Reflections and Ruminations on Writing.

Growing vaguely anxious about the party on Saturday.

*sigh* My three current mantras are:

My mother's standards of entertaining do not need to be mine.

My friends will not judge me for having a lived-in house.

People do actually like me and will turn up.

I've made a slice, a cake and icing, and will be cooking some chicken wings in soy sauce on Friday. I'm thinking about making a bean salad with a bit of a vinegar zing...

Yesterday, I gave the back door and frame a coat of oil, and it's been a bit whiffy through the house. So the cats didn't sleep in the laundry last night, and around 2am Smokey came by to insist she get to come in and sleep with me. Around 4am, Mal decided to join us. And around 6am, my alarm went off.

I have to get the back porch table cleared this evening, box as much stuff as possible (worry about sorting later).

Tomorrow is going to be hellishly hot, and the hot weather is going to continue on through to Saturday. Argh. It's going to be painfully hot outside, and I was kind of counting on being able to hold it outside...

I nearly posted a thanksgiving message to my American friends. Oops. Next week, Gadget!

I've been quiet, in part because all the other shiny socials are taking up my time and space, in part because things are kinda busy right now in garden and work and party planning and Christmas.

Also, I'm not sleeping well. I can fall asleep relatively well (except for when I can't and remain awake until 2:30am) and wake with a vague tiredness that is never really improved by actual sleep.

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The Month Of Writing Dangerously is not happening, per se. It's really more The Month Of Writing Safely And Moderately With Some Occasional Bursts.

I do feel vaguely bad about a few fic WIPs that I have had lingering for years, and yes, I know most people don't post WIPs for precisely this reason. I don't regret posting them, but I do feel a little regretful that I'm not finishing them. There are plans and plots for them, but actually getting those plots into scenes and the scenes into words is another thing. And also: obviously the longer it goes, the harder it is to keep writing and the fewer people are interested in the story anymore.

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It looks like I will be working the Christmas-New Year stretch. I'm not sure if that's office hours, or just being on call, I think it's office hours, but there's not much happening.

There are now three of us in the area I work in, monitoring two systems, and while I will have to come up to speed on the second system, we can hope that there are no major issues over what is usually a very quiet period.

We can hope.

Because I was a little bit busy during the Georgia part of the trip, and didn't really have the ability to write up what I was doing, this is my (late late late) review of my tour through Georgia from the 8th-14th September.

So, I joined the tour late - I was supposed to join on Saturday morning when the tour began, but ended up arriving on Monday afternoon. I'm glad I took the time to recover from COVID, though - it was definitely worth it, even if the actual sickness wasn't as debilitating as initially feared.

The tour organisers arranged for a driver to take me to where the others were, and it was a little unnerving arriving at Tbilisi airport, trying to get my bearings, meet my driver, get my phone started - everything all at once! And we promptly drove out from the airport and off to the village of Signahi, where the tour had headed out to just that morning.

( Travel 2025 - Georgia )

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This is the tour, with itinerary, if you're curious. I missed the first couple of days of Tbilisi, due to being sick, though.