the deep moans round with many voices

It has been kind of a trip living in a Minneapolis suburb these past few months, but I think on the whole I prefer not to get into any of that here.

In general, life continues. I ruthlessly yanked my little section of payroll (mileage tracking and reimbursements) out of chaos into proper organization, and then a coworker I have never personally interacted with got promoted to assistant manager and assigned all the tasks upper management had been trying to foist onto me. Which, on the one hand, I am glad to be free of a task I didn't want in the first place (to say nothing of the sweet release of not dealing with the executive director), but on the other it's annoying to have somebody else reap the fruit of my labors.

Ah well. One moves on.

I am working pretty minimal hours at Not The IRS this year, which is reasonable since I am new locally and don't have a pre-existing client base. But I have been making a good impression on various walk-ins and drop-offs and people who just scheduled an appointment with whoever's available, so next year I should have some repeat/request clients as well as clients of opportunity. I think I really must buckle down and up my certification level, as well as get our in-house small business certification, because that will make me more likely to show up as "the best match for YOU, dear client!" in our various scheduling programs. I have been lazy about testing up because my old office knew I am actually qualified to be a level 4 (or 4.5ish) tax preparer despite only officially ranking as level 3, but unofficial ranks don't transfer like official ones, alas.

I am slowly getting my new apartment in order. All the basic stuff has been done for ages, but I still have some boxes I should unpack and tidy away, my kitchen needs more organizing, and I have yet to hang a few pieces of art. But I bought a new armchair and some nice throw pillows at Ikea recently, so I am good on the furniture front. I think I keep putting stuff off because I want to kind of spend an entire weekend doing Household Tasks, but obviously I won't HAVE an entire weekend until tax season is over. It's a silly psychological block, but annoyingly persistent.

Hmm. Also I have been reading a lot of heavily trope-laden Harry Potter fic lately, sort of returning to my fandom roots. I feel ambivalent about this because, you know, Rowling and her everything (may she die in a fire), but a lot of people still writing for HP have taken an attitude of "Fuck you, you transphobic neo-Nazi asshole, you don't get to steal and destroy a huge part of my childhood," and putting in all kinds of things specifically because she's expressed disapproval of them. Which is kind of nice.

I have to be wary when looking through people's AO3 bookmarks, because a lot of the tropes I am currently wallowing in tend to come with a side of "let's bash Ron and Hermione in order to set [fill in character(s)] up as better friends for Harry!" and I cannot be having with that. There is also quite a lot of Ginny-bashing (but not Neville or Luna), which irritates me because Ginny's (still) (always) my girl and the particular flavor of that bashing leans HEAVILY misogynistic. :(

Also I am having way too much fun playing Fallen London. I did try to narrow my focus to one plot thread at a time after initially running around and sticking my nose into everything, but the game really encourages sticking one's nose into everything so right now I have about two dozen things going and I focus on whichever one speaks to me on a given day. I remain a Watchful Lady in search of my Nemesis (my brother's murderer), but I have backburnered that plot until I get up to level 7 in all the Name quests and crank all my base stats to at least 100. (Currently my Persuasive is lagging. I keep getting distracted from seducing the Barbed Wit.) Then I think I will let the Ambitious Barrister make me a person of some minor importance (I backburnered that too; she's been sitting in my lodgings for DAYS, whoops!), after which I shall at long last embark on a voyage to Venderbight in search of the brother-killing asshole who I am definitely gonna shank one of these nights. :)

Three-Sentence Ficathon 2022, courtesy of the amazing rthstewart!

I am at work and trying to actually Do Tasks, so I will not be participating just yet... but the moment I get home, I intend to dive in. :DDDDDDDD

Commenters with horrible opinions who like my stories are so much more emotionally draining than commenters with horrible opinions who HATE!!! my stories. Ugh.

...

Anyway, in other news today was a slow day at work, which was not helped by me buying a BLT for lunch and consequently taking a Benadryl so I could eat it without the tomatoes making my throat swell shut. Normally I only have BLTs for dinner or on my days off, so I can go to bed shortly after the meal and succumb to the Benadryl sleep-hammer, but most restaurants on and around the Commons are currently closed or require one to order ahead, and I was neither organized nor particularly interested in eating pizza, so a BLT it was. And then I spent my afternoon trying not to fall asleep.

But I gave an apartment tour and I think the prospect will apply over the weekend, so that's good. I also did some key return processing, and got back to my old project of creating proper floor plans for various apartments.

Tonight I made steak for dinner, which is always tasty, and I think I will fall into bed soonish so as to hopefully get up at a reasonable hour tomorrow and be moderately productive.

In no particular order:

1. We're changing up the schedule at the rental company a little as of next week, because their current temp is leaving after Friday, Ms. Busywork's medical leave has been extended indefinitely, and having Mr. Geniality back and forth between the main office and the satellite office isn't working well.

So I will still be in Collegetown on Mondays, and will be at the satellite office 10am-6pm on Saturdays, but Wednesday through Friday I will be at the main office from 9am-11am so I can A) coordinate better with Mr. Geniality, Ms. Rise-and-Shine, and Ms. Random Numbers, and B) do some of the scanning and filing. Then I will go to the satellite office until 6pm.

This is going to be a little logistically annoying, but being able to talk to the main office staff face to face should be helpful.

2. My congregation has been having some personnel issues lately (details redacted because privacy and confidentiality are still things), and the Board repurposed tonight's planned balcony meeting to discuss that and some related issues, instead of our planned discussion about our vision of ministry and strategic planning. Sometimes events happen and you have to deal with them, you know? I wrote up some quick and dirty minutes and emailed them to everyone for reference, which is kind of my job now as clerk.

Agreeing to be clerk was probably a bad idea, but somebody had to do it and if I can't write and organize stuff by this point in my life, something has gone Very Wrong with the universe. (I mean, more than 2020 has gone wrong in general. *wry*)

3. I think I may have killed another tiny clementine tree, goddammit. And I've been doing so well with the one I bought in January! (That one is still fine, don't worry.) The difference is that the new one had more root and less soil in its pot, so it dried out faster than I expected and I didn't water it soon enough. *sigh* I mean, it still has... four leaves? It might recover. But I suspect not. :(

4. After several weeks (...or longer...) of letting comments stack up in my inbox, I am finally trying to reply to them. I got through maybe fifteen today, which is not bad at all.

Now I am going to drink some cider and try to clear my mind with creative writing.

snowflake_challenge Day 3: Pimp your favorite communities, fests or challenges!

I feel like everybody knows about Yuletide and the concept of remix challenges, yeah? So I will talk about some smaller ones!

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First, there is the Narnia Fic Exchange, aka narniaexchange, run by the inimitable snacky and aurilly. This is a small single-fandom exchange run annually in the late summer/early fall, which does exactly what it says on the tin. The quality of fanworks is quite high and people are generous with feedback. I have been participating since 2011 and it is one of the highlights of my fannish year. :D

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I also enjoy wipbigbang, though I don't participate every year. I feel like their profile blurb explains their purpose better than I could, so I will just quote it here:

Got a rough draft of that fanfic you started writing but then real life made you abandon it? Is it just sitting around in a folder, gathering dust and making you feel guilty every time you glance at the file or think about that pairing? Do you want an opportunity to sit down and finish it like your greatest enemy in Mortal Kombat?

You've come to the right place!

Greetings. We are the WIP Big Bang and our goal is to take the stories we've already started and to finish them by [date subject to change]. We are an all-fandoms-welcome exchange and will have artist claims and everything. It's like a real Big Bang, with a twist. You only need at least 500 words of a story you've already written prior to signing up and the goal isn't a word count* but to finish the thing.

So, are you ready to defeat that WIP?

(*to make it worthwhile for our artists, we do request that stories do end up being over 7500 words!)

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And third is the Three Sentence Ficathon! This is a concept more than a fixed challenge; I have participated in iterations hosted by caramelsilver over on LJ, and by rthstewart here on Dreamwidth, at varying times of the year. The basic idea is like any prompt meme -- people leave prompts (signed or anonymous) and other people fill them -- but the fills can only be three sentences long. It's extremely multi-fandom and open to original fic as well. And if you run over the three-sentence limit? Oh well, stories do that sometimes. ;)

This is a very friendly and low-pressure event. It's also a great way to dabble in fandoms you enjoy but aren't necessarily comfortable enough with to write a full-length story.

I believe rthstewart plans to host another Three Sentence Ficathon iteration starting February 1st, so keep an eye out and come have fun!