Sheesh! Whatta Week!

This was one tough week!

Work Front: My co-worker was on vacation Wed-Fri so in addition to my shows (10+) I was trying to cover her 10 shows. A couple were on hiatus and a couple are done by an outside company but those memos still need to be reviewed and recommendations made to the project attorney. And one of the shows just hired someone to help them out. I've worked with this person many times before and she's nice and all but damn if she doesn't make more work, she's so....needy. She emails "is this okay. I email back. "Yes this is okay". She emails back "I want to confirm this is really okay?". I email back. "Yes it's really okay". To the tune of about four different items. *eye roll* And of course that's not to mention the pile o'work that's growing on my own desk. When I get back on Monday I have new scripts to read for Earl, Prison Break, Vanished and 24. Oh yeah....and Singles Table.

Health Front: Catching a cold that lingers on for two weeks is not conducive to doing much but eat cookies in the hopes that chocolate is a universal cure. It's not, but I did manage to lose almost a half pound at the WW meeting on Wed. I'm trying to get back to my walking routine cuz cold + cough = not getting any sleep and cold + tired = not wanting to get up and go for a walk in the morning. I did manage 20 minutes yesterday morning and 30 minutes today. Hopefully by Monday I'll be back to my regular 40 minutes.

SCA Front: Haven't been to many events, just KWAR recently. I'm planning to get to CoC today. I'll be at Coronation. I finished the linen coif last night but I think I need to buy a hair extension thingy to really wear it right. I'm planning one more that will be more of a cap and not have a tie at the bottom. I worked on the kumihimo during the football game and have been a little more consistent on the tension. It's very cool. Of course the pattern I'm doing is the simplest one. I can see a lot of applications for the stuff though. The patterns are really similar to fingerloop braiding but you can put the project down which is more conducive to our crazy modern lives. I need to work on a scroll.

Home Front: The house is still a mess but there is hope (see next post). Something is wrong with the cable box or cable service. I don't watch enough television these days for it to be a big priority (as long as channel 5 works which it does) but it's time to get this dealt with. It might just be that the equipment is really really really old. Beyond that, most everything else electric or electronic in the house is falling apart. I need a new refrigerator and a new microwave. I need a new DVD player I want to save the money for the purchases before I buy them. (Even though I have the money now.) I've been spending money like a crazy person lately and it's time to do a little budgeting. (Which reminds me I need to go to the bank today)

Game Front: There was a Firefly game the other day and boy did my dice suck! I rolled my first perfect fumble in like forever and shot Ben's character in the back. (heh) Fortunately I didn't kill him or even wound him seriously. Monday night is the Modern Magic campaign which has been a little dull but hopefully will pick up.

Football Front: My team won (and there is much rejoicing!!) in a defensive match-up that was rather tough. The cross-town rival let me down though and I'm a sucky 5-5 in my picks for the week. (My worst week so far....I might as well go back to just picking favorite teams and cool team names rather than trying to research the odds and the favored teams.)

Other Front: Rosh Shannah was Friday night/Saturday morning and he have a new Rabbi. He's really cute and rather funny and seemed a little nervous. It was his first High Holy days with this congregation. He's a gay man and his partner sang one of the prayers during the service Friday night. The Rabbi's family was visiting from Boston and his mom, dad and sister did the prayer over the candles on Friday night. And his mom carried one of the Torah's on Saturday. I thought that was pretty sweet. He's going to be doing a bike ride the first Sunday of each month which sounds like it would be fun to do. I've been thinking about getting a new bike, or fixing up my old bike. Or something.

Clutter Wars!

Thomas totally cracked me up one day with a discussion of the shifting fronts of the Clutter Wars at Angelina's and his place. And I'm afraid the Clutter Wars at my place have been dire. I've been thinking that the only solution was to call for a full evacuation or a total nuclear strike.

The house is a mess. I've tried various methods in the past (flylady.com, organizing lists, minimum maintenance) and read countless books on organizing and cleaning. I've thought a lot about how to build a routine and why I was able to get a walking program going. What works and what doesn't.

The fly lady stuff didn't work for me cuz I got annoyed at the sheer number of emails that were sent out and the fact that her program is primarily designed for stay at home moms. I don't have the time to drop everything today and clean out my underwear drawer. But there are some good systems in the fly lady philosophy that I thought I could adapt for me. Particularly the zone idea, though fly lady shifts zones too often for me to make the best use of it.

Another system I liked was from Bonnie McCullough who wrote Totally Organized and has a system she calls minimum maintenance which is basically giving every room five minutes of minimum maintenance before going to work or starting projects or cleaning.

My biggest problem is not having a lot of time to clean (or let's face it, not wanting to spend a lot of the time I have on cleaning). So what works. I decided to designate my desk as a hot zone and planned to give hot zones at least 5 minutes a day every day. Okay....that works. The desk is staying cleaned up enough to work at. So I added the dining room table as a hot zone. The dining room is generally project central. I sew there, do scroll work and craft projects and sometimes even use it for eating. :) So part of the five minute hot zone time includes keeping the dining room table cleared off. Cool....after a few days that works. I added the bathroom counter. Check. I added the kitchen counters. That's taking longer. Eventually the 5 minute hot zone check should be enough to keep all those place cleared off. To that I added 10 minutes of other cleaning and that's all been a help. I can get more done on the weekend of course and I have my full morning and evening routines to go through. But making time for 15 minutes a day, every day means that the areas I have straightened up stay that way and I hope to add more clean sectors as I go along.