do when Kevin takes Gavin on vacation without me next month). I have a lot of ideas, I'm just having trouble actually turning those ideas into blog entries.

So wish me luck. And prepare for me to wax rhapsodic about books.

Falling Behind

It is astounding to me how easy it has become to fall behind on this blog. I used to get antsy if I went a week without posting. Now every time I turn around it seems like another month has gone by. I'm hoping this is a temporary thing. I'd hate to have this blog fall by the wayside completely. Especially because I enjoy going back and reading old entries and reminiscing about vacations and such. This is probably going to be the best record of the beginning of my kid's life, and if I fail to update it I'm worried that I'll just lose a lot of those memories.

But for now, the lack of updates is definitely due to my pregnancy, which is sapping all of my energy. It doesn't really help that I've also had a really busy social life lately on top of a weird work schedule that's leaving me more exhausted and stressed than normal. I find myself having to choose between walking the dog and washing the dishes or cooking dinner, because I literally only have the energy to do one thing after work before I just collapse on the couch and fall asleep.

Luckily Kevin is around to pick up a lot of the slack. His final work trip got pushed back far enough that he couldn't go. Which means that he's home to cook dinner and walk Kina and just generally do everything that involves standing and walking.

Today, though, I have the day off work. And I got a full 8 hours of sleep last night. And the house is almost clean (I'm about halfway through a sink full of dishes, but I had to sit down). So I'm devoting the day and my limited brain power to getting as caught up on this blog (and my book reviews) as I can.

My work schedule has been crazy. Well, not that crazy. But stressful. Especially for someone running on 6-7 hours of sleep a night. Which I know doesn't sound that bad, but I fall apart pretty quickly without 8 hours. The problem is that I don't have any PTO left that isn't devoted to maternity leave, and my company (well, HR) has been very resistant to me taking unpaid leave. So to deal with all the doctors appointments, both planned and unplanned, I've been working 9 hour days to build up as much of a buffer as I can. This pay period it happened to work out that I was able to use that time to get an extra day off. More typically though I've been working til 7 one night so I can leave at 4 another day. And since my commute takes anywhere between 45 minutes and 1.5 hours, (and sitting in the car is murder on my back lately), it's hard to get anything else done on work days. I try to use the weekends to catch up, but that doesn't always work out either.

The pregnancy itself is going alright. The kid is moving and there aren't any major health complications. I've been sleeping on the couch for weeks now, because it's easier on my back. I really miss the bed. But every time I try to sleep there, I wake up with my back muscles so tight that I'm having trouble breathing. Someday I'll be able to sleep in the bed again. In the meantime, I'm just moving slowly and trying to remember to eat healthy and counting down the weeks until I can finally put the kid down for five minutes.

And then the rest of my life has also been crazy busy. But that's the subject of another blog entry.

Making the Blog Private

Hi everyone.

I've decided to go ahead and make this blog private. My book blog and writing blog will still be public, but this one is going behind a wall. If you'd like to continue reading, it's an easy, 2-step process:

1. Sign up for a google account
2. Tell me what your google user ID is

Most of you already have google accounts that I know, and I'll go ahead and put you on the white list. In the future, to read the blog, you'll need to be signed into your google account. Again, this won't make any difference at all to most of you.

I'm planning to transition all of this this weekend, after which new posts will start going up again.

Redesign

I've decided to make some changes to the way I blog. Specifically, I'm splitting this existing blog into two blogs and then adding a third. Because one blog just isn't enough.

This blog (Geeker Joy) will remain my personal blog. I'll talk about the stuff I'm doing and goals I have. I might try some other things, along the lines of that 17% post from 2014. Who knows, really. Basically, this will remain the catch-all blog, where I can write about whatever enters my head. It will mostly be about my life. I'm toying with the idea of making this one private, but I'll let you know before I do that. And I'll make sure friends and family know how to get on the white list.

I'm splitting all of my book reviews off into a dedicated book review blog. It's called Bookish Thoughts and you can find it at caitsbookthoughts.blogspot.com. I'm in the process of porting everything over to it now. It's taking me longer than I expected, because it turns out that Blogger enforces a 50 post/day limit. But I'm chugging along and should have that all set up within another week.

I'm hoping that the new book-only site will be somewhat more navigable. To that end I'm going back through and adding a bunch of tags to my old posts. You should be able to zero in on stuff by author, series, or genre, and I'll try to pull as much of that out as possible to make it easier. Doing that is creating some work for me now, but it should all run nice and smooth with minimal effort on my part once it's up and running. If you're one of the people who cares what I have to say about all the books I read, you can check out that site (which will remain public). If you don't, the personal blog will now be less cluttered for your enjoyment.

The third blog I'm setting up is a writing blog. It's called Paper and Ink Dreams and you can visit it at paperandinkdreams.blogspot.com. I'm hoping to post some short stories and writing challenges over there. Mostly I want to get in the habit of writing for some amount of time every day. I want to hone my story-telling abilities. I want to start producing a mountain of work in the hopes that I will get better at writing fiction. I want to see where this goes.

For the time being, I'm revisiting some old projects. In high school, I was given an assignment to write a short story for each letter of the alphabet, memoir style. Those are currently being posted as a sort of baseline for me to see where I can improve and where my strengths are. And for you all to have a good laugh at 16-year old. Some of these stories are pretty melodramatic. It's fun.

Once that's all up, I'm going to dive back into my companion project - the college alphabet. I started this years ago when I first started the blog. I posted five stories and wrote drafts for six more before it all fell by the wayside. I'm going to start polishing those up and writing new ones. They'll start going up after the high school alphabet finishes posting. Depending on how far along I am, they may or may not be in alphabetical order.

At some point I'll look into daily writing prompts or creative writing challenges or something and start posting based off those prompts. Maybe I'll come up with another project for myself. Maybe I'll start writing actual short stories (as opposed to what I've been writing, which I believe qualifies as "flash fiction" or "drabbles"). We'll see where this goes.

I Hate Summer

The heat saps my energy and my focus. On the really hot days, just getting through a day of work is a struggle. At the end of it, all I want to do is lie on the couch or sit in front of the TV. For a couple of weeks I even had a hard time reading, as I could barely focus on the words.

And, as you probably noticed, this blog fell by the wayside. I'm gonna try and pull it back together, as I have read several books that I need to talk about. Wedding planning is beginning to pick back up, too. Between the vacation I'm taking next week and the approaching end of summer, I should find the energy to start writing again.

August

So...August kind of got away from me

I attended the wedding of my best friends and had an epic weekend

I went camping in Arizona with my dad's side of the family and played a ton of pinochle and won three games of Scrabble (it's nice to be able to beat someone at that game).

I re-read The Name of the Wind and The Wise Man's Fear and have a ton of speculation about what's going on.

I worked a lot and got put in charge of a proposal which is terrifying, but in a good way.

I basically failed to go to the gym. Between vacations, work, metro break downs, and a general sense of laziness, I think I managed to make it four times this month. There's always next month...

I figured out how OnDemand and HBOGo work on the TV (thanks Jen!) and spent a lot of time catching up on TV and movies. I fell in love with Political Animals and had fun watching Bunheads. I was pleasantly surprised by Crazy Stupid Love (though I could have done without the babysitter's uncomfortable love triangle) and a bit let down by Bridesmaids. I think my expectations were just too high on the last one.

And now I'm gearing up for Labor Day Weekend, during which my brother and cousin are coming to visit. But I'm hoping to get back to this blog and actually post some things in the near-ish future. Especially some of my thoughts on Rothfuss' books. I have a lot of thoughts about those books.

In the meantime, I'm glad the weather is finally cooling down. I'm ready for summer to be over and autumn to be here. The only thing I'm not looking forward to is walking the dog after the sun has set. I think I'll have to switch from walks in the (not lit) park to walks around the (better lit) neighborhood.

Anyway, this has been a post to let you know that I haven't abandoned the blog. Life just got in the way. And I needed some comfort, so I started re-reading books instead of seeking out new books. Sometimes you just need a familiar story to keep you grounded when everything else in life seems to be going crazy.

Setback

It turns out that in Blogger, Ctrl +z does not mean undo. For some incomprehensible reason, it means delete my entire post. The fact that Blogger auto-saves every thirty seconds makes this "feature" fairly disastrous.

Also, the mobile app I downloaded is refusing to sync with the site, so I can no longer use it to edit posts.

Stupid Blogger.

It's The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Where did November go? I just turned around and realized I haven't updated this thing in two weeks. I've been too bust flying across the country, seeing old friends, hosting my first Thanksgiving, and getting ready for the holidays.

This time of year always seems to flash by much faster than I expect. Maybe it's because the days are shorter. Maybe they're just fuller with the holidays coming. At any rate, I've had almost no time to blog. So now I'm really far behind on life stuff and book reviews and all that. But it is coming. If slightly out of order.

In the meantime, here is our totally awesome Christmas tree.

Christmas tree!

We got it on Saturday morning and decorated it on Sunday. This right here is my favorite part:

Curse your sudden, but inevitable betrayal!

The only sad thing is that it's in an otherwise empty room. The only place I can sit and admire it is the dining room table, and that's not so comfortable. One day we'll move one of the couches back upstairs. Hopefully.

With the tree set up, I am ready to embrace the holiday season and all the ridiculousness that comes with it. Though I do wish that it felt a bit more wintery. The temperature has yet to dip below freezing, and today it was warm enough for me to wear a sleeveless blouse. Winter, where are you?

Update

I haven't been blogging lately (except for my Buffy meme updates).  I don't know if any of you even care or not. But I'll try not to abandon this thing completely.  Work has gotten a lot busier and a lot better.  This has left me with less time to whine and fewer things to whine about.

My boss left the company at the beginning of the month.  This was sad, but my new boss is awesome (and the exact person I was hoping would be promoted to the position).  We met after her promotion and she managed to make me feel a lot better about my position in the company and my future with it.  Also, a bunch of my projects have deliverables soon.  This accounts for the sudden business of my life.  It also makes me feel like I'm actually accomplishing something.  Work is still frustrating, but it's the good kind of frustrating now.

Also, Boyfriend and I are starting to look at houses.  Everything is still very up in the air and our plans are pretty vague.  We went to a bunch of open houses this weekend (and I am planning to write a post about some of the ridiculous houses we got to tour) and I'm suddenly really excited about the idea of a house.  Which means I'm far more inclined to keep my current job with it's nice paycheck.

I think I've been in a slump or a rut for the past couple of months and I'm starting to come out of it.  Hopefully this trend continues.  My job really is awesome and I'm pretty excited to keep it at this point.

New Computer!

I finally got my 2009 tax refund.  Yes, that's the one I was supposed to get last year.  But between forgetting to sign it, making a mistake, and moving three times, there was a whole lot of miscommunication and it took the government a full year to actually get the check to me.  The good news is that the government will eventually pay up, even if it takes a while.  The better news is that my money appears to have been gathering 5% interest for the last year.  So the check was even bigger than I expected.

All of this means that I was finally able to afford a new computer!  I actually have working monitors now!  I no longer monopolize the television anytime I want to use my computer.  Hooray!

So now I get to play with my new computer and work on moving files over and installing all the software I want or need.  I can also finally see what my blog looks like.  So I'll probably be playing with the tomorrow.  It may change a lot or a little.  We'll see what I end up liking.

=D

Blog design

This blog probably looks kind of awful right now.  I'm sorry about that.  I chose the simplest template and haven't bothered to start customizing anything yet.

The monitor on my laptop stopped working.  So I've been hooking my computer up to the (boyfriend's) TV to use it, but the resolution is all wrong.  It's great for watching DVDs, but not so great for reading or surfing the net.  I mean, it works.  But everything I look at is pretty ugly.

At some point I'll give this place a face lift.  But first I need to buy myself a new computer.  One that has a usable monitor.  In the meantime, I hope the layout/color scheme isn't too offensive.  I figured the standard template would at least be reasonable.