L.J. Writes

( Procrastination and career thoughts )

Speaking of whom, the Tot is growing apace, not doing much talking but he sure laughs and babbles a lot. He's a healthy and happy kid and I couldn't ask for anything more. He is HEAVY into cars, both toys and the real kind; Mark's father even sent the kid a mini sedan he can ride in and drive around, proving once and for all that grandparents love their grandchildren more than their children.

Mark calls that thing the White Elephant for a reason, aside from its color. It's noisy, takes up space, and is heavy as hell to take out of the house where there is enough space for the kiddo to ride it around, something we have only done twice. Funny, though, it's actually worked out reasonably well; the Tot hasn't shown much interest in playing outdoors with the thing, and mostly loves to climb in, honk the horn, and play its tiny selection of music. He occasionally pedals it backward and forward, but we stop him from doing that at night so we don't disturb the downstairs neighbors.

I pulled my zero gravity chair out of storage and rearranged my workstation to use it, with a bed tray holding my keyboard placed on two straps across the armrest so I can type comfortably. I was using a kitchen chair for a while and that got uncomfortable, so I considered getting a swivel office chair but the idea of being upright all the time didn't appeal, either. This arrangements suits me for now--with my main monitor being a flatscreen across the room, I can tilt back while working when it suits me. Maybe a better lumbar support could help, but then again I'm not vertical most of the time so it doesn't bother me.

I've been writing code to auto-post my local files DW, and while I've been adding stuff and debugging it's running more or less reliably these days. If all goes well this post should come from a queue, too. You may have noticed that my posts have increased in frequency, and that's due largely to having an actual draft folder and queue. Being able to work on some posts little by little while others go out to queue just suits my workflow a lot better when it comes to blogging, and it's a big plus to be able to work locally with posts on apps of my choosing and to have local copies on hand.

( SW EPIX trailer discussion, fan discourse, academia )

I've been spending the past couple of days trying to set up a DW queue from my local machine and it's been a lot of fun, though hard because I knew practically nothing about the Mac OS X shell going in. Now I think I know even less--like why is it so hard to set up a variable lol. I've been documenting the process as I went along and will post it when I get it working. If all goes well this post should be posted with that script. Update: It worked! It's showing unexpected behavior that I need to figure out, but so far it's not affecting anything visible.

Two days of this week were taken up in an INTENSIVE deadline that got me some much-needed dough but took a physical toll. I have the beginning of a head cold and a persistent lower-back ache that I am trying to relieve with rest and stretching. My tot has a runny nose, too, a recurring occurrence for him: Poor kid never stood a chance with both his parents' history of sinus infections.

I've been listening to The Queen's Thief audiobooks and am almost done with the second book The Queen of Attolia. The audiobooks are well-acted and enjoyable in their own right. I'll have more to say about the books later on, but for now here are my Mastodon threads from Book 1 The Thief and from Book 2, with rampant spoilers obviously.

Writing has fallen by the wayside while I was distracted, but I'm hoping to get back on that wagon this weekend. At this point I don't think I'll meet my goal of completing a first draft (well, third first draft) of the WIP by my birthday this June. :( Oh well, at least the goal will push me to keep writing.