phoenixswords

Tuesday - Four inches of icy snow.

Wednesday - 56F / 13.3C and brilliantly sunny

Thursday/Friday - Four more inches of snow predicted.

Saturday - 50F/10C and cloudy.

Go home Mother Nature, you're drunk.

I got quite a few recommendations for new books/series back when I attended Crime Bake New England back in November. I read a bunch of Christmas themed mystery in December, then after reading Four Queens of Crime I read some Margery Allingham (did not like her detective, Albert Campion) and started on Ngaio Marsh’s Inspector Roderick Alleyn series, which I am enjoying very much. And I've been picking single books off the To Be Read pile here and there.

In one of Ngaio Marsh’s books that I read recently, I was really starting to enjoy a character, who was sort of everyone’s favorite uncle. But it turned out (much to my dismay!) that he was the corpse! Of course, I’m so used to the corpse being someone that everyone hates that it was interesting to watch Marsh build a plot around a corpse that everyone really did actually love. Although I would have enjoyed seeing him become a recurring character, alas, his fate was to die to move the plot along.

I also finally got around to picking up a book that I’d picked up at Crime Bake, Murder at the Wham Bam Club. I picked it up because the book is set in the 1920s, which is my current sweet spot for mysteries, and because the protagonists were all Black. What I hadn’t realized was that our amateur detective was going to be psychic (one of my pet peeves is supernatural help with detecting). And her auntie is the local HooDoo practitioner. But, as it turns out, the author was writing what she knows. Her author bio says she is a Reiki master, a psychic medium and a Professor at Berklee College of Music Online. A graduate of Oberlin Conservatory and the Eastman School of Music, she has performed with the Pittsburgh Symphony and represented her country as a Jazz Ambassador for the U.S. State Department. When she is not writing, performing, or offering Reiki to students at Berklee, she maintains a private practice in healing and mediumship. It wasn’t a bad book, but there were enough weaknesses that I don’t think I’ll be buying any of her other books. There were lots of info dumps that just didn’t make sense. Like the heroine had been working for a catering company for eleven months, but for some reason, when they work a gig for their best customer, a woman who hires them at least once a month, her boss is busy explaining to her who the woman is and how to act when she’s in their house. Because somehow she’s never been there in the past eleven months? That sort of thing just doesn’t make sense. I know the author was trying to tell the reader about the client, but repeating things to the character that she should already know is a clumsy way of doing it. It violates the advice “show, don’t tell” that you hear so often when writing fiction.

I also recently picked up Richard Osman's We Solve Murders. He's the fellow who wrote Thursday Murder Club series, which are good fun, but this is not part of that series. I'd picked this one up a while back, read the back of the book, and put it back on the TBR pile. No idea why I didn't read it before, it was just as good as the Thursday Murder Club books, just a new set of people thrown together to solve a murder or two. I have to say, for someone who is only 55 years old, Osman really understands how to write older/elderly characters and their feelings about being retired and/or widowed. Plus, he’s one of the few murder writers who can make me laugh out loud.

AI really is becoming the bane of my technical writing existence this month. =P

One of our bleeding edge Technical Writers wrote a really nice post on Slack today about how we should not be worrying about keeping up with all the technology, that just focusing on a few simple things (editing topics, writing new topics) is all we should really be doing. Because trying to keep up with all the new technologies is too much, and we’re only human. And then he shared this file he uses to have AI check work against our Style Guide (SO useful!).

One of my coworkers thanked him, saying “You've lowered my blood pressure with a single post.”

I saved it to read again later when I need a reality check. It really was THAT good.

I just wish he hadn’t said, “Get really good at 1 and 2 [editing and creating topics] and your productivity will be 100x more.” Because I don’t want anyone to think that it’s humanly possible to be 100 times more productive. Even with AI. Especially because I just read an article last week about a study that found that “AI adoption increases labour productivity levels by 4% on average in the EU”. And that four percent is actually higher than the last study I saw, which IIRC (I can’t find it) was somewhere in the 2% productivity growth range.

* le sigh *

Since they were predicting a huge snowstorm here for Monday, last weekend I really pushed myself to try to get stuff done around the house that I might not be able to do until we got ourselves dug out.

Saturday morning I ran out to Mann Orchards and Thwaites Market and picked up some salad greens and ready made food (because I hate cooking for one). Because we’d had about four inches of sticky snow overnight, I was driving through a winter wonderland. All the trees and bushes were frosted with snow. But I was having trouble enjoying it because I’m still pissed at our Property Manager and snow reminds me of the whole kerfluffle. I need to get that out of my system so I can at least enjoy a pretty snowfall again.

I hauled a bunch of stuff out to the dumpster. Kitchen trash, a box of purged papers, and lots of empty cardboard boxes. I checked the dates on food in the fridge and found a few things past their expiration date, so those went out too. I also did a bunch of laundry, washed my sheets and all my bedding, bath towels, whites and darks. Next weekend, when it’s warmer out, I’m going to have to wash my fleece vests and winter coat, because I’ve been sweating whilst clearing off the cars and they could use a wash.

I also made a run out to Target and picked up a few things there, and a grocery run to Hannaford, for milk and other perishables.

At the start of the weekend I was facing a huge pile of dirty dishes and almost all of my silverware was dirty. And I think I was down to my last emergency spoon. I’ve got all the dishes done, the only dirty dishes are the ones I’ve used today. And I put away a bunch of stuff that was sitting out on the counters. I haven’t had this much counter space clear in quite a while. That was probably my biggest achievement this weekend. Tackling the kitchen for twenty minutes, then taking a break, then back to the kitchen again, even when I didn’t feel like it. Go me! *\0/*

Oh, forgot to mention that mom called last night to see how much snow we'd gotten already.

I'd been out to haul stuff to the dumpster and make a grocery run and had gotten back around 7:00 pm. Mom called around 8:00 to see how much snow we'd gotten? When I told her it hadn't started snowing yet, she asked if I was sure. I said I'd been outside in the past hour and she accepted that.

I said we were supposed to get 13 inches (6" on Sunday night, 7" over Monday) and she said, "No you're not, you're supposed to get two feet!" I told her that I'd been checking the forecast hourly all day, and that while they were forecasting more snow south of me, I hadn't heard anything about two feet for my area.

Lord, at my age you'd think she'd trust me to check my own weather forecast without her calling to warn me that the Snowpocaplyse is coming. She said she'll call back tonight to check how much snow we got.

She also asked about power outages. I told her I'm just down the road from the Water Company, so even when I lose power, I get it back pretty quickly.

I think she might be bored.

I got a letter from the DMV this week. I got my first choice on spelling for my vanity plate. Whenever it arrives (they say it could be twelve weeks, seems like a long time to stamp a plate to me!) my Subaru Forester will be sporting the license plate SHERWD.

Yep, Sherwood the Forester. Because I am THAT nerd.

***

Someone rang the buzzer at 8:30 am this morning. And I could hear the plow going by. So I dragged myself out of bed and went out to brush off the cars. I had both cleared off and was headed out to do my grocery shopping when the text came through at 9:30 that the plow guy was going to be on site. Thanks for the timely warning there. =P

***

A handful of us from the Guild are headed down to Jamestown for Military Through the Ages next month, to spend time with Das TeufelsAlpdrucken Fahnlein and to help out since this will be their first MTA without Larry leading them. Stephen organized a Zoom call today, because he figured a 30 minute call would save us a bunch of texting back and forth. We talked about what we might need to get out of storage, who is driving with whom (I’m going to grab Tom on my way down) and where we wanted to stay. Since there are several of us, we’re going to stay at the Historic Powhatan Williamsburg again. It’s a timeshare/condo thingy where we can rent basically a townhouse, with several rooms and a kitchen, for a pretty reasonable price. I’ve stayed there two or three times in the past.

***
Since last weekend was Valentine’s Day, I decided to take a break from reading murder mysteries and read a couple of romance novels I’d picked up but not read yet.

I’ve been reading a bunch of books by Christina Lauren (which is actually Christina Hobbs and Lauren Billings writing together). I’d picked up a book called Tangled Up In You, which turned out to be part of a series of books (A "Meant To Be novel") based on Disney movies. This one was very loosely based on the movie Tangled (‘natch). I’m not a huge Disney fan like some people are, but the book was enjoyable. The authors only picked a few bits and pieces of the movie and spun a totally different story (but with a happily ever after, because it’s a romance). So I figured I’d take a chance on the other books in the series, and had ordered three more. So last weekend I read through If The Shoe Fits (Cinderella), which was excellent. And then I read By The Book (Beauty and the Beast) which was also good. Then I read Kiss The Girl (The Little Mermaid) which was probably my favorite of the series. I’m currently waiting for my order of Worth Fighting For (Mulan) which is new since I ordered the other four.

Anywhoo, if you’re a Disney fan and looking for some romance to read, these were fun.

***
My back has been hurting all week, so I haven’t really gotten anything done other than work. Since I was up (and out) earlier than usual today, it at least got me jumpstarted. And driving to pick up groceries with the heated seats on probably helped too. So today I tackled some neglected housework. I finally folded the load of laundry that I washed last week that’s been hanging out in the dryer ever since. I washed another load of laundry, and this time I got it all folded. I hauled two bags of kitchen trash out to the dumpster. Washed a bunch of dishes. And sorted through a pile of mail. Go me! Adulting! Being productive on a weekend!!! And I still have time to read in the evening.

My company's fiscal year begins February 1st, which is nice because it means the "year end" scramble for everyone doesn't happen over the holiday season in December, but at the end of January.

Today we had our "virtual kick off" meeting, where we review the last fiscal year and talk about our goals for the coming year. The leadership team tries to drum up enthusiasm, and today we talked about our All Hands, in-person offsite that is going to happen in Vienna right before Labor Day, and our new set of goals for this year, since we met almost all of the goals we set last year.

Maybe I'm too old, or becoming more socialist, but it's really hard for me to get excited when the TL;DR message was, "We had a really good year last year, blew past our goals, everyone worked really hard! Now let's get excited to work even harder this year!"

"Time is our enemy. Speed is our weapon."

"Every team in the company needs to think aggressively about how to use AI. If you're not using these tools in your daily job, something is really wrong."

It's easy for the leadership team to say, "Work harder! Work faster!" when they're not the ones who are going to burn out as the pace of work just keeps going faster and faster.