Yes, that is Theodora wielding a very sharp knife to cut pears at way-too-early o’clock this morning. No further comment needed, really. Also, it’s 2:43 p.m. and in an hour I’m supposed to be leaving to pick the kids up from school, after which we’re supposed to be driving straight to Indiana, but that might not actually happen on that timeline because Jarrod is at the optometrist and also a woman who has it in her will to be buried at St. Andrew’s (or at least have the funeral here, ha) is in hospice??? I don’t know what the heck is going on, honestly. Happy Thursday.

Work & Tech Stuff

This morning’s phone interview has sort of thrown off my whole day, but in a good way. I only really started to get nervous for it in the 5 minutes before, when I sat down at my computer to wait for the recruiter to call me. But reviewing the job description, I am extremely qualified for the position. Which is a relief — no pressure to sell myself or justify my existence. Anyway, the call went great. Amazing, really. The guy was friendly and easy to talk to (which always helps me open up), and when he told me that the hiring manager had already requested an interview just based on my qualifications, I was like, “Oh yeah. This is in the bag.” My favorite part, though, was when he asked me what happened with AS and I gave the usual, “They merged with another company and then layoffs happened.” He goes, “Layoffs! BOOOOOO!” Which honestly, that’s how I feel too, dude. I’m glad you’re unprofessional enough to agree with me.

Anyway, the request to schedule my next round came within the hour. I initially scheduled a time slot for tomorrow afternoon, but then decided that would be a little too stressful, with me having to find a quiet spot to interview during our actual vacation time. So I’ve got the interview scheduled for Tuesday. The hiring manager seems to also be a career-switcher, and got into software about a year before me. What have I been doing wrong? Hah. I’m feeling only slightly nervous about Tuesday’s interview, but I’ll brush up on some React basics and get my STAR stories in order, I guess. After her — I mean, if I pass, obviously — there’s an hourlong panel interview. Whee. That’s the real nail-biter. But I’m trusting God on this one, and trying not to overthink things.

Writing

This is a good place to write a blog update: I really love this format but it is a lot. Maybe I need to switch it to weekly, then do Five Things or other random stuff like usual in between. I dunno. We’ll see.

Reading

FINISHED A Single Shard. The smashing-to-bits piece happened differently than I expected, but yes, it did arrive. Lovely story, lovely ending. 5/5 stars for me.

FINISHED The Silver Chair. Another great story with a lovely (and funny) ending.

FINISHED Raja the Gullible just a bit ago. I was pleased Boodie came back, but disappointed it wasn’t the sweeping romantic happy ending that I wanted. Sigh. I gave it 3 1/2 stars in the end. Better than 3, I really did enjoy listening to it, but not quite up to the level of enjoyment that would have merited 4 stars.

So now I’m one book away from my goal of (urp) 10 books this month. Should be pretty easy to get that done in 6 days. I’ve got a few options from the library ready for Kindle and audiobook.

Other Creative Pursuits

Must not forget to take my camera with me to Indiana this weekend! I shall take all the beautiful fall pictures.

Health

I missed yesterday’s upper body workout, so did it today. It was a 2-times-round circuit of one longer exercise followed by 4x clusters of a complimentary exercise. Tough, but I really enjoyed it! I’m hoping I can do tomorrow’s full body workout in the hotel gym tomorrow, if there is one. If not, I suppose I’ll get it in on Saturday somehow.

Home Projects

The journals are up to my bedroom! A couple of them have majorly crumbling fronts that stuck to others…ick. It’s fun to see my little life laid out all in a row like that. Ended up being just 2 1/2 crates worth!

Family & Adventures:

Liesl is apparently on a field trip to an orchard today. I can’t wait to see pictures.

Action Items:

• Figure out how to talk about React without sounding like an utter fool

It is still cold here — “cold”, ha, and I am not feeling today. But. I’m doing the best I can. Jarrod and I went to confession this morning right after a dual drop-off, and so that sort of threw my entire morning off (read: I haven’t exercised yet) but it was also a really nice time. I got to chat with Fr. Jan and got a tour of St. Theodosius Cathedral, which suffered an incredibly tragic fire a few years back after the dome that had been in the process of being restored was apparently lifted onto the church while it also happened to be on fire from some welding that had just been done on it. Fr Jan told us they were two weeks away from the end of the restoration and he had no idea what he was going to occupy his time with once it was finished. Oh, the irony! The church should be ready to open — sans domes — this spring, but it still needs some extensive (and $$$) internal fresco work because of rain damage it endured after being left open to the elements after the fire.

Anyway. All this is to say…there’s always going to be something, isn’t there?

Work & Tech Stuff

Phone interview is tomorrow but I’m not actually feeling super freaked out by it. I guess I should prep a bit tomorrow morning, but it’s just a call, I think with a technical recruiter who will pass me onto the team for another more intense interview. At least that’s what I’m assuming.

ChurchCMS work is coming…slowly. I think it’s not quite as intuitive as the website pitches it to be. Like…how to change the default stuff? It’s all hard-coded in there, but “you don’t have to be a developer to use it”. It just feels like the platform is only partially built out. A lot of links to documentation lead to 404 errors. I’m a bit worried I won’t hit the 10/1 deadline for getting a donations page up. And by “a bit” I mean yeah, this isn’t gonna happen without some sort of massive effort and/or divine intervention.

Writing

I’ve at least been thinking about my writing. Does that count? Oh, and I applied for some sort of Scrivener scholarship to a 100 Days of Writing program. Which lead me to discover that there are 99 days left in the year! If I want to write a Shitty First Draft in 100 days, it could be done by/on January 1! I like this idea!

Reading

About 70% of the way through A Single Shard. Tree-ear’s relationship to Min’s wife is also lovely. I know something devastating is about to happen, because why would it be called “a single shard” otherwise? Yikes. But obviously the devastating thing (say, the vases he’s currently en route to the capital city to deliver getting smashed to bits somehow?) will turn out well for him/Min in the end by the preservation of…yeah that’s right…a single shard.

66% of the way through Raja the Gullible. Just got through “his time underground”, which was indeed a bit drawn-out and graphic, as Goodreads reviewers stated. But I want to know what happens at his residency, dang it! And I want to know if Boodie will ever come back. I do love a happily-ever-after, after all. Although obviously, if it’s a National Book Award winner for Fiction, a happy ending is unlikely.

Other Creative Pursuits

Hey look, I took some pictures last night! Honestly, this daily blog post will be a good way to prompt me to take a few photos of everyday life each day. Future Emily appreciates me for that.

WRC rehearsal last night was fun, but I still didn’t really talk to anyone. Sigh. Maybe next week.

Listened to Home, Before and After yesterday, which is an album by my favorite-of-all-time Regina Spektor that’s really growing on me. I keep re-starting these album projects and listening to it as part of that, and in the process have gotten familiar with a lot of the songs, and am coming to love some of them. Though no album of hers, in my mind, will top the perfection that is Far.

Health

As mentioned in the intro, I haven’t done today’s workout yet. Boo. I will…later. At some point. Bleh.

Home Projects

As today has been an odd one, no — I haven’t really had time to work very earnestly on my house projects. I did get most of my journals up and into my bedroom yesterday, and they aren’t taking nearly the amount of space that I was worried they would. I think I can commit to finishing that move today.

Family & Adventures:

Ambrose caught a moth for our jumping spider, Lucas. But so far Lucas seems not super interested in the moth. Jarrod thinks this is because he can’t get down to the moth.

Theda is on fish duty this week and the next at school. You give the fish three pellets of food twice a week, apparently!

Liesl has also been dealing with some molluscum in addition to her stinky feet and eternal skin itchies. Tonight I put on some plastic film to help resolve one particularly painful bump. She wants to peel it off, but hopefully she can keep it on long enough to do some good.

Action Items:

• File for another week of unemployment via the New York online portal.
• Get in the gym and do the damn workout.
• Go down to the basement and get the rest of the journals up!

Today is Tuesday, and it also happens to be the first day of FALL Y’ALL!!!!! Am I feeling it? Oh yes. Yes, I am. Especially given this most recent cold snap. Literally wearing my Little Miss Pumpkin Spice sweater as I type these words. Let’s get into it.

Work & Tech Stuff

I realized this morning that I should have *forked* the churchcms repo like Paul asked me to, so I destroyed the repo I created yesterday, did the fork, and started from kinda-scratch. I say “kinda” because it was actually a lot quicker to get the thing running today, since the database was already there and the dependencies were already installed. So I did get a chance to poke around on my local instance of churchcms, and I’ve gotta say…I’m not super impressed? It’s hard to figure out how to customize stuff. Like, will I actually need to edit the source code to get these pages looking normal/get rid of the stuff I don’t want? The actual CMS part though is pretty great. (Though you can tell it was created by Indian developers, there are little quirks here and there — pin instead of zip, for example — and also the donations currency is in Rs. Heh.) The next thing I need to do is connect with Phil so he can create a Stripe account for us to take donations through. Let me just write that down on my action items list.

Oh, and NBD but I have a phone interview on Thursday with Cleveland Clinic for a frontend dev position. 🙂 🙂 🙂

Writing

Well hey, at least I’m here writing this blog, right? Man I’ve been distracted today, and distracted –> getting behind on tasks. Like, for example, my writing block. Which was supposed to have started two hours ago. Woops.

Reading

I started A Single Shard as my before-bed Kindle read yesterday and it’s great so far. I’m loving Tree-ear’s relationship with Crane-man. No further comments.

Other Creative Pursuits

I forgot to say! I joined the Western Reserve Chorale! Went to my first rehearsal last week, and I’ll go to another one this evening. It starts at 7:15 and goes until 9:30, so feels a bit long, but it’s a fun evening of singing. And boy oh boy do I love singing in a choir.

Listened to the first Beatles album while working on the basement yesterday. It was just okay. Can’t say it really spawned any Beatles-mania in me, but then I’m also not a 16-year-old girl from the 60’s.

Health

Got my lower body workout done this morning: Fuel #11/50. I can’t say I loved the staple of RDL to lunge, but overall the format was pretty good and made the workout go fast. (Two supersetted exercises, the staple, once more, the staple, then another two supersetted exercises, the staple, once more, the staple. Then finisher!)

I’m down into the mid-147’s, well on my way to 145, but I feel like there are zero bodily changes, oddly enough. I have more to say about this whole…process. But not ready to grind it out today.

Home Projects

Got a lot of great work done in the basement yesterday! Cleaned up and organized almost every bit of the mess the kids left down there before I had to pause to do pickup. I’m not sure I’ll really have time to do much of it today, but I did at least make a good start on getting some miscellaneous dropped bedroom projects finished before I started writing this. Ordered an Instax album for some dear photos of the kids’ toddler days I found bundled together (I am massively applauding Past Em for taking those, and reminding myself of how much Future Em will adore photos of these current days with the kids) and finally ordered some new photos for the frames that have served as a Shrine to Ambrose’s Babyhood for far too long. Actually, hang it all! (As my beloved British novels would say.) About the basement: I’m going to make it my goal today to get my journals up from the basement, now that I’ve created shelf space. If I do that, I will consider it good basement-project progress.

Family & Adventures:

Ambrose managed to work in some piano practice this morning. He also spent 20 minutes working on the wrong chapter of his Lit Circle folder last night because I started him on the wrong page. Whoops.

Theda wants fall hair. Whatever that means. She also made a jet pack that involved food coloring, sequins, and pipe cleaners. Jarrod helped her tape her water bottles together and get the pipe cleaners strapped onto her shoulders. So funny.

Liesl has happily taken her Sudafed, but I’m not sure it’s making much difference in her congestion, poor kid. Also, we’re dealing with a severe foot stank issue with her. Like how, and what. How is it so bad. What can I do to make this stench disappear??

Action Items:

• Get with Phil to figure out Stripe
• Take a cool picture for this post!
• Figure out how to fix Liesl’s feet

Hi! How’s it going? It goes. Week before last I…well, you know what? I’m getting ahead of myself here.

I thought I’d create a little template post (is that a thing? I should look into that) and give bite-sized daily updates (remember? I’m supposed to be blogging daily?) about each area of my life I’m working at…improving? Automating? Neither of those words really fit what it is I’m trying to do. I’ll think of the word I’m looking for, and when I do I’ll come back and put it here: OPTIMIZING. Geez I hate that word though. There’s gotta be a less icky buzzwordy way to say what it is I’m trying to achieve.

Until then, here’s everything for now:

Work & Tech Stuff

Week before last (as I was saying before) I botched two interviews enormously. One of them, surprisingly, wanted me to come back and have a technical interview, so that was Friday. And guess what? I botched it. Enormously. Like, what is a static method uhh I don’t know enormously. Good lord. I haven’t heard back from them yet, but I’m also not holding my breath. I have a few recruiters out working the field for me, but I think I’m going to have to settle in here and be prepared for a long, hard winter of (not-f)unemployment.

In the meantime, I’m putting together a new church website for St. Andrew’s, so that will be a nice little portfolio project for me. Jarrod wants me to use ChurchCMS, so today I thought I’d spin up a nice little instance of it locally. Three…hours…later…and I finally got it working for me. Like, to the point where my local instance booted up. I haven’t even had a chance to look into what it might be like using just the API or whatever. But Phil apparently wants the payment stuff set up by October 1. So speediness is key here. Time? Oh, I’ve got time baby.

Writing

Do not speak to me of the old magic witch I was there when it was written. Uh. That is to say. Between prepping for these stupid interviews and running back and forth to the BMV every other day I haven’t had much time to work on drafting the novel I’m supposed to start writing in 9 days. Or really, I haven’t taken much time to work on drafting. Like, at all.

Reading

Hey, reading is going well though. I like to start my reading years off with a bang, and so far I’ve got 6 books read — will be 7 just as soon as I finish The Silver Chair tomorrow. Or heck, maybe even today. If I can finish The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and his Mother) by the end of the month, plus maybe one other, that will really be the start I’m looking for. All these novels-in-verse go by really quickly, anyway. So far I’ve mostly enjoyed everything, though I’m already a bit burnt out on the queer, Black wokeness of it all. I don’t have anything against queer or Black subject matter. It’s just…it feels like that’s all the topics that win these awards anymore. Whatever, fine. Go ahead and cancel me. :$

Other Creative Pursuits

BLOG ERR DAY except uh maybe the first two-thirds of the month? Okay, got it.

DSLR project is going okay, though I could stand to get it out more often. I uploaded the first batch of photos this weekend though, and so that was fun to sort through. Got some good boba and mushroom pictures on there!

The listening project is a bit stalled, but it’s not too late to catch up. I was going to listen to an album in the basement, anyway. So there.

Health

Plugging away on the new Fuel CGX app program, and really loving it. The workouts are around 30 minutes each — Caroline can go insanely long, but thankfully she’s sparing us with Fuel. Today I did a nice HIIT session that involved gorilla pushups? Those were fun and interesting. I’m a couple days behind just due to life being life-y, but I’m actively trying to put my complete-ism behind me.

The walking plan is not panning out. Turns out, doing all this other stuff PLUS a workout PLUS another forty minutes of walking really isn’t super feasible. I’d still love a walking pad, but that will have to wait until I have, you know. A job.

Home Projects

I started a little garden outside, and so far it seems a few beets and broccoli have come up. I forgot to plant anything else, go me, but it’s fine. We’re going to put in actual containers next spring. I also planted some tomato seeds in a container with the intention of moving the pot inside once it got cold, but I got too cocky with how beautifully it was growing, and an unspecified animal came and chomped it all away this weekend. Wahhhhh.

As for the basement work, I ordered some cool drawers to sort the craft stuff into and installed them downstairs but then fizzled out halfway through that. I’m planning on getting down there and working for about an hour once I wrap up my writing for the day.

Family & Adventures:

We got out this weekend to watch Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom, and that was cute — a good time. Lots of giggles, particularly from Jarrod. I had ordered an icee and popcorn combo plus a Powerade for Jarrod, and when we got to our seats there were two giant bags of food waiting for us. No idea what happened — I even checked my receipt and I did only pay for the aforementioned three things — but we got an extra two giant tubs of popcorn thrown in. I would speculate that maybe it was someone else’s popcorn? But there was no name on it, and also we were literally the only family in the theater, aside from a dad & son who sat somewhere else.

Ambrose has been enjoying learning piano, and not enjoying doing his 20 minutes of lit circle folder each night. Must let him fail. He struggled through putting away his laundry yesterday and pitched a fit, but when I went to finish the job up, I saw that he’d matched all the socks and folded them together like I’ve showed him in the past. He is not a hopeless cause! Just need to be more consistent. To him, if it’s not easy, it’s not worth doing. We’re working on fixing that.

Theda made a mushroom poster at school with her BFF Indira. She has to do timed math practice each night and only manages to get 20 addition facts done in 6 minutes, but at school she’s a lot quicker with it.

Liesl is getting sick, poor girl, but! I was at Walgreens today getting my flu-rona shots and happened to see some (insert angelic singing here) children’s Sudafed behind the pharmacy counter, so I asked if I could buy it. I’ll give it to her as soon as she gets home. Sudafed is magical. And all three kids are old enough for it! Other Liesl stuff — we pinched pierogi with the parish for the first time this weekend, and she held out the longest. She’s such a big helper. Always has been. And her sorting love isn’t going away — she just sorted all the candy this past week too. Silly kid.

Action Items:

• Figure out how to make a template for posts
• Take a cool picture for this post!