Friday September 13-Sunday September 15, 2019

I was gone all day Friday and until evening on Saturday. Because of that, although Friday was supposed to be day 15 and of my 90 day countdown, I will make Monday September 16 the new day 15 and continue the countdown from there. I was driving for several hours to get to meetings.

Work intervened. If you have a problem with that, well you can do differently if you set yourself a 90 day challenge like I have, but although I don’t work a 9-5 day job, I do work. Like any job, it requires a certain amount of time.

Today, Sunday, has been insanely busy. I’ve been, with DH’s help, moving boxes o’ stuff around and storing things at full speed.

More than 2 boxes of books went out of here in the past 2 days, that’s more than 100 volumes. There’s a few more staged for the dump’s swap shop, but I gave some away Friday, some Saturday, and DH took books to the dump’s swap shop today (Sunday).

I quoted some books to a customer. Made arrangements with a bookdealer friend to take some of the books if I have them. (They wanted a specific author.)

Culls: 100+ books

Used/Found a New Home:

15, 14, 13

Wednesday September 11, 2019

This is our midweek dump day and oh boy do I need to go! I have approx. 100 books to get out of here, 2 full boxes plus, not to mention the regular garbage, which I could ignore until the weekend. But I can’t ignore the books. . . . I took the garbage bag, 2 boxes and filled my passenger seat with more books.

I also talked to the folks at the dump about volunteering to help keep the swap shop tidy. It’s frequently a mess. I hate adding to it the days I bring a lot of stuff, but don’t know what else to do. So I found out today how I can help. (AFTER my book sale! AFTER the books are done! And AFTER this challenge is complete too, although there’s only 18 more days to this, although I will skip a few days soon and I will add more days to the end….)

ALPHABETICS

C- CLEAN – Shoes. The weather has turned and so we’re going to need our cold weather shoes, very soon. They need to be checked and cleaned if they weren’t when we stopped using them in spring.

H – HOME FIRE – The wood box needs to be set up, the tools cleaned (again), etc. in preparation for winter!

M –MOVE – Boxes of books from the house to the storage. From the house to the dump, as appropriate. I’m going to count this as 30 minutes although it was a lot longer than that! (30 minutes)

R – REMOVE – Remove the excess stuff, or at least one more load of it from the attic.

W – –WORK – I have work to do for the day job. (30 minutes_

[x][x][x][x]||[][][][]||

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Other Work

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Culls: about 125 books taken to the dump’s swap shop. Sold 6 books to my first customer.

Found a New Home or Use:

18

Wednesday September 5, 2019 -Thursday September 6, 2019

Wednesday 9/5/2019 – Without meaning to, I skipped 9/5/19. Apologies!

24

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This is farm day and so there’s not much which will be finished otherwise! I started with prepping most of a batch of salsa which I’ll finish tonight. (Done!)

Also on the agenda, more freezer move/organization.

ALPHABETICS

D – DEAL – with the large metal basket, bags, etc. of food which came from the farm. Some of it will be washed/used right away, some of it will be put aside right away, some of it will be stored in the fridge, etc. This takes time! (20 minutes)

I –

N – 

S – SALE WORK – I’m getting ready for a book sale I’m having. This requires going through boxes of books, here and at the storage. (1 box, 5 minutes) Books sorted into book sale books, books going to antique store, books to swap shop, books to writers. (The books to the writers were delivered.)

X – RANDOM –

[x][][][]||[][][][]|| (10 minutes uncounted)

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Other Work

We had more submissions today, so the morning was spent catching up on those along with making the salsa as far as I could. The reading doesn’t count towards the cleaning effort, but it does take part of my day!

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23

 

Tuesday Sept 3, 2019

I was gone this afternoon running errands. DH was home as always.

Progress on the mini-split planning. We have gotten final measurements/okay for the new location, DH is on his way to order the window which is part of this effort. We’re replacing one of the leaky windows with the mini-split and another, new and smaller window. So there’s progress on this task as well. That’s LEVEL 2: Systems/heat & cool.

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ALPHABETICS

B – BOOKS – Go through at least one box of books to vet it for the sale in 2 weeks. (10 minutes) 9/6/19

G – GET TOMATOES – Go to the farm for an extra load of tomatoes. (1 hour)

L – LAUNDRY – Put away the clean laundry, that is, clear the top of the machines. Wed. 30 minutes

Q – RANDOM – Make salsa. 9/5/19 (25 minutes)

V – RANDOM – Make stewed tomatoes. (30 minutes, Tues. night)

[x][x][x][x]||[x][x][x][x]|| (35 minutes uncounted)

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Other Work

I organized the freezer space for an hour this morning, but it was noted on the date when I assigned the task, not here. That said, I will count it as LEVEL 2: Systems/food work!

We’ve had another spate of submissions, which has taken, oh probably about 2 hours total to read and evaluate. I don’t have a way to credit myself for the time spent on my “day job”!

Yesterday, I started cleaning up the bed next to the drive’s stone wall. I worked some on this today too, about 10 minutes worth. LEVEL 1.

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Level 1❌Level 2❌ Level 3    Level 4   Level 5   Level 6

26

Friday August 9, 2019

As I said yesterday, today’s efforts are mostly going to be reading for a book I’m involved with. If the ALPHABETICS get done, it will be late or piecemeal, in tiny bits!

ALPHABETICS

E –

J –

O –

T –

Y –

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51

Saturday August 10, 2019

I’m still reading stories!

50

Sunday August 11, 2019

Only 3 new stories this morning. I can catch up a little! The project DH has been working on for the past few weeks is also all but done. Hurrah! That means at some point in the near future the corner of the kitchen he’s taken over for this will be returned to household use. Well, maybe. We’ve discussed him making that corner the permanent home for his hobby stuff. If that happens, it will free up a corner of the living room. We’ll see!

I went back and did three of the undone tasks from July.

Culls: 2 barcode readers, an electric cord, 2 books, 1 piece of clothing,4 tiny meat thermometers

49

Thursday August 8, 2019

One of my day jobs involves putting books together. We had a published deadline, today. I spent today mostly doing farm and other food, as usual. But I have an entire day’s worth of reading to do because I was gone. (I was gone from 10:30 this morning until 6 p.m.)

And there will probably be even more to read, tomorrow!

So, answer? No ALPHABETICS, not until I catch up. I’ll select them, probably, but I will be glued to a computer reading/writing stuff for a book probably all day!

ALPHABETICS

D – DRINKING WATER – I need to sterilize the bottles used to store water for the winter power outages. The bottles get emptied in the spring, but need to be sterilized before they’re refilled.

I – ICE BOX – I need to go through the freezer again and make sure that all of last year’s foods have been removed. Shelf 1 of 6 culled/reorganized (5 minutes)

N –NOTEBOOKS – Part of the ongoing culling effort. I’m of the generation who’s used to storing information on paper, so I have notebooks full of data. Many of which need to be recycled!

S – STEWED TOMATOES – I have a large quantity of overripe tomatoes to turn into stewed tomatoes. Because I could let them cook while I did other things, I cooked the first batch of stewed tomatoes on Friday. Call it an hour. I started first thing in the morning and quit just before dinner, with bits and pieces between.

X – RANDOM

[x][x][x][x]||[][][][] (5 minutes uncounted)

Friday August 2, 2019

I have a manuscript due today. Only after it can I work on the house decluttering effort, so the ALPHABETICS and other work may not happen today at all!

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The manuscript is NOT done, I had to put off the publisher until Monday. So… not only will this weekend NOT be a catch up for the ALPHABETICS, but I may not get much done re the cleaning and culling at all!

This is my “day job” folks, no one else can do this, it’s a book I wrote. This isn’t one of the books I help edit, where it’s possible for me to ask someone else to help. Nope. This is mine, all mine!