January 23: Kill Team, A Dragonling's Family, Trash and Grocery Pickup Adventures

Let's see, what did I do this weekend? Well, in the last three days. It's basically all weekend for me now.

Lut and I played two games of Kill Team on Saturday and I think watched an episode or two of The Bad Batch? We've watched a few episodes of The Bad Batch every day for the last three, IIRC. We only have a few episodes left and that'll be it until season 3 starts. But there will be a season 3, yay! In late February.

We haven't watched season 4 of RWBY yet. I remember it being grim and that's put me off from suggesting it, and Lut's been willing to watch The Bad Batch.

On Sunday, I realized I didn't feel like writing or drawing Apothecaria, but I felt like editing A Dragonling's Family. And I was like "aw yeah that's on the list of things I'm supposed to do! DO EEEET." So I spent much of Sunday editing and got from 0% to 25% in one day and felt Extremely Productive.

Yesterday, I poked at my notes for Possible Next WIP, and finished the last pair of characters I wanted for it, and decided on the character arcs for the main characters. And wrote the first bullet point for the outline and then metaphorically scratched my head going "huh, how do I write this?" I think maybe I want it to mostly be a bunch of goofy vignettes about the characters interacting and changing together. I want to write a slice-of-life book so I'm not sure it's gonna have my standard Big Climactic Moment that everything builds towards. Maybe? Maybe it'll have my usual Plot-Critical Party*. A Plot-Critical Party ought to fit in well with slice-of-life anyway. 

Oh huh that covers three days, doesn't it? I did a few other things. Telnar called on Sunday, so we talked while walking like usual. I also illustrated an Apothecaria during Craft & Chat, and yesterday I did two more. I should do another two more today. Went a few days without drawing any, so now my buffer is down to two. At some point in the next two weeks I will need to write more so that I have more to illustrate, too.

Did a little more painting on the Death Jester. Maybe I can finish it in another 1-2 hours of painting? There's some little details still to do. 

Yesterday had some fun adventures. We were scheduled for more bad weather, so on Sunday night I checked to see if garbage pickup was cancelled again, like it had been last week. It wasn't, so I got up at 4AM like usual to take out the garbage. (The city trash service will not pick up your trash if you use a garbage bin; you have to put it in bags on the curb and pickup will be at a random time between 7AM-6PM. Hence: getting up early to put it on the curb.)   It was freezing rain outside and the steps/path/driveway were covered in ice. I clung to the handrail with one hand while returning to the house to get the recycling, and still slipped and fell. For the next back-and-forth, I put the recycling bin down and clung to the hand rail with both hands. Which was barely sufficient. I went back to bed and got up again around 7AM for V's bonus stream, which turned out to be cancelled. At 8:30AM, I went to Pretend Coffee Shop and opened the blinds so I could see when the Walmart grocery delivery van came up. I figured I'd go out when it arrived and if the ice hadn't melted yet, tell the delivery person to leave the groceries by the snow-covered walkway (not optimal but less treacherous than an ice-covered one) on the other side of the house, and I'd carry them inside. Around 11AM, I got an email saying, "Your Walmart associate attempted to deliver your items but was unable to. The order was returned to the store. We may need to cancel this order, and if we do, you’ll receive a separate email confirming the cancellation."

I suspected what this meant was 'we cancelled deliveries for this morning because the roads were terrible, but our automated system for contacting customers doesn't let us change the message or explain exactly what happened.' It was still a little annoying because the message feels more like 'we got to your house but you weren't home', which was definitely not the case. An hour or two later, I got a phone call from the associate confirming that, yes, they'd canceled because the roads were terrible. (Their manager had actually sent everyone out and they'd tried for an hour or two before giving up and hobbling back to the store.) They were going to try to deliver this afternoon, or reschedule for later in the week if that didn't work. I was a little worried about the potential of having to reschedule, since Monday had been the soonest available slot four days earlier. But not worried enough to go through pick-up for it (which the associate offered as an option).  

Happily, the weather warmed and the sun came out and the ice melted off both the roads and my steps, and we got the delivery in late afternoon. Victory!

I want to schedule our next grocery delivery for next Monday or so, and do so in the next day or two, just to ensure I don't keep telling myself 'I'll do it soon' and then not successfully doing it for six consecutive days like this time.  But right now the refrigerator and pantry are full, so it's hard to tell what we'll want ordered for next time. Caffeine-Free Diet Coke and ice cream for me, and breakfast sandwiches for Lut, for sure, though. We go through a lot of those.

Oh, and my trash was never picked up. Although the city website still hasn't been updated to say it won't be. Sigh. I don't know if I should leave it on the curb and see if they get it today (a thing they have literally never done) or drag it back into the garage/house. I bought two outdoor trash cans when I moved into this house 20 years ago and didn't yet know I couldn't use them to put out trash. But I think only one of the trash cans is still functional and I can't jam my now-up-to-three bags of trash in it. So one bag will have to wait in the extension. 

Okay, decided to deal with it now and ended up putting all the trash in the garage. My second trash can is missing a lid but otherwise intact; with some misgivings, I put the third bag in it. It's sopping wet and I didn't want it in the house. Not even in the unheated extension. The garage is broken and can't be secured, so animals will probably get into it. But probably the mess will be contained to the trash can (the animals around here usually do targeted strikes rather than scattering trash everywhere) and I can just dump it all into a fresh bag. Good enough.

*Almost all my books have a Plot-Critical Party/Festival. No, I don't do it on purpose, no, I don't know why.