Where has the time gone?

I can't believe I've let a whole week go by without posting anything here. The odd thing is that it has been an eventful week, but now looking back on it, it is a bit difficult to point back at what actually got done. I'm sure everyone has weeks like that. But there are a few things I can definitely point to as accomplishments…

"Northern Mist" is finished now. It has a proper title, I've done a first round of edits and cleaned a few things up, and submitted it for consideration. No word back yet about how the story was received, so I'm proceeding under the impression that it hasn't been read yet. After all, it is an anthology and other people are submitting stories. There is plenty to keep the editor occupied. So, until I get the official word that the story has been accepted and can be talked about, I'm going to have to keep the story's title and setting a secret. I'm expecting some back and forth editing of the story, but that process hasn't really begun.

The surprising thing about wrapping up "Mist" is how short my last writing session was. Last Friday I sat down to add 250 words to the story so that I could say I wrote something, and by the time I got done with that, I realized that I was done. The writing session prior to that I had stopped because I was so very tired, and it hadn't registered how close to the end I was. I did a first editing pass over the weekend and caught a few mistakes and polished up a few rough edges. Rather than batter at it to make it "perfect" I went ahead and submitted it. If I'm going to make changes, I'd rather they be changes that get the story accepted. The first draft is around 7000 words, so it is a healthy sized short story. We will see if it stays that long, or if I have to cut it back down towards 5000 words.

In the wake of finishing "Mist" I've found it hard to get back to writing. Part of me seems to want to wait for word to come back on "Mist". The reality is that I need to get back to working on Perils and get that finished off. If I'm going to podcast Perils this fall, I have to get it edited and line up voice talent. Just a ton of work there.

Last week also saw the release of a new Shrinking Man Project episode. That was an interesting episode, in that I recorded it while I took a 2-mile walk around my block. I've got some positive feedback from it, in the form of people who like the honesty of hearing me exercise while I'm talking about exercise. I've had at least one request to do more shows like that one. And it got Nathan Lowell to subscribe to the podcast!

I think I've also had it with grocery delivery services. I placed an order with Giant's Peapod delivery service for delivery last Tuesday. Peapod only gives a limited selection of what is available in the stores, but the lure of it is that they pull the groceries and deliver them to your door at a specified time. Right. My delivery was supposed to arrive between 5 and 7 PM on Tuesday evening. A little after 4 PM, they called to say that they were going to be late, but they'd deliver between 7:15 and 7:45 PM. Irritating, but not horrific.

When 8 PM rolled around, I called Peapod customer service to ask if they were planning to make the delivery at all, since they were now 3 hours past the original delivery window. The truck finally showed up at 8:20. And then it turned out that they forgot two of the items I ordered, and they crushed my loaf of bread.

Obviously, this did NOT make me a happy camper.

The whole point of services like this is that they'll save you time. But my experience is that having the groceries delivered TOOK me more time. In the time I spent waiting for the truck to show up, I could have gone to the grocery, shopped, brought my groceries home, put them away, AND cooked dinner. This would have required me to carry my own groceries, but I wouldn't have had a limited selection of foods, and I'd have all the things on my list.

I believe I've had it with Peapod. It just isn't worth the aggravation.