I wish I was the Energizer bunny. I could use the stamina because the work keeps coming and coming and coming. :-)
My goal for Friday evening was to finish the chapter I was working on and then get to bed early. Simple goals, yes, but not achievable for me. I arrived home to find a disk from my publisher with my cover art on it. My zip disk is attached to the desktop, so I fired that up to get a look at it. All I had was the same thing that was emailed to me, but I guess that's my own fault since I asked for files I could open on the PC. The Dorchester art department uses a Macintosh.
Since I was on that computer anyway, I downloaded the email on the desktop account. Yes, each one of my computers has its own email address. I can access all of them from any computer, but I'll only download that address on that particular computer. I hadn't been on the desktop in a few weeks, so not only did I have email, I had virus software to update and an update for Windows.
I wanted to check prices on postcards, but the company I use to make my bookmarks has changed their website and I can't get past the home page without registering. I do that. When I received the confirmation email an hour later and logged on with that, I still couldn't see prices. I hate this version of their website.
All this stuff took about an hour. Then I switched to the laptop to write. Had half a gazillion emails. Do I need to mention I'm hopelessly behind on them again? After answering the ones that couldn't wait, I started to update a page on my chapter's website.
Yes, I volunteered to help with web design. There is a reason for my insanity. I want to get more involved with my chapter, and while I can't do a lot of the things they need help with, I can do web stuff.
It was a quick update, should have taken me like 5 minutes to do. Except my chapter uses a template through their website host and the interface is clunky and more difficult than coding by hand. I struggled to figure that thing out, read the help screens, tested a few things. I discovered every time I hit save, it was publishing the page, ready or not. Sigh. I understand why the chapter wanted to go this direction--they don't want to burn out someone who knows real web design, and this way, anyone can volunteer. Personally, I found it worse than coding, but then I'm pretty comfortable with HTML, so I'm hardly a great judge.
Finally, finally finished with the page--like 2 hours later. I swear, if I was putting that page up on my website, it would have been done in minutes. But I'm sure it'll be easier once I figure out the system.
Now it's about 7pm and it's my day to blog on one of the group blogs I participate in. I haven't given this a thought all day, and I have to come up with something. That took some consideration, but I kept the post nice and short.
At last, I can write. Or rather revise. I have everything I need down in the chapter, it's just punching it up a little bit, doing some adding, some cutting, and reworking the ending.
My early night ended up lasting until 9:45.
This morning, I had the alarm set to go off before 6am because I have to bring the urban assault vehicle in to have its oil changed. I'm tired and I know I'm going to end up sitting. Can't bring a laptop. I've tried that and there is nowhere to plug in and my battery doesn't last as long as they make me wait. I do, however, have an Alphasmart Dana. I hate it.
I hear people swear up and down by their Alphasmarts, Dana or any other version, and I don't get it. I bought it so I could write outside, but I don't like the keyboard and I don't like that I can only see a few lines of text at a time. I'm bringing it with me to the dealership anyway. If nothing else, I can get the worldbuilding details down for the WIP.
