Christmas!

Which was awesome just because all of my family(including the brother who moved to another state and the grand kids) managed to spend the whole day at my parent's house just hanging out really.  not a lot on the physical present side, but the spending time together would have been more than enough.  Getting all of my siblings for any of the holidays has been getting harder as my two married siblings have kids and other responsibilities and my brother has to take a plane to get here.  But we managed it this Christmas!
Work of course was crazy, and people did not seem to notice the 'closed at 4' sign my boss put up before Thanksgiving to let them know we were not having regular hours and tried to come in after we'd turned off the open signs. Had to wait almost fifteen minutes after that to lock the doors and people still tried to  come in.  And when that failed to let them in they came through drive through....
Today was much slower(we still made almost as much as we'd been making every day for the past week with six hours less)by comparison but still busy.  The late snow last night trying to freeze car doors shut and keeping the daylight cold did not help I think.  Sold a lot of soup today....
Might get to see siblings tonight too, but we'll see.

Oopps...

My mom and I were working on my ceramic greenware christmas scene and one of the sides on the church caved in. We spent the next hour trying to piece it back together so it would hold on the outside.  today I spent another 15-30 minutes getting the inside of all the cracks to hopefully ensure it would not fall apart during the firing.  Letting it dry for now then I'll go back later to see if it worked or if I still need to patch more of it.  Took a few tries on the outside to keep the patch from cracking while drying.  Then if it's good I just have to smooth out or reform the windows(sad to say that side had a lot of them) and rough patches.
Staged a pillow fight with my dad on saturday that my youngest brother got involved in too, just trying to get him to smile as my dad had had a stressful week and seemed tired.  Went on for about fifteen minutes and I did see a big smile for a while there.  Success!
Work has not been as busy as my GM thinks it should be so less hours at work.  But saturday was very busy so it still is plenty busy for me.
Christmas is so close!  Had a sub job yesterday that made it clear to me how eager the students are for the break.  They were supposed to watch a video on the earthquake in Japan and take a quiz while doing so and I could not get them to stop talking for more than 30 seconds.  Just was not going to happen I guess.
Had to get a new water heater saturday(part of why my dad was so stressed) as my dad was fixing a leaking toilet and the water heater started leaking. Sigh...

BRRR

Been a cold week, that's for sure.  So far has not got above 40 once since it snowed.  But that's not surprising to me.  Just means I have to make myself deal with the cold until my body gets used to it.  I guess being on drive through a lot will help there....
Work was of course crazy thursday with French Toast with Santa(they got the same awesome guy to do Santa as last year, which was cool for the kids) and people wanting soup.  Ran out of a lot before we closed.  Last night was not much better, given it was friday and it seemed to be either sick people(hopefully their family, not the actual sick person) getting soup or people not wanting to cook coming for most of the night.  Put us very far behind on cleaning before and after close and the only reason we were done by 10:30 is there were two of us doing it.
My mom got a cold this week that is refusing to let go despite three days off from work and stuff.  Thankfully none of the rest of us got it.  My dad took a few days off to help her as well.
I think I've got all my presents ready save one that just needs a frame, which is nice.  Means that I'm done with that for now.
Pearl Harbor day yesterday,  watched Midway with my family after I got off work.  They watched Tora Tora Tora while I was gone.  77 years....
Had to put our oldest cat down today, seems she hurt her back some time this week and she was just not functioning well at all.  She couldn't walk really, just limped and kind of fell to one side with each step.  Her meow sounded like a dying record and she couldn't really eat.  Hard to say it, but it seemed the only thing we could do for her was to let her go as she was not likely to last much longer any way and we did not want her to suffer.  My second youngest brother is really sad about it, just like when we had to put our dog Marley down.  And Samantha(the cat) was older than Marley.  She lasted longer than Princess, my dad's cat who died at about 15.  Marley was about 10-12(we were never sure of her age).  Samantha lasted 18 years.  So she had a long run.  Her brother didn't make it to 10 I think, but he got hit by a car.
Funny that this is the week that my cat Midnight decided to come back to us a bit more permanently.  She's been coming by off and on for several years now, but this week she seems to have come back to stay.  Demanding to be an inside cat and wanting a lot more attention now too...
Down to her and her sister Teresa now...

Snow!!!

We finally got a lot of snow that stuck!  To the drive way any way.  So my dad and I had to spend 20-30 minutes clearing a path for him and my mom to get their cars out to go to work(my brothers' were not keen on helping, though the second youngest did help with the other side a little after my dad left) and I finished the rest of it later. After visiting the chiropractor to figure out why my neck has been giving me headaches all weekend(occipital bone and my C5 vertebrae were out of place-the former in a unique way according to the chiropractor)and getting things put back in place.
Good news about getting the driveway done early: even when it snows after it's shoveled it tends to melt instead of continuing to stick most of the time.  so it dries off before it gets dark so we avoid an ice sheet.  hard part is usually getting it done early enough for that to happen.  or when it is too cold so that it sticks any way.
Kind of a hot chocolate pastry night saturday, so the nasty headache part did not help with the late night trying to clean up the store.  But it was a good pastry night even with customers coming in after we closed(finally had to tell people we had closed as they were coming in so we wouldn't get in trouble).
Got my 50,000 words in before work friday!  Beat my mom, for once.  Only because I had more time alone to write and this story just kept going and going and going on its own....

2,000 to go

For NANO.  I was hoping to finish before today, but it did not work out that way.  But not far to go.  think I have identified the true villain now, finally.  Still have a lot to go on it, so it's not like I'm going to struggle with finishing today before work.  Granted it's gotten harder given that it's not quite writing itself any more.  But I'm still not sure where all of it ends.
Rained a lot this week, most of it yesterday and the day before.  Got the part for my car, so no more trying to work out transportation for now. Tried to take a chunk out of my finger(just a scratch, thankfully) getting it attached.  But I got to see how it handles the rain(no problems with sliding or other stuff yet).  Waiting on snow to see how it handles that...same for my brother with his new car.  we get to show him donuts when it finally snows.  Just wet and cold right now.
Getting Sub jobs has been harder too, things have slowed down there.  probably a good thing, given how tired I was trying to do both for so long.  So I'm only doing a partial one maybe once or twice a week now.  Can't get more than that and not really wanting to any way.
Work got crazy as expected for Thanksgiving, but went really slow for the next week after.  Yesterday the rain made it crazy again, so we were running out of soups and the store got very messy.  Nice change from boring slow, but a bit much right off the bat for most of us.
And now we have to set up for Christmas.....

Thanksgiving Week,

and 34,000 words so far.  And I finally have an idea of the story line for my Nano, but not much beyond that.  I sit down to write and I really can't say what I would write until after I make myself stop.  Certainly not sure what it was going to be when I started and it has kind of stayed that way. Figures...
Got off work saturday and it seemed to have gotten so cold once the sun went down that my car windshield was already frosted over.  Too bad there wasn't a scraper in the car, so I spent almost ten minutes getting the heater to do it.  Had some snow and rain last week, but so far its just cold.
Work is still getting busier by the day it seems.  At least my coworkers have gotten to the point that they don't need my help much.  Wish they knew more about drive through so I could get away from it more than once a week...

Half Way Already?

Sheesh, this story is writing itself, I had no idea where it was going beyond the opening scene(which I now have six versions of before I finally settled on the one I have now moved on using) and then the ending opener(not the actually ending, just how the 'final battle' begins).  It's moved past that by far, so I'm up to 25,000 words and that's only two or three chapters worth so far.  And as I said, I really don't know what's going to happen next beyond what I already wrote down. And I have to stop myself from reading what I have already written so I can stay up on word count(not that I'm behind, just don't want to fall behind) because it's sad to say that this is my type of story.  Not what i usually write, but it was an unusual story idea to begin with.
Work is not getting any better, had a coworker put in their two weeks notice friday then pull a no call no show on saturday(that was so much fun for my manager to deal with) and it happened to be the start of the crazy half of pastry nights we get during the holidays.  In other words: NOT FUN.
Had snow on sunday that lasted pretty much until the sun came up, but the cold is lingering.  my car still has power steering issues(as far as I can tell, the reservoir is cracked and leaking badly) and I can't get the part I need to fix it. sigh...not enjoying strong arming my car even if its not as hard as my truck was...