Five things

1. Update on my mother's missing choir director...
( he's been found, alive, and well, and in Rhode Island )

2. Crazy work place is driving me crazy, but it is Wednesday. So only two days left in the work week.

I'm making a chart in excel to figure out what questions have been answered by addendum, which haven't, how they've been answered, by what addendum and when, and also which firm asked them. Also realized that I need to add a tab keeping track of all the contractual changes by addendum.

This used to be easier to keep track of - without a spreadsheet. I'm copying a co-worker - who is doing the same thing, for the same reasons.
While doing said spreadsheet - I discovered something. Apparently I can write a phrase in English, then translate it to a made up language via just clicking on "the symbol" font. (I found this out cutting and pasting text, which kept falling under the symbol font, and I had to keep translating it back to Calibre font.) Ah, technology - what did we ever do without it?
Does make life easier - in making up fantastical languages for fantasy and sci-fi novels. (You no longer have to be an accomplished linguist to do it - technology has made it easy for just about anyone with microsoft word to give it a shot.) Yes, I'm still mainly interested in attempting to become a novelist - even if I have to do it entirely on my own dime.

Me: I'm worried about getting my vacation time at Xmas again.
Mother: It's too early - stop worrying ahead of time. It's a long way until then. You'll be fine.

I can't wait until I retire and no longer have to worry about this crap. It's insane that I have to worry about vacation time being approved. I was discussing this with a co-worker who agreed. Morale is kind of at rock bottom at the moment - the lowest it's ever been. Lower than it was during the pandemic. We actually weren't doing that badly during the pandemic, we were just scared.

3. I've never understood the English Lit Canon's insane love of 19th Century literature. ( Read more... )

4. Mother was rec'ing the new Elvis film by Baz Lurham to me today, the one starring Austin Butler and Tom Hanks. She said it had lots of musical performances, and focused more on his musical career with Parker, than on anything else. She liked it, with reservations. And recommended that I rent it.

She rented it on Amazon Prime - at my suggestion - I told her it should be available on one of the streaming channels to rent. She can't rent on demand - her cable/internet provider has done away with their on demand film service. (She has Hargraves - provided in deal with her retirement center. Not that Time Warner was all that much better. I actually like Optimum better than both - which is odd. )

5. Stealing time to revise my contemporary romance novel about the Female War Veteran who disarmed bombs, and the bisexual male sex therapist, who is her high school sweetheart/ex-fiancee. ( do you really want to know about this book? )

I was talking to another co-worker today, and almost got teary eyed - mainly because I felt strongly about the topic. We were discussing the Howard Ashman documentary on Disney Plus - and how tragic it was. I told him that it was tragic that Ashman didn't feel safe and couldn't be who he truly was. Everyone would have been happier if he could have been. But no, we live in a world with people who feel everyone has to be like them or how they want to see things, so people can't be who they truly are. That makes me want to cry - we should be allowed to be who we are, not be forced to hide it. (Within reason of course - if you are a sociopath or psychopath, and who you really are - is well to be a serial killer - uhm no. Or a narcissistic personality shouldn't be allowed to run roughshod over folks to further their own ends. Actually, now that I think about it - that's the problem - we've given a bit too much power to the sociopaths and narcissists on the planet to be who they truly are, and not enough to the kind gentle souls who just want to love others, and be geeky about theater.)

We also talked about "kindness" and how it is really hard to be kind to people that we strongly dislike or aren't kind to us. The nameless, faceless people who make our lives painful. Or those we have names and faces for - and hurt us. Those are hard to be kind to. It's easy to be kind to people who are nice to us and we love, and cherish, and aren't irritated by.

I'm struggling with being kind to the people I would like to smack upside the head or throw off a parapet.