Last Week With Mister Pips and Me
It was an eventful week, what with multiple day-eating appointments (body maintenance, car maintenance, eye maintenance) a tornado warning on Tuesday night, 30+ degree temperature shifts Wednesday & Friday, and a lot of shopping for various long-overdue-to-replace things.
Pips came through all the disruption like a champ. The tornado sirens worried him, but he loves the new harness and leash I bought him.
(pics with alt-text at the original post on Patreon, no paywall.)
And here be the things going on in my world that I think are worth recording:
-> TInyletter went bye-bye on Thursday, and I still haven't chosen a new newsletter provider. That's partley beause I've begun questioning whether I want to continue a strictly separate email newsletter in addition to my other communication channels. It feels redundant, but there's a point to redundancy, and I have argued myself into decision paralysis. (Which is a kind of decision, I know, but "decision by inertia" is unsatisfying.)
-> News came out Wednesday that Wordpress.com has decided to go Full Supervillain in terms of allowing AI scraping content, so I am now looking for a new website provider as well as a new newsletter provider. Or not. Bah. I really do not want to have to set up a whole new website on some other service, and the idea of "self hosting" is a Hard. No. (Grr. I love technology, but the enshittification of technology I do not love.)
-> I've done a bunch of line edits and made improvements to Relics From A Traveling Show, so now it's...done? For this stage anyway. It's time to send it off for editing, and I really, really need to commission cover art. But ugh, that means contacting artists and communicating, and more decisions, and and I'm honestly tired just thinking about it.
-> I will do it all. I will. Not gonna lie, though, it all feels very overwhelming right now. I have made a to-do list (with many sub lists!) for all the admin & setup stuff. That helped.
-> Got word back from my audiobook producer that the full recording is in progress! That is huge happy news. I've made a tod-do list for getting cover art & doing all the "give it an ISBN, upload info, edit the blurb & description" work that will need to be done there, too.
-> MiniCon is in 3 weeks. I feel ready for everything except the road trip. It's been 3 years since I drove on a highway for any length of time, and I hated every minute of that. But. Old car, old glasses, not knowing if somethin was wrong with my eyes (no) bad weathtr, at night, on truck-filledmetro expressways...this drive should be different in a lot of better ways. I hope.
-> Happier driving news, this week I started finding excuses to drive my new car more, and I've been loving it. I went back to the dealership for a second tutorial on all the features Thursday, and I have mastered the seat, steering wheel, media player, map, and heating. Next week's goal: drive highway speeds w/out traffic around so I can practice w/the cruise control. Which means, not the expressways around here. I'm thinking some country-road driving. If the weather holds.
-> Everything's sprouting in the yard. I'll get around to posting about that soon. And about other things. I keep thinking, "I should post about____" and then I think of a second thing, and a third, fourth, and fifth, and then write about Serena and Parker arguing over dogs training instead. (not that I'm making progress with the story, though. Just...playing. And enjoying the playing.)
So, okay, I wasn't a total lazy slug all week, it only felt that way.
Gonna try to lay down more words in more ways, in the coming weeks, though.
That's all until later.