The new job is great. I have a shared office, assigned parking, and the company considers Black Friday to be a paid holiday. After years working in retail, I am seriously excited at the thought of not being at work that day.

Not sure I’ll go shopping, especially since COVID is still a threat. But, if I do, rest assured I’ll be one of the nicest people the associates in the store will meet! They don’t get paid nearly enough to deal with all the idiots who run roughshod over them just to save $5.

One thing the new job cuts into is my free time. I’m working 40 hours now, where it had been about 16 before. I don’t have the free time during the week to get stuff done. Some laundry, like bedding or towels, waits for the weekend now. I can run Fred, and I do, but there’s stuff that gets put off Monday-Friday.

I’ve got a routine down where I can usually get an hour of writing in before I go to bed. This is good, as progress needs to happen with ‘Sword and Soul’! I’m roughly 75 pages in, and I’m retraining myself that I can write in smaller chunks over spending 3 or 4 hours typing.

I ordered a new file cabinet for my office yesterday. The one I have is old, used, and had issues when I got it. It was free, though, and helped organize things. The nail in the coffin was when I had to kick a drawer that was stuck 3 or 4 times before I could get into it! I found a new one that matches my desk and will be large enough. It’ll be here sometime next week, and odds are high that it’ll stay in the box, unassembled, until the weekend.

What I need to do this weekend is get ready for it. That entails going through the cabinet I have, purging files, shredding stuff, and figuring out what appliance manuals are being stored that we no longer have. It’s going through office supplies, trashing the stuff I don’t need (like a box of rubber bands my mom gave me over a decade ago that are rotten). It’s purging the files I made that are full of school photos, report cards, and artwork.

I mean, do I really need to keep 15 copies of the same picture from 3rd grade? Nope. Just need 2 at most, as there’s larger versions in the house somewhere.

It’s gathering the Halloween decorations, packing them up, and storing them for another year. It’s taking the growing pile of stuff I want to donate and actually driving it to the drop off point. It’s taking a hard look at what furniture is in here, where the best place to put the new cabinet will be, and moving everything around so it can go there.

It’s doing all the work that has to happen before it arrives, so it can be assembled and filled without much fuss.

My office needs a good cleaning, and the weekend is the only time I have to do that. So, Thia will have to wait a few more days to learn why Adam calls Jinaari and ‘old man’.

Maybe I’ll figure out the story while I’m cleaning. You never know. It’s gotta be a doozy, mildly embarrassing, and took place so long ago that even Jinaari laughs about it now.

Kinda like how I managed to pull a muscle in my arm while pushing myself up on the couch.

BB/Chan Eil Eagal Orm