2 things: work and writing

Today I worked with New Hire (upon whom I will bestow a nickname once I know her a little better) for the first time. She seems nice and also competent -- a winning combination!

The day was crazy despite the lack of an Elmira delivery (we are now using Elmira Distributing mostly for cigarettes and a few other things that HLA doesn't carry, and getting only one delivery per week, on Wednesdays), partly because holiday shopping season is getting into full swing, but mostly because the Mega Millions jackpot was at $400 million... and then jumped to $425 million halfway through the afternoon. People start getting really weird about lotteries when the jackpots get high.

Unfortunately, nobody won tonight's drawing. The new jackpot (which will be drawn on Tuesday) is $550 million. That is going to bring even more people into the smoke shop, many of whom will have no clue what they're doing and will thus eat a lot of our time, which is already in short supply.

I hate lotteries.

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On the brighter side, I finished and posted another section of a fic I am writing anonymously for a kinkmeme. It's for a prompt that has some potentially awkward issues, and also I wanted to try writing it serially, so I have been experimenting with true anonymity instead of attaching my name to the story. (I am a coward; this is a cheap escape clause in case I can't finish the fic after all.) I think I may have finally found a shape to the story and thus a potential end point -- it had been rather distressingly open-ended for a long while -- so that is nice. I suppose I may de-anon when I do my end of year writing roundup post, even if I haven't finished the story by then, because I would like to be able to count the posted parts in my public record for 2013.

I have not written anything further on my Yuletide fic, but one of the books I borrowed from Cornell turns out to have exactly the piece of historical evidence I was looking for, which has given me a much more solid structure for the story. (This is not surprising; I checked out that book because I was 95% sure it was the best place to find that item.) Another book turns out to be mostly irrelevant except as general character background stuff, and I am still working through the others.

And as for the Three Sentence Ficathon... well, I keep meaning to write some more fills, but I have not been in the best mental place for that. I managed two, but I'd prefer to hold off on a collection post until I have at least one more. Perhaps Saturday!

a minor catastrophe averted

The plan for today ran as follows:

Step One: get up 11:30am, morning routine, catch 12:15pm bus, eat at grocery store cafe, buy groceries, catch 1:30pm bus home, put away groceries. Step Two: leave apartment by 2:00pm, walk into town, attempt to get haircut. (Step Two Point Five: lunch?) Step Three: get to smoke shop by 3:30pm, work, close store at 8:00pm, walk home.

This worked just fine until I arrived home from the grocery store and realized I'd left one of my three bags on the bus... and it was the one with the chicken thighs that are the planned basis of my dinners for the next week. *headdesk* Fortunately, the #13 bus stops at the Seneca St. bus station, so I figured if I hurried I could still get to the Commons, get my hair cut, and be standing at the curb when the bus came by at 3:00pm in hopes that the bag would still be there.

I DID AND IT WAS! The bus driver had saved it in the little compartment where drivers can keep their own snacks and drinks and so-on, and had even told her replacement so he kept it there and knew exactly what I was trying to ask before I could finish my question.

Sometimes people are just awesome. :-D

I stashed the chicken in the back of a drinks cooler while I was at work, and it is now safely in my freezer, thank goodness. Lunch fell by the wayside, but eh, I sleep through my lunch break a lot of the time anyway and subsist on peanuts or chips until I get home and eat proper food for dinner.

I have also shoveled way more snow in one day than I expect to see in the whole month of December, but again, eh. Winter is not a predictable season, and I'd rather have it descend early and hard than never arrive at all.