Harry Potter and the Boring Hallows

Chapter One: Voldemort schemes and behaves badly while sycophants cower and fawn. WTF do these people see in him?

Chapter Two: Harry reads the newspaper, and I fall asleep.

So tell me, does it pick up? Or should I just turn my attention to the next book in my To Read pile?

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Just when I was on a roll with the whole productivity thing - I came home from work tonight and pretty much just fell asleep for a few hours. I woke up at 9:30 or so, and was too sleep-addled to do any work. I just made muffins, and watched some TV. I guess everyone needs a night off - I just hate feeling like I wasted so much time.

Gotta start getting more sleep.

Dumbledore's Zombie Kills Harry Potter!

Yeah, ok, maybe not so much with the truthiness; I haven't actually started reading it. My prediction: it will be bloated and crappy in a lot of ways, but probably a decent story; Harry lives and will make babies with Ginny; Snape dies; blah blah whatever. I'll start reading soon.

Something that's more on my mind, though, is the process of Getting my Shit Together. I (like everyone) have a lot of Stuff to do: work, domestic stuff, creative stuff, magazine stuff, and so on - just overwhelming piles of Stuff. For the past few months, I've been methodically working on getting it all together. I've been reading a lot of productivity books and blogs, experimenting with systems, and it's slowly starting to come together. It seems like I can only focus on one area at a time: if I'm focused on deep-cleaning the house, for example, I can't really concentrate on writing a novel.

But the good thing is that once an area gets to a certain level of togetherness, it seems to almost maintain itself. Once I get the house in good shape, for example, it only takes a few minutes a day to keep it clean; once my slush pile is under control, it only takes half an hour or so to deal with the newest slush.

It takes a lot of work to get to that point, and I still have a lot of work to do to get everything together. But it's worth it.

Currently I'm using Remember the Milk to keep track of my Lists; it's great, and free. The most useful feature to me, right now, is that I can save a search that looks across all my lists, and pulls out the ones that meet particular criteria - like everything due today. So I can manipulate the due dates and priorities and so on until I get one short clear list of the essential things I need to do, instead of being overwhelmed by lists of hundreds of things. So if you're looking for a web-based to-do list, check it out. I'm a big fan.

Feel free to speak up in the comments. What works for you, in terms of productivity? What challenges are you facing?

We Conquer Ikea

It was approximately eleventy-billion degrees in the house today, so we headed out for the air-conditioned wonders of Ikea.

Now, I've never been to an Ikea before. I've never lived in a city that had one - and when I was visiting other cities, I always had far more interesting things to do. I was expecting a massive sprawling store (check), filled with smallish inexpensive furniture (check). I was also expecting huge crowds, total overload, and to walk out of there with fifteen things besides the coffee table we went looking for.

But I guess we lucked out. It wasn't crowded or too overwhelming. I did manage to drop a coffee table on my foot (why, yes, the same one I sprained a while ago, how did you know?), and my new shoes were not the most comfortable - but I can't say either of those things was Ikea's fault. So we tracked our coffee table to its lair, hoisted it to the register, and escaped. The only extra thing we got was $2.00 worth of oven mitts.

We put the coffee table together a little while ago; it wasn't even missing any pieces!

Life is working out pretty well these days, all in all.

Apex Online Interview

Jason Sizemore just posted an interview with me in the latest Apex Online. Check it out!

The Battle of Fort Abbamondi

Upon the advice of several faithful blog readers, I asked Sean to fetch me pillows for a fort, chocolate (cake), wine (in lieu of laudanum), a plant, and some fine reading material. We constructed a fantastic fort, guarded it with a garden gnome, and I settled in to recover.

Suddenly, the fort was attacked! The valiant garden gnome was the first casualty.



After a brief but bloody battle, I was vanquished, and the conquerer set up a writer's workshop in the fort:

Battlefield theatrics aside, my ankle is recovering nicely, and Sean is being very very solicitous.

Happy 4th, y'all.

Owww!

I just sprained the fuck out of my left ankle. Just an innocent walk around the block with Sean and the dog, and somehow I tripped and fell badly - very badly. It was bad enough that Sean went and fetched the car so I wouldn't have to hobble a block home. And now I am setted in on the couch, foot elevated on a stack of pillows, with my laptop. Sean is being perfectly solicitous and fetching things for me, because he is super-awesome.

So, what else should I have him fetch, while he's in a fetching mood? Leave your suggestions in the comments.