The Rogue's Scribe: Farewell, Writing. I Knew Thee Half-Decently...

Sunday, November 24, 2013

Farewell, Writing. I Knew Thee Half-Decently...

Define irony.

Having a much more relaxed work schedule and writing less than when the week was crazy-busy.

Yeah... not sure what happened there....

I had every other day off this week. Monday was spent crashing and finally just relaxing all day to try to get over my bad head cold. I still have it, but it's mostly just the sniffles at this point. So I guess having one day fully off - no work, no chores, and no writing - was justifiable.

Tuesday after work and Wednesday while I was off were used for two things.
1) Cleaning the house. Between writing and being sick nearly every dish was either in the sink or in queue for the sink...
2) Preparing for The Great American Smokeout this past Thursday. I wrote about the Smokeout in last year's NaNo recap.

Since my "Propaganda Cart" was a bust last year I decided to put less effort in - clearly my coworkers just love their tobacco too much - but I did still have to do SOMETHING. So I created a new Anti-Smoking promotional poster. This of course meant fighting with my printer for about 4hrs, Hubby having to pull me away from the thing before I went all Office Space on it, and hitting up the in-laws' place to finish the printing I needed. I hung the poster by customer service, pinned up anti-smoking info and advice on my Wellness Board in the break room, and put the number to a quit hotline on the table the smokers sit at outside. Although firmly taped down with packing tape, the info on the smokers' table apparently lasted no more than 5hrs before someone ripped it off, put it in the ash bucket, and added their cigarette butts to the pile...

So glad I took the time to print those up and have them laminated by the store so I could re-use them every year. Thanks, guys. Super big thumbs up!

Anyway, that and working was my Thursday. Friday was more cleaning and the start of one of our friends crashing for the weekend. Anyone following the X-Future story, this was Filipe's player. Anyway, this resulted in us marathoning board games and Nintendoland all weekend; the board games simply because we have so many awesome ones but never the opportunity to play any of them. I did mean for us to also play the terribad, Mario-Party-esque game "One Piece: Pirates' Carnival" since we are constantly telling the guy how awesomely bad the game is; plus he is a One Piece fan.

Downside: For the past month or so that we've had our WiiU - we turned in our normal Wii for the limited edition Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker WiiU - we couldn't play Gamecube games since it's only backwards compatible with Wii games. Although the Game Stop exclusive came with a free download of the HD version of The Wind Waker, that still left our Gamecube version of Twilight Princess unplayable... and I've really been wanting to play it again. LOOOOVE that game!

Plus side: I FINALLY got around to hooking up the N64 and Gamecube in the bedroom while doing all of that cleaning Friday, and so we actually could play the Gamecube game "Pirates' Carnival". This also means my upcoming free time might be taken up with Twilight Princess, Majora's Mask, and either the original N64 Ocarina of Time or the Gamecube Master Quest version.

Downside Again: Most of our Gamecube controllers are busted in some form... the A-button is stuck in the pressed position, the B-button is so super sensitive that just tapping the controller near it makes the system think the button was pressed, the joystick is stuck slightly left of center and so the system thinks the player is moving left unless the joystick is held slightly to the right to counter.... etc. This is because we only have one true Nintendo-brand Gamecube remote, and the rest are off-brand; mostly MadCatz. Because of these controller issues the game is virtually impossible to play. Looks like I know what's going on our Christmas wish list this year.... OH! And add in a third Wii Motion-Plus remote so we can have more players for Nintendoland....

One Last Downside: The TV in our bedroom was a hand-me-down that was originally purchased at a yard sale. We kept it because its screen is about twice the size of the TV we originally had: my dinky one from college. The issue is that none of the buttons on the TV actually work properly. It turns on fine, but that's about it. Whenever I tried to change the channel - so I could test out the game systems after hooking them up - I ended up bringing up the menu instead. When I tried to turn down the volume I turned it up. When I tried to turn off the TV I also turned the volume up. Next thing I know the volume is at 100 and the TV is on channel 46. Also, nothing nearly as major, but the screen is set too dark and I can't access anything to brighten it up due to the lack of properly functioning buttons. This means the very dark-color-schemed Twilight Princess is going to be increasingly difficult to play until I can adjust the TV brightness.

Anyway, I attempted to link a spare universal remote to the TV so we could at least use that in lue of the TV's buttons. After fussing and trying 300 different codes over the course of about three hours, the best I could get was being able to manually type in the channel I wanted - but not actually use the channel up or down buttons - and lowering the volume back down to a reasonable level. So.... new universal remote needs to go on that Christmas List too, I guess.

On Wednesday and Friday I did attempt to work on the chapter a little bit, I swear! I got another glorious 400 words under my belt. I'm still about 11,000 behind at this point, though.... I'd like to say that I'll work on it this upcoming week, but that seems highly unlikely as well. I work straight through to - and including - Thanksgiving this Thursday. Friday we're heading down to my mom's to celebrate the holiday with her, and Saturday we do the Thanksgiving get-together with my mom's family. Sunday we'll be spending one last day with Mom and Sis, and possibly my very pregnant matron-of-honor and bestie. It's also the day before Hubby's birthday, and so we might all be doing something for him then since they won't be able to celebrate on his actual b'day. We then drive home at around two-ish I'd wager.

Monday - as mentioned - is Hubby's birthday. Not just any old birthday. The man is turning the big 3-0. Unfortunately, we can't really afford a huge blow-out, but we are still having the house invaded. This of course means I need the place SPOTLESS by Thanksgiving. This way I don't have to worry about obsessively cleaning the evening we come home or the morning of his birthday before people show up. Resulting in me cleaning non-stop whenever I'm home this upcoming week. If I do get any writing in it will be while visiting my mom; unlikely, but possible.

Now I REALLY wish I had my netbook fully fixed. I could at least have it in the car with me as my mom drives to and from the family gathering on Saturday. If it's with the extended family in New Jersey I'll have about an hour or so each way to write. If it's being hosted by her brother who lives in Pennsylvania I'll have ten minutes tops.

December being a week away also means I'm about a week from CROCHET MADNESS MONTH! That's right, everyone's Christmas gifts will be home made yet again. Hooray for being poor, but also having a 35gallon tote filled with yarn... and the skill to turn said yarn in to Christmas gifts! Whoot!

Alas, this means that my slacking this week cost me probably my last real chance of posting something before Christmas, if not the end of the year. Sorry for that, folks.

I tried on my day off Monday, but the illness was still too strong, and I ended up sleeping most of the day away.

I tried Wednesday in between beating up the printer, gluing a poster together, and cleaning. Alas, after about 300 words I fell asleep again.

Friday was another attempt. I got maybe 100 words in before I realized I just couldn't concentrate. I was just way too excited about the fact my husband was picking up his pre-ordered copy of A Link Between Worlds. This game was like a puppy we had picked out of the litter, but we had to still wait a few weeks before he was old enough to take home. I was PATHETICALLY excited for this game; mostly because it would be the first Zelda game we could afford to purchase on the release day. I spent the day cleaning, hooking up systems so I could play the other Legend of Zelda games we owned, and listing to a 45min Legend of Zelda playlist on repeat.

DAY OF ZELDA! And the game looks AWESOME. Hubby owns the 3DS and the game, and so he gets first play-through. But if that 3DS is ever left unattended I'm totally starting up a file! Considering the crazy schedule I have for the remaining 5 weeks of the year I feel like Zelda's going to have to wait though.

So... January 2014 is going to ring in my ability to again: