There was a disruption in my Tuesday night that might have been overlooked:  one of the female friends of one of my sons (not a girlfriend) called around three in the morning because she was maybe a mile away and her truck was making horrible noises and screaming that it was low on oil.  Since I was not certain where she was, and I was still doing forums, I rather unchivalrously let her walk to me (it’s not a bad area, and she’s a pretty tough girl), and then drove back with her to add oil from our supply into her crankcase.  It was not, I think, so bad as she feared, but she blew an engine once, apparently, by ignoring the warning lights, so she was wise to avoid the risk.  I returned home with enough time to finish my work before dealing with the morning schoolboys, and then got a bit of sleep before working on Wednesday, which was late most of the day, as mentioned.

Today I knew I was committed to an early afternoon errand, and when I returned from that I recognized the need to get dinner made, which was served just in time for Brittany to arrive for the Collision rehearsal.  Baxter did not make it; his little sister was involved as a store clerk in an armed robbery this afternoon, and he had just gotten her home from the police station when we called to find out where he was.  Adam arrived, although he was a bit late.  It was, however, a good rehearsal overall, as we spent time trying to learn the second tier songs.

I got dinner myself after that, and have been trying to get through the day from the delayed beginning since then.

–M. J. Young

Yesterday was sufficiently behind schedule that I did not reach the north end of the state until about four hours later than my original estimate, and then had dessert in the intended rendevous diner (technically a breakfaster, open from ten at night to three in the afternoon and specializing in things like eggs) not quite alone but without the company of the friend I’d expected to meet.

Then, sometime around midnight before I had run into the construction on the Turnpike that set my E.T.A. back from two to two thirty in the morning, I received word by cellular phone that the friend I had volunteered (or been volunteered, I’m still not completely certain) to move expected us to be there by ten in the morning.  That meant an hour of sleep after finishing yesterday’s work, and then an hour after getting kids on buses, and then I stole another hour before getting dressed, getting their late but as they were pretty much just getting started.  It was mid-afternoon by the time we were finished with the task, and approaching dinnertime by the time I was back in the house.

Things did not run smoothly even then.  I requested that a particular member of the household wash dishes, and he indicated that he would do so after he finished some homework.  Since the kitchen situation would have made it difficult even to serve leftovers (my intended meal for the night) I decided to get another hour of sleep before tackling the matter.  Then someone or something woke me every twenty minutes over the next three hours, at the end of which I was more cross than rested, but had to feed the youngest so he could get to bed.

I’ve not yet decided whether I’m going to push through the Tuesday work today or send myself to bed, but I suppose first I should see how long it takes to get through the forum posts, and how I feel at that point.  I’ve a stack of extra tasks tucked into tomorrow, but not so bad that I can’t manage them, depending on the weight of the e-mail.

–M. J. Young

The Collision concert went reasonably well last night.  Baxter brought his new amp, which looks really good, but because we’d not worked with it I suggested we use the old one for this concert.  Adam got crossed communication wires and went to the wrong coffeehouse location, and since Brittany had to be out early we got a short delay and then did the first song without him, tuned up the bass while Brittany introduced the second, and finished our two songs to audience approval.  I got some compliments on Adam’s playing, but he ducked out early.  Baxter and I did an encore near the end of the night, which also went well, although not as well as the opening songs.

Meanwhile, I’m starting to get nervous about the week ahead.  I’ve got Ubercon on Friday, and Kyler has indicated that he will not be going this time, and I’m not certain what John’s situation is.  I can probably handle it alone–but there are still many preparations to make, including getting my hotel reservation (I don’t know anyone close enough to Edison to stay with them, despite having attended elementary school within half an hour of there).  I have to do inventory of everything that has to go with me, probably printing copies of forms used, and make sure that I have everything packed.  Complicating this, my Monday Workload has been increased because when I take my mother-in-law shopping I will also have to go about ninety minutes further to return a certain young lady to her home.  Then my overbooked Tuesday has been further overbooked by the need to help an old friend move.  I’ve also realized that our youngest guest’s medicine will run out next weekend, and that his doctor cannot refill it without seeing him, so I’m going to have to twist arms to get him an appointment midweek on top of everything else.

It’s not looking good; and I have been alerted that there is a substantial amount of work awaiting me in the form of an analysis of The Last Mimzy that will add a significant chunk of time to Monday’s work.

Conventions always mean crazy weeks; unfortunately, crazy weeks don’t always wait until they are convenient.

–M. J. Young

Not every day can be a milestone.  In the past week I’ve seen two books finalized and made available for purchase–Faith and Gaming yesterday and Game Ideas Unlimited Volume 1 over the weekend.  I have done a bit of announcing of these books here and there, although there are probably a few more places where I ought to announce them.  I should also get them added to the web sites–but today is Tuesday, always busy, so it is unlikely that these tasks will be completed just yet.

We’ll see how it progresses.

It is evident to those who follow this column that I lost most of yesterday.  This was not entirely unanticipated; I knew that I would be driving someone’s girlfriend home, and visiting my still not healthy parents while up that way.  I also caught up with an old friend once again.  It was not entirely without any business purpose–one of those I saw bought a copy of the Multiverser rules, and another bought two of my self-published books, so there was some return for the investment.

However, it leaves me looking at Wednesday with the Tuesday workload still on my plate, and wondering in what sequence to do everything so as to get everything finished.  I am eager to check the e-mail, given that I am awaiting a reply to that job application I sent; I am not eager to put the Lutheran forum too late in the night.  Nor do I wish to delay those Gaming Outpost forum posters who have been waiting to learn what happens next in their adventures.  Thus everything seems a bit urgent, and yet it is not entirely clear what is most important.

Hopefully everything will be reached in time.

–M. J. Young

…Not necessarily in that order.

As I mentioned on Sunday, yesterday’s plan involved driving north so that a son could spend his girlfriend’s birthday with her. This also would give me opportunity to visit my sick father, who although home from the hospital seems to have lost his voice (vocal chords not responding for some reason), and to connect with our drummer to give lend him the electronic drum gadget he’s been eager to use. It has also meant that the Monday workload got pushed into today atop the Tuesday workload, which is a lot of work.

The plan did not go entirely smoothly. I believe I got almost three hours of sleep by five in the morning, when the first to need to catch a bus was looking for his morning medicine, and then in somewhat disrupted and disjointed fashion pieced together my morning study and was on the road around quarter after seven. We grabbed breakfast at the gas station (which is not as bad as it sounds, since although Wawa has recently established a strong place in the retail gasoline market they are traditionally a deliconvenience store) and so reached the northern destination very shortly after ten.

Having fought for consciousness over the last leg of that journey, I locked the car and slept, fitfully with the CD player running, for about two hours. I then was unable to reach the drummer, who I think had not anticipated his wife and her Irish family monopolizing his time on St. Patrick’s Day–but my mother called, wondering why I was not already there, so I went there, ate lunch, and by around two was reading clippings cut for me.

Then, perhaps near three, I fell asleep again, and slept until my cell phone awoke me, my wife calling to see what arrangements I had made for several things she had expected me to address. Since it was by then almost six, my mother turned her attention to feeding me dinner and packing my car full of groceries. I still could not raise my drummer on the phone, I settled in to wait for someone to call.

The son called first–not the son for whose call I was waiting, but the son who hoped I would pick him up from his brother and bring him home for a few days. That was agreed, although the timeline was still uncertain. Then the anticipated son called, but to tell me that he was going to have dinner nearby before he was ready to go home. Then the drummer called, and the end of the stay up there was a somewhat awkward juggling of conflicting connections–but we made it.

The return trip put us in the driveway around two in the morning, if memory serves, and then there were some things that could not stay in the car overnight which had to be unpacked. My online work was limited to posting to the Corinthians list, and then I got to bed about an hour before I would be getting up again–but at least this time I correctly anticipated being able to return to bed after people were rousted and driven from the house. I think I’m reasonably rested at this point, but do not know whether I will be caught up by the end of the night or not.

To add to the confusion, my mother-in-law called. We just solved her banking problem so she can pay her bills, but now she has no stamps. Thus I have promised to bring her some tomorrow. Here’s hoping that’s not too disruptive.

–M. J. Young

I lost a big chunk of yesterday to return a son’s girlfriend to her distant home. I was shorted on sleep for it, and am not certain I fully caught up today. I was also behind on the work, since I spent the bulk of this evening doing the major part of my Tuesday work, the Lutheran forum.

I seem to be losing a couple days a week this way, and my wife wants me to put time into some other projects that need my attention, but I don’t seem to have the time. At the moment, though, I am concerned about next Monday. In fairness, it is the girl’s birthday, and a girlfriend has the right to expect a doting boyfriend to pull out at least some of the stops for her birthday. However, I’m wondering if they expect too much from me. He is hoping that I will drive him up, which I understand; in fact, his notion that I visit my hospitalized father is excellent, and I am already entertaining the notion of killing part of the day chatting with drummer John. However, he wants to be there by ten in the morning–which means I’ll be leaving here pretty shortly after putting the last student on the bus, as it’s two and a half hours if there’s no traffic, and we’ll be hitting the Philadelphia and New York metro morning rushes (an oxymoronic name for the time when no one can get anywhere fast). He then plans to be there until rather late–late enough that I am going to have to drive back the ninety minutes and pay the three or four dollars in tolls to get back to take my mother-in-law shopping, because there is no way that he will be back in time for me to reach her in time to get her to the store if I wait for him. I would then have to drive back to him, another ninety minutes and several dollars in tolls (plus we are needing gas money) so that I can bring him home again.

By the time I would be home, I would have lost the entire day and shorted myself on sleep for it.

I guess I need to find out what he’s going to do to make this possible for me. Somehow, though, I’m not optimistic.

–M. J. Young

I was wrapping up last night, with only the Corinthians list still to do, when I was asked whether I would be willing to go for a short ride. The short ride wound up about an hour each direction, and the quick run inside also hit about an hour, so by the time I got home and finished that last bit of work it was about fifteen minutes before time to roust the boys.

This would not have been so bad, but that our oven died over the weekend, and a call to the gas company appliance service promised a technician this morning, so I had to stay up in case he showed early. He did not show that early, and did not stay long before pronouncing: the oven is dead. I thus lost part of my afternoon to finding a replacement, but other than that we drove quite a distance hunting for the used appliance shop only to realize when we got there that we’d been there before some years back (to get a part for a dryer) it went quite well, and tomorrow afternoon someone will be removing our worn device and replacing it with a rather nicely refurbished one. We did have to stop to pick up a few things that will make dinner possible, but by TV Guide standards it is not yet evening as I start my work.

This, too, would not be so bad, but that last week I committed to driving two people to the north country tonight. They must be there; I must drive them. I might get some driving help, but my new stand-in driver has been deathly ill the past couple days and I’m almost surprised that he is coming with me, but that it is his girlfriend who is going home, and another son going to work for the week.

All of this means there is little hope that I might complete my Tuesday workload. I’ll be pleased if I manage to get through today’s Gaming Outpost threads and am still able to post to the Corinthians list. We need to get on the road early this evening, and that does not give me much time.

–M. J. Young

I knew that today was going to be trouble before it started. After all, my wife has been sick for a few days, and was going to need me to drive to the doctor for a mid-morning appointment. My sleep was to be curtailed.

Then the kid with the distant school missed the bus. I could complain that it was his fault, since he was playing a video game instead of watching out the front door; but then, I had fallen asleep on the couch and did not hear the six o’clock alarm that tells me he has five minutes to go. That meant that after getting the other kid on his bus I had to drive the first almost half an hour away. By the time I returned, there wasn’t much time for a nap, and I was going to have to get moving on my two hours of sleep–the hour from when I made it to bed after the late night delivery of my son back to his work address until my wife needed my help, and the hour from then until the five o’clock alarm.

That was bad; but I had already been forced to boot Tuesday’s work into today because because I’d booted Monday’s work into Tuesday and had that delivery run in the evening.

So it is not yet late, but it feels like it. Still, I am almost on top of the day, and with a bit more effort I’ll reach bedtime.

I do hope that the run-down feeling and body aches are due to this, and that I am not catching the horribly debilitating illness my wife is battling. I don’t want that.

–M. J. Young

All I can say I accomplished is catching up two weeks worth of Tuesday work. I’ve gotten through the e-mail, but there’s so much still undone.

–M. J. Young