Logging time, and a thunderstorm

The time-logging app worked on Monday, very well – to an extent. So too did the “no housework” thing.

I say to an extent, because on Monday afternoon we had a thunderstorm. Only a little one. There was one distant rumble … and then the internet dropped out. It took several hours to re-set itself too. But the time-logging app I was trying out was internet-based and it fell over.

As soon as the signal came back – it came back sooner on my phone than it did on the desktop – I searched for a proper downloadable app, and I found aTimeLogger, a mobile-only app that you can edit to suit your own needs, along with a huge selection of regular and amusing icons (there’s one of someone sitting on a toilet reading, and there’s another of someone throwing up in a toilet).

You can also change the colours, and you can have more than one task or “thing” running at a time. Then, at any time during the day, you can view the chart to see where your time has gone so far, along with a bar chart or a pie chart and other management tools.

I don’t know yet what it’s completely capable of, but so far it’s doing exactly what I want it to do.

Monday morning I was very productive. I waded through all the various versions of Catch the Rainbow, along with the latest beta-reading feedback, made sure I had a print-out of it all, and stuffed it all into a jelly (plastic folder).

Once that was done, and the blog post written, I turned to The Beast Within and I started the hard-copy planning folder. (I spent 45 minutes writing Monday’s blog post!)

The afternoon was spent dodging thunder and working through the client edit.

By 4:30pm, I’d run out of creative steam, and I did some housework then anyway.

In all, a good day.

Yesterday was totally wiped out with travel and appointments. But we had a very good meeting. I’m back at the desk for one day – today – and then I’m off on the road again tomorrow.

I’m currently reading two books for NetGalley – a novel and a collection of short stories, all mysteries. I’m also currently reading one book for 52 Books in 52 Weeks, and am almost at the end of that one.

Why am I reading three books? Well, the writing one feels just like work, but the other two are more like R&R. So I read the writing one in work time, and the fiction in leisure time.

Why am I reading two different books of fiction? I don’t usually, but one is a book of short stories so I try to read one story in one sitting. Sometimes they’re quite long, sometimes they’re nice and short. So I read one of those, and then read a few chapters of the novel.

Hey, it keeps me entertained and interested.

I’ve not done any short material work yet this week, but that will depend on how quickly I finish the client edit. I hope to have the hard-copy version of that done today and the edits transferred to the electronic version by the end of Friday. If I finish earlier, then I’ll turn to the short material.

The poet has transferred all of the video clips from our weekend trip to ‘G’ for the Alphabet Adventurers. But he had to drive down to the Midlands yesterday evening for an early morning appointment today. He didn’t mention the photographs, so I think he may still have those to edit. I still have the initial write-up to do in the “bible”.

Our new Alphabet Adventurers t-shirts went out for their first time on this trip too. When the video is ready, we’re thinking of having a competition. The winner will receive a t-shirt, but whereas ours have our names on, theirs won’t. We have to have some perks. 😉

Today, then, I’d like to crack on with the client edit. I’ve done some housework, but not a lot and I’ve logged it.

What do you think? Should we get Rufus a bandana? (The ABC graphic, which you can’t see in this picture, is too big for a dog bandana, so it will just be his name.) (And he won’t wear it anyway. He’ll chew it to death first.)