(no subject)

My curtains will be fitted on Monday. This is the next step in a bunch of things. My place has to be completely post-burglary, so that the curtain people can get in and do their job (I've developed the bad habit of blocking things off, so that evil burglars can't enter) and I have four battles (maybe five) that must be won in the paper war. I need to read at least five books and write them up if they need writing up and put them away if they don't.

None of this is any more than I had intended to do. It's really good to have a deadline, however, and one that's two days earlier than my real one. If I can get the physical mess done and all the work that links into it, then I will have two days with nothing but computer-based work and teaching.

It's a case of getting the right brain set. The further I get into a year when more goes wrong than right, the more I need little pressures to remind me to keep moving. If I move, I can get to the other side of each given problem and my life doesn't stop and stare at me, bewildered. Now I have a goal, I'm much happier about my workload. it's only tangentially relevant that the goal is not being embarrassed by the state of my flat when the curtain bloke comes round.

The ripping of those few hooks off the curtains in the loungeroom and the damaging of the bedroom blinds has actually made a big difference to the comfort levels here. I can't open the loungeroom curtains at all or use the back door, and there's a triangle that won't stay closed. And the bedroom is light all night and extra light during the day, for the vertical blinds are not quite vertical. And I rather suspect that some of my less-than-wellness is due to it being not easy to control temperature when the curtains don't do their job.

This all makes it triply worth while to fight the paper fight and make horizontal surfaces visible. It also gave me the impetus to buy a hanging shoe rack for the back of my laundry door and finally, finally to get coat hooks for my own coats. This means I am in danger of not having shoes and coats spilling everywhere. That and the slight diminution in numbers of black t-shirts makes a big difference to my ability to actually fit into the space.

Normally I do this level of paper sort when I'm getting ready for another big project. There's a small corner of my mind that's saying "I know what novel you're writing next." It's a novel about a house.


ETA: The nice insurance people have been in touch again. Now the work side of things has been approved. I'm another step closer to an end of it all!

(no subject)

I'm about to head out to teach worldbuilding. I'm so glad to be teaching it, for I keep encountering novels with certain basics stuffed up. Societies that cannot possibly operate. Lack of women is still too frequent, but I've seen no means of growing food and no means of earning a living and I've seen sustenance level societies with sophisticated coinage and societies where the technologies make no sense whatsoever.

I need to find a geological map, if I can. If I can't, I'll wing it. The next six weeks are not just any worldbuilding, but worldbuilding using the Middle Ages, and it's kinda important to get rocks right and know if the land sustains life or pottery.

And that's an end to my procrastination for now. I need my wormeaten geological map and can't just sit here, wondering if it's where I left it!

(no subject)

I keep forgetting that I never get much work done after the first night of a new course. Years and years and years of teaching and I get home and expect to work. After all, I got home early (8.30 pm!) because of a lovely student who gave me a lift. I ate dinner before 9 pm. That left four hours of work in my day. In a different universe, anyhow.

I've read maybe fifty pages and wittered around the net and watched it get colder and colder (one degree outside right now) and avoided overeating. I will probably read another hundred pages and pretend that it's work. I will definitely watch more Dr Who. I shall cross nothing off any list, which means everything is there for tomorrow. Still, I have a good Thursday class and I prepared two classes and started sorting stuff for the beach teaching and all my copying is done for next week and I have made a start on my multidirectional paper war. What's more, I did all this on a high pain day.

I've talked myself into it. A hundred pages, then two hot water bottles and bed. The two hot water bottles are essential because it will be zero degrees by midnight and who-knows-what until dawn. I guess the weather shift explains the high pain day. It doesn't, however, explain the laziness.