Weekly Wrap-Up: May 24

What Is This?

Every Monday, I document the happenings of the past seven days. The original (and still primary) intent is to track my progress in meeting my writing goals. Increasingly, I’ve been discussing more than just writing. For example, I’m a sports nut, so occasionally I’ll throw in a sports tidbit. I may talk about World of Warcraft, do-it-yourself projects, travel, food, or beer and wine. I think potpourri fits very well. *grins*

Writing

Weekly Word Count

My weekly goal is 2,000 words. I use an Excel spreadsheet to track all my work by category (blog post, copyediting work, creative writing) and item. So all I need to do is add up the “words” column and I’m good to go. Blog posts and creative writing count full credit. Copyediting for other writers is counted at ten percent of the starting word count for the document; style sheets for that copyediting will count twenty-five percent. Editing my own work, if and when I get to that point, will count fifty percent of the starting word count.

This week’s word count: 1,564. Fail.

• Blog Post: “Weekly Wrap-Up: May 17,” 958 words
• Copyediting @ 10 percent: 606

Meh. Although I must say, the copyediting job I did for a fellow blogger was a delight. It was World of Warcraft fanfic, but the perspective was new and refreshing (at least to me!), and the story itself was a lot of fun. In fact, I laughed out loud in a couple places (I certainly hope that was the point *grin*). As soon as the story is published somewhere, I promise to link it here and tweet about it as well.

What can I say? I just haven’t been motivated to write lately. I think part of that is from working on the deck, and being tired and achy after a few hours of that kind of work. But I also haven’t had a story I wanted to tell recently. Time to give the ol’ imagination a kick in the butt.

Potpourri

Reading

I did a little, but actually watched more television this week (caught a lot of Dodgers games, to be honest, as well as knocking stuff off the DVR). I started reading The Dragonbone Chair by Tad Williams, which I’ve had for over 20 years. Maybe because it was fairly late in the evening when I started reading (10:30—I probably should have gone to bed, instead!), I had a hard time really getting into the story. For me, at least, it started slowly, and the backstory wasn’t the backstory I wanted to know about. Of course, given the POV, the backstory I wanted wasn’t really available. I’m sure I’ll get back to it before too long.

The cats were restless the other night, so I around 11 I grabbed a paperback Pern book and took it to bed. I read for an hour or an hour and a half, and was totally absorbed in that.

The Deck

If there’s one thing this project is teaching me, it’s that I’m not nearly as young as I was when I first built the deck, some 18 years ago or so. There is a lot of bending and kneeling, and this morning (after a horrid night of thunderstorms and plain old insomnia—from which I suffer extremely rarely) I have an achy knee and back. However, all the boards are in place. They only need to be trimmed evenly on one end and have a bunch of screws driven. (They’re all secured, but I haven’t secured every board to every stud yet. And hearing the thunder starting again, it won’t be happening today, either.)

Once that’s done, it’s on to the front steps: Remove the old, paint the risers and ledgers gray to match the house siding and deck, then cut and secure the new steps. Unfortunately, I think that job might take at least a couple days, so there’ll be quite a drop from the doorway to the walkway in the interim.

Temporary Bachelorhood

I’m surviving. The cats are too, for the most part. The first couple days, we had a bit of fighting (including Thursday night just before bed, when there was a real catfight). For several months, Mocha has been getting pissy when Merlin surprises him. And by “surprise” I mean “comes into the room.” It’s gotten to the point where Mocha is afraid to go downstairs. Originally, Merlin was acting territorial (realize these two are brothers and are 8 years old!), but now I think Mocha’s just overly touchy. So we have the growling and spitting and hissing. And when I try to calm them down, they hiss at me. (For the record, I am not a cat person. Or a dog person, for that matter.)

Otherwise, things are going well. I’m not starving (we actually had quite a bit of good leftovers, which, along with a trip to KFC to satisfy a sudden craving, got me through the weekend), although I think I may have to actually start cooking on Tuesday. Hopefully the rains will pass and I can fire up the grill.

I also finally made some sun tea on Sunday, for the first time all season. I couldn’t find the regular tea, but I did find some Celestial Seasonings Wild Berry Zest herbal tea, which steeped nicely on the front steps, and was quite tasty. I think I may add another teabag next time, though, for a somewhat deeper flavor.

Generally, I shave every other day, mostly because I hate shaving. However, until this morning, I hadn’t shaved since last Monday (the wife being away and all…). I was toying with the idea of growing back my beard. Over the past fifteen years, I’ve vacillated among a full beard, no beard, and goatee. For the past year or more, I’ve been clean-shaven (mostly). As I said, though, I’d thought about growing the beard out while the missus was in Italy. Last night, though, during one of the relatively short periods in which I was actually asleep, I had a dream about seeing a picture of myself with my beard. I don’t need to look any older than I already do, so I put the electric razor through its paces this morning. I do wish I hadn’t gone gray as early as I did.

World of Warcraft

Yes, I’m still playing. No, I’m not addicted. Much. I did screw up and let my account renew for another six months over the weekend…

Raiding is rather meh currently, although we did manage to put together a 25-person raid on both Tuesday and Wednesday last week. We haven’t been able to do that in a while. We wiped on Rotface all night Tuesday, and much of Wednesday, before heading over to one-shot Festergut. People can’t seem to avoid the slime spray on Rotface.

A couple weeks ago, I was in a 10-person guild raid that downed Putricide (second time for the guild, first time for me) and Dreamwalker (guild first). Once we figured out Dreamwalker (on the third attempt), it was pretty easy. We don’t have enough (good) healers to do it on 25-person though. And if people think Rotface is a challenge, 25-person Putricide is going to be one massive [expletive deleted].

But I’m having the most fun leveling up my Draenei shaman. With my friend Leslie, we started our shammies around Easter. When we hit the Plaguelands, we were joined by our friend Kat, who’s had a shaman for a long time, but hadn’t played her a lot. On Friday, we hit 68 and Northrend. Last night, we hit 70. We are pretty unstoppable, when we get 12 totems, 4 spirit wolves, and various and sundry explosive devices (Leslie and I are engineers) all going at once.

I’ve leveled my shaman as Enhancement from level 10 on, and I can’t believe how much fun it is! In fact, I think an enhancement shaman just might be more fun than a rogue. The thought has crossed my mind to make the shaman my main in Cataclysm (and no, I will not dual-spec into Resto!).

Speaking of Cataclysm, while haven’t striven very actively to avoid learning about the upcoming changes in that revision, I also haven’t paid much attention. Sure, I know there are going to be some changes to stats, but I’m never one to join the Little Red Hen’s “Sky is Falling” guild. I expect I’ll buy the expansion, but I’ve grown weary of being a raid healer. So we’ll see what happens…when and as it happens.