A Window, A Light...

I effectively had two things I wanted to post today, the WIR continuation and just... stuff going on in my life. I haven't yet received any letters from anyone in the letter writing club, but I'm not terribly concerned about it, I guess. I'll be writing to only a few people in general, and some will probably be pleased to receive a communication from me that isn't absolutely insane with liquor. (The internet hears all about me when I fuck my shit up, but not so much from me when I'm in my usual lucid state, so this might be a pleasant change of pace for many.)

I've been using what's kind of a goofy website for effectively getting me to stay on task with stuff I need to do called HabitRPG. In fact, it's frequently open in a separate tab where I can check what it is I need to do when I've been sitting on my can for too long. I have a very short list of things that I expect myself to keep up with daily - stuff like laundry and the dishes, where I basically decide that any real effort made putting away or putting up dishes counts towards one or putting away, collecting, or running and drying counts for the other. You check something off the list, it gives you experience and points (which I'm less interested in, since I mostly just like checking things off lists) and it turns a color. Cool colors mean you're doing things in a timely way or that you're doing things reliably often. Warm colors suggest that you may be dropping the ball. For me, it's just an effective way of keeping a color coded paperless list, but like I said, it's been very helpful thus far.

Is also ensures that I stay very busy, since I put every little thing I've been meaning to do on the list and then scramble to check them off before I swamp myself. It's gotten to the point that other good habits I try to keep up with, like giving myself time to relax and finish books, games, and projects i've started end up on the list, too. At least I'm organized.

Our mower broke a while ago, and we ended up having a neighbor with a yard-tending service help us with the front, but he's not able to get the mower through the gate in the back. The back ended up getting so bad that the grass actually stopped getting taller because it was literally as tall as it could get, effectively making our back yard hundreds of square feet of literal midwestern prairie. Katie kind of liked it. I liked it a little less, because it made getting to the garden impossible and resulted in a totally overgrown garden with struggling plants. The city (and maybe one of our neighbors) liked it even less, because we got a letter on our front stoop saying to cut it or else. With little immediate alternative, I charged up the weed wacker batteries and started in on it. A little over a week later, the whole thing's cut and ready to be attended to by an actual lawn mower of some kind, but ours is still broken. Borrowing one is a pain, so either Katie'll get the electric one fixed or I might even opt to borrow or acquire a manual mower. They're a pain, but Kay's so big on sustainability that it might be the best choice for the household. It's not like our lawn is painfully huge or anything, and the exercise doesn't hurt.

Anyhow, that means the yard is ready for phase two - trimming the sides and near the gardens, setting the bricks better in the herb and vegetable gardens, and trimming all the goddamned fucking pokeberry I hate so much.

Edit : Oh and since it's the third, I'll share this month's unofficial reading list. Items crossed out where already read this month.
Milk : Momofuku Milk Bar - Christina Tosi
the World of Darkness - Bridges, Chillot, Cliffe, and Lee with additional material
the God-Machine Chronicle
The Wasteland and Other Poems - T.S. Eliot
A Brief History of Time - Stephen Hawking
The Ocean at the End of the Lane - Neil Gaiman
Oryx and Crake - Margaret Atwood

Anything else is a bonus, of course.