Today has been one of those days. You know, the kind that start out with lovely intentions of rising when the alarm first sounds and gleefully attacking the to-do list like the ninja I sometimes am. And then gets derailed by sleeping in an hour and a half and puttering around not getting much done aside from thinking about everything I need to get done, and reading a book instead of dealing with it all.

It’s frustrating. I have an excuse, and it’s a pretty valid one too, but it seems lame when I type it out so I’m not sharing. :-P

But seriously, now. It’s time to shake things up a bit. Get things done. Now is the time.  Today is the day, and all that.

Thanks. I needed this pep talk. You’re such a good friend for giving it to me.

Theory:  No matter how much cold cereal you eat at one time, in no less than two hours you will be hungry again.

Discuss.

(Note: If you’re reading this via Facebook or LJ, click through to the original post at betsywhitt.com to consolidate the comments onto one forum.)

I have been lax in my bloggelation duties.

Yes, I totally made up that word.

No, I have not been lax in everything in my life.  In fact, I have gotten quite a lot of writing done and read several books and played quite a bit of Diablo 2 and rearranged the office and done other worthwhile things, I’m sure.  You should know by now that I can never remember many specifics very long after the fact.  I can hardly remember our wedding date (no, seriously, I had to think really really hard about it just the other day).

Suffice to say that I have been busy.

Also, I have not been very good at getting to bed when I really should, which means I wake up a bit later than I really should and don’t have time to blog before I start the day’s writing.  And I have finally placed working on the novel above blogging in the priorities.  That’s good, yes?  Yay noveling!  But it does mean the blogging has suffered.  Next goal: Getting to bed on time so I can do EVERYTHING!

But I digress.

The real reason for this post is to fill time before I have to pick Matt up from class and we go to a meeting at church tonight.  No, wait.  That wasn’t supposed to be the real reason.  I mean, it’s part of the reason, but. . . . I should stop babbling and wander around to my point.

My point is, where has been a recent addition to the Whitt Household!  That’s right, folks, something else for me to kill!

She’s a very pretty flower plant in a pot, and I’ve named her Georgette.  Here’s a picture of her (with Shiloh, who looks slightly annoyed because I made her sit there and stay while I took a photo and she can’t imagine why):

Yes, those are Matt’s psychoanalysis textbooks on the table.  No, as far as I know he is not psychoanalyzing me (we can all hope).

At any rate, Georgette was gifted to me with the instructions that I was not to intentionally kill her.  My friends know my track record with plants.  I did not feel it was appropriate to point out that I never intend to kill any of my plants.  She’s lasted out her first week and a half, though, which is pretty good in terms of flower-plant lifespans in this household.  I have no idea what to expect in terms of her annual life-cycle, though.  Will she bloom all the time?  How much water is too much?  Her blooms get wilty when I don’t water her every day, but are some of those yellowy brown leaves a result of too much water?  I just don’t know.

Georgette sits on the TV table near the porch windows because she seems to do better with a bit of light, and that’s the most consistent place for her to get it without being frozen on the porch.  I will keep you updated on her progress or decline, as the case may be.

Bob2, for those who are concerned, seems to be doing fine.  He’s still a bit sunburned from where I left him out on the porch this summer, and I’m not certain he’ll ever recover, but he seems to be plugging along just fine.

And now I will think about cleaning the kitchen, which is a mess.  Or maybe I’ll read a bit more. . . . Decisions, decisions.

I apologize for my slackeriness lately.  I promised photos and other semi-exciting news and absolutely failed to produce on either.  More than that, I waited more than a week to apologize.

I blame the paint.  No, seriously, I painted my brother’s dining room last week.  I’m fairly certain the fumes didn’t get to me too much, but the painting and surrounding activities (like spectacularly burning a batch of sugar to their nice saucepan–I really am going to tell that story sooner or later) sort of got in the way.  And then I was flying home and enjoying the company of my husband and our dog, and everything got a bit out of hand.

I live a wild life, can you tell?

At any rate, the writing is progressing and I got a satisfying amount of stuff done *aside* from the writing yesterday as well, so that always makes Betsy a happy girl.

Also, I’m working on reorganizing our LibraryThing so that I don’t have to use both LT and Goodreads (nothing against Goodreads, there are some things I like about it very much, but I’m trying to simplify) AND you will actually be able to access my 2009 reading list, the link for which has been nonfunctional pretty much since I posted it.

Finally, those of you who read directly from my website as opposed to through the various feeds have probably already noticed that the look of the website has changed–again!  But I’m a big fan of this one and it seems to all function properly and I have a feeling the new look is going to stick around for a while.

Now, time for a quick bowl of cereal, making some tea, and then writing!  So lovely to make progress.

I mentioned briefly at some point that I was headed to Ohio to visit family, and that is where I’ve been.  Aren’t you glad I’m not a liar?

The flight and everything surrounding it went well on Thursday, and we (my brother, sister-in-law, and nephew) spent Friday morning at the doctor’s and then the zoo, the latter of which was lots of fun for everyone.  Friday evening and most of Saturday, the lovely, brilliant theologian Marva Dawn was a guest speaker at a conference hosted by my brother’s church.  That was a great deal of fun as well as being educational and though-provoking, AND my high school English teacher was there, so I got to chat with her for a few minutes.

As if that weren’t enough excitement, on Saturday morning we were all woken by the beeps, clangs, and rumbles of heavy machinery–William is firmly in the phase of fascination with all kinds of trucks, and he stood transfixed for several hours as the men ripped out the old, ugly cement stairs in front of the house.  I say “stood,” but there was also a fair amount of dancing, wiggling, and jumping up and down in excitement.  I took pictures, but they really don’t compare.

Sunday morning and half the afternoon was church, as usual, and then I ran to the grocery store while the house turned into The Napping House, and I made a giant cookie for a dessert pizza that they took to a picnic in the evening.  I, on the other hand, drove up to my parents’ house and had dinner with my parents, grandfather, and aunt and uncle.

Returning to Saturday night, I babysat for William while Nathan and Johanna went out to dinner, and after a screaming bedtime routine, William went to sleep within minutes of my turning out the light.

And then I embarked on the Horrific Computer Transfer.  I didn’t know that’s what it would be when I started.  If I had, I might have made more demands.  You see, I helped my mother switch from Windows to Mac about a year and a half ago, and she’s never been entirely happy with it.  That’s okay–I’ve always acknowledged that there are some people for whom Windows works just fine, and my mom is one of them.

So, since I was planning on being in the area for a while, I offered to help her buy a new PC and switch her files back over while I’m here.

Because I like sticking forks in my eyeballs for fun.

Also, Matt and I get the old MacMini when I go home.  (Yay more computers!)

At any rate, after I put William to bed Saturday night I went about setting up both computers so that I could get down to the work of the switcheroo.  It went well for a while, and then I ran into trouble with transferring files, since I couldn’t get both machines online at the same time with any kind of ease.  So I found a blank cd, burned the files I needed to transfer, and loaded most of them on the new computer.  I knew the email files weren’t going to be very nice, so I saved them for last.

Suffice to say that I am having problems.  There’s not a lot of documentation online about switching from Mac back to PC, and the vast majority of THAT is from OS 10.3 or earlier, which is just ridiculous since we’re on 10.6 now.  Mail files look like mboxes, but aren’t any more; the emlx-to-mbox converter I tried to use didn’t work; and before I even got to that point there were several hours in which I was moderately concerned that I might have lost all my mother’s emails entirely.  That is significant both because she does a lot with email and keeps a lot of things saved there, and also because it would have been an idiotic thing for me, of all people, to do.  I was going to try to convert using Thunderbird as a “translator” since it runs on both platforms, but I have been thwarted at every turn there, too.

I am beginning to seriously consider more drastic (and seriously annoying) actions.  Also, as a pre-emptive strike here, in this entry I have not even begun to give details either on the situation or on what I’ve tried to do (literally just about everything.  I’m more thorough than most people.), so general “have you tried this?” comments probably won’t be greeted with much grace at this point.  If you have extensive experience specifically with moving obstinate Mac Mail version 3.6 files into Windows Mail, feel free to send me a private email.  Otherwise, commiseration and rantings about how idiotic the technology world can be are most welcome from everyone.

That about sums up my visit so far: good times with family, lots of fun, and ongoing desires to scream at computers.

I’ll try to post some photos tomorrow.  In the meantime, look out for an Exciting Announcement!  (Don’t get too excited, though.)

For those who have not been paying attention, today was New Stove Day!  Before the old one was hauled away, I took this photo of the damage:

Yes, the oven floor is a bit dirty, but at least it was not flaming.  For those who really like details, the right portion of the broken coil was the bit that wasn’t getting power, and the left bit was the angry red/white-hot/flaming bit.  The flame traveled from the broken end up and around about the where the top rack crosses it in the photo.  Maybe a bit more.  As I said before:  alarming.  I do not recommend it as an experience everyone should have.

So the new oven came today.  It’s white and extremely clean (it makes our white-painted cabinets look a bit dingy), and it doesn’t have a window in the door or an oven light.  But it seems to cook things just fine, which is really the material point, and I can’t blame the landlord for going a bit cheap on his rental property instead of shelling out a big load of cash.  See?  New oven:

And to initiate it, I thought it was appropriate to cook myself a chicken pot pie for lunch.  That which brought the last one to its death will initiate the new appliance’s life.  Or something.  It smelled something awful for a while, but that was only alarming until I decided that was “new oven smell” (which is decidedly not as nice as “new car smell”–no one will be bottling it and selling it at Wal*Mart) and in the end I had a perfectly lovely chicken pot pie made with ABSOLUTELY NO FLAMES INVOLVED.

To be entirely candid, the bottom was less crispy than I really like, but that could be because I didn’t preheat the baking pan like I usually do.  I will report on this high-interest story as it develops.

In other news, I need to go officially turn in my key and access card and final timesheet to leave the day job behind.  I should probably call Matt and make sure he remembers that so I can have the car.  Also, the new writing regime has been working quite well, and I anticipate consistent progress in the future as well.

Finally, I leave for Ohio tomorrow, so you can expect things like updates of me with my adorable nephew for the next week or so.  And funny things I see at the airport.  And whatnot.

I’m sure there’s more, but it will have to wait.  You know how it is.

Look! Prettiness! At least it will do for now… and perhaps until I get back from Ohio in a few weeks. I’ll be here and there between now and then. Mmm generic promises. Toodaloo!

A lot of my “free” time recently has gotten sucked up in preparation for the sermon I delivered this morning. It went well, I think, and I can now look forward again.

1) We got new phones! And unlimited texting! Whee!

2) I caved and joined Twitter. I am @betsywhitt over there. I suppose I should put one of their little buttons in my sidebar.

3) Things are good. I have very few complaints.

4) It is time for bed very, very soon.

It’s been an interesting week. I’ve gotten some things done as planned, and others have fallen through the cracks. If I’m honest, that’s because I have stayed up too late and then been extremely reluctant to wake up early enough to have a truly productive morning. It’s a common trend in my life.

Matt has the car today, so I’m stuck here at the apartment. Stuck isn’t really the best word. I mean, I do have legs. I can walk somewhere–there’s a wide variety of things within a mile of here. Or I could ride my bike, which opens the circle of possibilities further. And, you know, there are city buses. But the easiest, coolest (as in, air conditioned) mode of transportation is the car, and I don’t have access to it today, which means either I will lie on the couch and waste time (tempting, but guilt-inducing) or I will get up and get to work on the variety of things just waiting for my personalized attention (delayed gratification–stinky now, feels great later).

The dog is extra-needy today. She wants attention and activity. Both Matt and I have been gone during the day for the last five or six days, so her life has been less than exciting, napping and waiting for us to come home. We’ll see if I can work out a trip to the dog park after Matt returns with the motorized chariot. I suspect she will curl up touching me once I settle into place at my workspace, which today is my folding table since my desk is covered in Stuff I Need To Deal With Eventually and if I have to look at all that Stuff I won’t get any revisions done. And nobody wants that.

That’s about all the news. Things here are, on the whole, quite good. Can’t complain, except that I’m not getting enough done. And that’s nobody’s fault but my own.

It seems that every so often–sometimes longer, sometimes shorter–I find it necessary to step back and refocus. People who don’t know me very well laugh when I give them my standard self-description: tall, blonde, and easily distracted. “Easily distracted?” they say, “You read huge books in one sitting!” As if that’s the pinnacle of focus and attention. Seriously, people, I read books in one sitting (or as close as I can get) because if I don’t, I’ll get distracted, put it down and more than likely forget I ever intended to finish it. And because it’s a convenient way to be distracted from other things I’m supposed to be doing.

Sometimes I’m conscious of allowing distractions to edge their way in, and other times I look up and realize I have no idea how I got so far off track.

So I’m refocusing. Matt’s out of town again this week on a nice long wilderness backpacking trip courtesy of Solid Rock Outdoor Ministries, so I’ve got plenty of time and space to clear out the mental cobwebs.

Family: Happily, one of the aspects of my life that hasn’t slipped much lately. Goal is to maintain and deepen time/interaction with family.

Career: Two aspects of this, the writing and the day job. As the day job looks much different now than it did 6 weeks ago, and looks more and more likely to disappear sooner rather than later, I can dedicate more time to the writing. In the current job market, I’m leaning toward investing myself in writing rather than wasting time and energy trying to find a nonexistent position. Regardless, I need to set short and long-term goals for my writing, and I need to find someone to crack the whip and make me stick to them once I set them.

Finance: We spend more money than we ought. We have a peculiar financial situation, and it often results in a rather lax view toward budgeting and savings. I’m taking steps to adjust our mentality on that, beginning with trying out the MVelopes.com service.

Health and Wellbeing: I caught up on sleep last week, and it’s a wonderful thing. I’ve also gotten myself swimming semi-regularly at the apartment complex pool. I’m working on setting up a regular time to take Shiloh to the dog park, which gives us both exercise, and I’m really really (really) going to recommit to my WiiFit schedule.

Recreation: Much of this also falls under exercise, since much of our recreation is active, but I’m making sure I block out time for reading. We also got an XBOX 360 recently, and Fable 2 allows us to log into the same game together and kill bad guys. I’ve STILL got a big unfinished quilt that needs to be completed. And I do very much like meeting people for coffee.

Personal: I am learning about the care and keeping of cacti (turns out they do best in steady, diffused light, not direct sunlight, so Bob2 is back in the office) and I am contemplating installing a window-box-style herb garden on the porch railing, if I can be reasonably assured I won’t kill them all. My writing definitely counts in this category, too, for a variety of reasons.

Friendship: I generally operate with a bit more distance than some people in terms of friendships, so once I plug back into my “usual” sources of information and communication, there’s not much of a course correction that’s going to happen here. There are a few people, though, who I want to be better friends with, and I’ll be intentional about getting together with them.

Community: For all intents and purposes, the church congregation serves as our community. I’d love to get more connected in the neighborhood and the town eventually, but right now it’s just not possible. I’ll be keeping an eye out, though, and laying the foundation to move on that when the time is right. Meanwhile, maintaining relationships with people in the church, our small group, etc., are the standard.

Household: Goal is to do a general sweep of the house every night to tidy up – clean the kitchen, run the dishwasher if necessary, put the stuff that always lands on the dining room table away, corral the dog toys, find the remotes, etc. Once a week laundry and vacuum, and we’ll be cutting back drastically on eating out.

Spiritual: This one’s between me and God, but it’s definitely part of my consideration in refocusing and being deliberate about how I spend my time.