BitterSuites

eBay Sales: lunchbox purse

Craft Projects Completed: 0

Dead Bulb Watch: Fixed today! Someone else put in the ticket though, so I’m considering it a win.

#MilWordy Update: 54,194 words (2,813 words/day to complete)

Spending the evening writing.

Work was, as big a pain as usual.

And, honestly, today was pretty much a filler section of a book and not worth discussing. On the other hand, I’m still here, still blogging, and still writing every day. I count that as good.

What did you get up to today?

eBay sales: figurine, cross-stitch pattern

Bonanza sales: Camcorder tape

Craft Projects Completed: 0 (Yes, progress on the scarf)

Dead Bulb Watch: 22 Business Days (Although, someone actually mentioned putting in a ticket for it. But she’s like me and is refusing to do it herself this time.)

#MilWordy Update: 53,931 (2,807 words/day to complete on time)

Turned in my November short story for the GFP Patreon. Doing the last line-edits on my October short story. (Just a little out of order, but there’s reasons for setting it up this way. The November one has to do with Veterans and the October one is a horror story.) I’ll hopefully get the October turn-in done tomorrow. Or tonight, if I end up feeling ambitious.

eBay is slowing down, but I’m pretty sure that’s my fault. I haven’t been listing every day, which means that there’s very little new product for people to find. However, Bonanza sales are going up. (Not that that’s hard. I’ve only had a handful of Bonanza sales over the long-term.) Do any of you shop on Bonanza?

My eBay focus is on new products, Halloween products, or Christmas products. Hopefully, quick listing will lead to quick selling. There’a a whole host of items which take a lot more time to describe and list. (Patterns, magazines, dolls) Things with barcodes are easy to list. Vintage things, not so much.

I’ve been diving into some writing lectures lately and I don’t know if it’s helping, but at least it’s not hurting. I’ve got a notice set up for a virtual write-in for Wednesday and you should consider joining us. Porscha Simmons:

Should be fun.

I’m meeting a friend for dinner on Thursday. It’s been a long time since we really could do that, given the situation in Virginia. But I’m looking forward to it. I’m going to try to do a Discord-Write in with a friend on Thursday or Friday night. Basically, I’m trying to remember what it’s like to have a life again.

I’m in post-Basho blech when it comes to TV because the next Sumo tournament that they broadcast is in November. And November seems so far away. I think I’ll sign off and try to be productive tonight.

Pumpkins, Leaves, and Laughter, my Lovelies!

eBay Sales: magazine back issue

Craft Projects Completed: 0 (scarf progress continues)

Dead Bulb Watch: 21 Business Days — I am beginning to twitch. Can no one else see that the light is out? Is the light not out and my eyes are failing me? Am I going insane? Or are people really that incapable of just putting in a freaking ticket. Honestly, my money is on the fact that people are freaking lazy and incapable of putting in a ticket because I still regularly need to talk people through how to do such a thing. “How do we get a coffee maker?” REQUEST ONE. Put in a ticket. *deep breath* *deep breath* Let it go. (Song cue!)

#MilWordy Update: 53,664 — Finished another short story and sent it off for beta reading. At least some projects are getting finished, even if they aren’t *long* projects.

Okay, if MS Word doesn’t stop trying to open One Drive which I DO NOT USE, I will not be responsible for my cursing. So done with your shit MS Word. I have to batter you into a corner every time you update because you’re trying to override my systems. If I want your crappy grammar help, I’ll ask for it. If I want you to autocorrect to fancy quotes, I’ll tell you to do that. But I DON’T because this document is destined for the WEB and your FANCY QUOTES don’t TRANSLATE PROPERLY.

Walk away. Just walk away from the computer. That is all I can do tonight. Just walk away and let it stew in how wrong it is.

eBay Sales: None

Craft Projects Completed : 0 (some progress on the scarf though)

Dead Bulb Count: 20 Days (paused for weekend)

#MilWordy Update: 48,535 Words (need to do 2798/day to complete on time)

I’m getting prepared to go on a trip and my biggest decision right now is whether I should bring my external keyboard with me. I know that I want to be able to write quickly and I’m not sure if I’ll go back to writing on my laptop. LOL. I’ll be honest, I’ve written for more than a decade on my laptop, so there’s no real excuse. And there’s no real need either. Yeah, I think I’ve decided no. I don’t want to take too much with me. Need room to bring things home. *looks around innocently* There might be some shopping in my future. I’ve been setting aside cash in order to be able to do that.

I am trying my best to only buy one thing at JoAnn Fabrics tomorrow. I don’t know if the mirror I want is even going to be there, but it’s also supposed to be on sale, so I’m going to give it a shot. They have a really cool Art Deco Halloween line — I do think I’ve mentioned this before. I do like Art Deco and Art Nouveau. And I am an overstuffed Christmas and Halloween type. I think I’ve been doing respectably at letting go of Halloween items though. I’ve listed and sold several large pieces of Halloween stuff. And I’ll be honest, the Art Deco Halloween items are *not* going to be packed away. They’re going to be part of my main decor, so there’s a lot less guilt in that.

Ug, just realized that I need to clean out underneath the desk in my office. there’s a stack of books hiding down there under my “shred me” box. I’m trying to capture all of the books that I have hanging around and put them into the proper piles. I mean, it’s not like I have too many books to fit onto my bookshelves. No, of course not. There’s no reason that I’ve got stacks and stacks of books on my floor that I’ve not read yet. And there’s absolutely no reason that I shouldn’t keep getting ebooks and audiobooks too. I’ve got plenty of time to read these days. Right? You know, now that I’m back full-time as of October 1. *sighs* I don’t even get the last two days off that I might have gotten next week. Ah well, it was nice while it lasted. And I’ve been more at work than I’ve been home during this adventure.

My friends and I are actually going to try to gather — properly masked and more than six feet apart — in a parking lot. That’s going to be a lot different than the online meetings we’ve been having.

People at work have been trying to tell me that things will get back to normal at work soon. That’s sort of a “live in interesting times” curse, I think. I still won’t have a co-worker who can cover for me when I’m out for a week. I feel sort of badly that I’ve only half-trained the person who will be picking up the slack for me. I’m going to have to make sure she has the latest drawings. Oh, hell. I need to start that now because I’ve been nose deep in it for months now and she’ll only have a week or two to be ready to support it all. That’s a whole ‘nother layer of stuff to prep for my trip that I hadn’t thought about. Meeting minutes are easy enough. And the usual stuff we’ve done should be okay. But there’s a bunch of things we’ve been doing specifically because of current events that I don’t think I’ve been looping her in on. Well, that’s going to be a pain in her inbox when I get in on Monday.

Here’s hoping my inbox stays under control next week and I don’t end up back over 1000 before I leave for a week. I expect it will be awful when I come back to work, but that’s always the case. It’s still not enough to keep me from going. Proper social distancing, masks, disinfectants, etc. will be going with me on the trip, but that’s the new normal right? I have to wonder what people will actually write in the history books about this year. There’s been so much going on.

And now, the President is not agreeing to a peaceful transition of power, is trying to force a vote on a Supreme Court justice — when out of respect for the election last time (Scalia in 2016) that was held until the new president was in power — and there’s still no large-scale reform of police procedures or actual justice for imprisoned children. And I’ve been hearing rumors (can’t say if they’re true) that people are once again advocating for eugenics in the prison system and trying to enshrine such practices in law. And sadly the Supreme Court hasn’t struck down such laws as unconstitutional and the precedent was set in 1979 that states were allowed to do such things. The supreme disregard for human bodily autonomy just sets my teeth on edge and makes it impossible for me to actually write anything dystopian because I’m not sure it won’t be used as a blue-print by the Powers That Be to drive us further into the ground. Oh, the headache is just tremendous. Okay, for my own blood pressure, I’m stepping away from the politics. For now. But the list of actually nicely researched topics I want to study is getting longer. And I’m trying to figure out how to make that pay beyond putting things on this site and popping up a tip jar. (Which I realize I ought to do just in general for my own peace of mind. If I crib together a way to keep health care and make writing my primary method of making money, without having to work for Starbucks, I will do so. It’s the planning part of that which makes me twinge.)

This is a long enough block of text today. I will talk to you tomorrow. Also — hello future historians! It’s been really interesting around these parts. Hope you have fun sorting through the mass amounts of data. Well, actually, I hope that somehow the Internet Archive expands and survives and that you can still access all of these digital words. Or that someone thinks to make them into something which cannot be easily destroyed by hitting the delete key on a service, ala Geocities.

Love, luck, and lollipops, lovelies!

eBay Sales: Mid-Century print

Bonanza Sales: Face serum

Craft Projects Completed: 0 (6 rows on my scarf)

Dead Bulb Count: 20 Days (pausing here for the weekend). I also noticed another 4 bulbs on the floor which are burnt out. Still resisting the urge to put in the ticket to fix them. It’s morbid curiosity now.

#MilWordy Update: 48,303 words (This means I need to do 2,791 words per day from here on out to make it to the finish line)

Finished a short story yesterday which is now out for beta reading. We’ll see. I creeped myself out a couple of times while writing it, which is promising. We’ll have to see what the reader(s) think of it.

Work was work. Time stopped at around 230. I kept checking the time, but it was just not moving. I had to get a Code Red Mt. Dew to keep myself awake. On the other hand, I did get my email down to 487 or so. I consider that significant progress.

I was planning to do a whole digression on sumo wrestling, but I am just too tired to actually make it work. I think I’m going to head to bed early. Then, I can get up and do some writing in the morning. Or maybe I’ll two sprints tonight and see if I can’t get at least half of my words done for the day.

Talk to you tomorrow, cousins.

eBay sales: Lemax Spooky Town House, stuffed bear

Craft Projects Completed: 0

Dead Bulb Count: 19 Days and Counting

#MilWordy Update: 44,340 word

Work was, well work. I managed to get my inbox to a measly 699 emails today. LOL. Progress right? Every little bit helps. If only I could have, perhaps, stayed in my office for more than a few minutes. I think I could do without running throughout the building all day.

There’s nothing particularly interesting about today. Though I have a great horror story to write. So I’ll talk to you all tomorrow.