Category: Weeknotes

We saw a coyote chilling in our backyard last weekend!

Stuff I did:

• 13.25 hours of business development
• Submitted my statement of qualifications! Except I forgot to include a form promising I haven’t bribed the government, so they may disqualify my proposal 😭
• 4.75 hours of writing
• Took Monday off work, wrote instead 😉
• 3 hours consulting
• Troubleshot a dishwasher error message 😑🦾
• Weeded for an hour over two days
• Baked dreamy cream scones and apple crisp
• Joined three new Discord servers (for self-published writers and local urbanism)

Stuff I did:

• 3.25 hours writing
• 2 hours consulting
• 17 hours business development! 😲🥱 I decided to apply for another roster with a deadline next week 👀 so I’m packing a bunch of work I’d planned to complete over the next month into a week 😱 My holiday weekend may not be much of a weekend 🤷‍♀️
• Organized sample works in my portfolio and updated my resume
• Baked blueberry pancake cobbler from Smitten Kitchen Keepers
• Rode my bike for the first time in a while and walked once with a friend
• Headed up to Saint Edward State Park for a warm afternoon walk with my husband 🥰
• Finally gave in and ordered new sneakers online

We’re getting our first test of the heat pump’s cooling capabilities through a heat wave this week (the plants are ALL ABOUT IT ☀️🌿), and so far I’m impressed!

Stuff I did:

• 7.75 hours consulting
• 2.5 hours business development
• Two appointments
• Cleaned the tub of any pepper spray residue
• Baked muesli cookies
• Walked to retrieve our car plus took one walk with a friend
• Pruned our apple espaliers 🍎✂️🌳 (still needs more)

Dinners:

• Pancakes + sauteed cinnamon apples
• Bean bowl (refried beans + guac + sour cream + leftover olives + tortilla chips)
• Asparagus carrot salad, snow pea salad, and white bean “Caesar” on sourdough toast, from Smitten Kitchen Keepers
• Mushroom toast with cheddar cheese (inspiration)
• Baked beans + veggie hot dogs + coleslaw
• Baked potatoes + curried chickpeas and kale (inspiration — too dry)
• Quesadillas with sweet potato, bell pepper and kale

Reading:

• Read a lot!
  • Novels: Her Big City Neighbor by Jackie Lau, Flashed by Zoey Castile, and Battle Royal by Lucy Parker
  • Cookbooks: Smitten Kitchen Keepers by Deb Perelman and Ottolenghi Test Kitchen’s Extra Good Things
  • Comics & art books:
    River of No Return by Laura McPhee,
    Mean Girls Club: Pink Dawn by Ryan Heshka, and Days of Sand by Aimée de Jongh
• Continued reading Stolen Focus by Johann Hari
• DNF’d The Creative Act by Rick Rubin, The Right to Sex by Amia Srinivasan, The Life & Love of the Forest by Lewis Blackwell, Starfighter Command by Grace Goodwin, and No Good Options by Jennifer Estep
• Added 2 books to my TBR (total = 742)

Words I looked up / concepts I learned:

• argot
• immiseration
• fladry 🐺
• asemic writing

Stuff I did:

• 4.25 hours of consulting
• 2.5 hours of business development planning
• My husband got assaulted standing up to a belligerent guy accosting the gas station clerk on Friday night — he’s ok but pepper spray takes a lot of cleaning up 😔 He couldn’t see to drive home so the police gave him a lift, hopefully our car hasn’t been towed 🤞
• Headed up to the mountains for a picnic day on Thursday 🥪🌲
• Kickoff meeting with an accountability group for a 12-week year plan and developed the plan
• Borrowed a pressure washer from a neighbor on Buy Nothing, but it didn’t work 😔
• Weeded twice for 45 minutes total
• Walked twice with friends
• Went to Homebrew Website Club
• Figured out a trip plan for a family wedding and booked a motel
• Realized I had our emergency fund cash sitting in a savings account getting 0.6% interest when I have a money market account getting 2.5% 🤦‍♀️ so I shifted it over
• Updated my backlog with tasks floating in my head and scratch paper notes floating on my desk

Stuff I did:

• 6 hours consulting
• Assembled my April listening report
• Gave my family a video garden tour 🌷 My camas are just starting to flower!
• Sunday morning donuts 🍩
• Weeded three times for half an hour each and once for fifteen minutes 🌱
• Baked almond diamond cookies and chocolate snacking bread
• Walked with friends twice
• Met with a business advisor and worked on my business voice / profile
• Two appointments

Dinners:

• Huevos rancheros + refried beans
• Veggie stir fry + rice
• Domino’s pizza — $7.99 for a 1-topping large?! We got olives and added diced pineapple from a can
• Baked pasta
• BBQ bean sliders + coleslaw + sweet potato wedges (I think I cut mine too small)
• Tomato soup + toasted cheese
• Veggie quesadillas
• Veggie sausage dogs with cream cheese and onions + coleslaw

Reading:

• Read Hotel of Secrets by Diana Biller and The Trouble with Hating You by Sajni Patel
• DNF’d The Bright and Breaking Sea by Chloe Neill and The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen by KJ Charles
• Added 2 books to my TBR (total = 746)

Words I looked up / concepts I learned:

• mither
• motte and bailey fallacy
• apomixis
• coterminous

Stuff I did:

• 10.5 hours of consulting
• 6.5 hours of writing
• Reviewed Tidal because my subscription finally ended — now I need to develop a listening system that isn’t centered on a streaming subscription
• Baked spiced pineapple upside down cake 🍍
• Weeded the yard for an hour and a bit 👩‍🌾
• Went to Homebrew Website Club
• Walked with friends over the weekend and twice during the week

Reading:

• Re-read The Scandalous, Dissolute, No-Good Mr. Wright by Tessa Dare
• Started reading The Bright and Breaking Sea by Chloe Neill
• Added 5 books to my TBR

Words I looked up / concepts I learned:

• euthymia
• shibboleth
• fossick
• recondite

Pretty stuff I saw:

• Portrait of Merry Joseph Blondel by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres — I like the sparse drawing style
• Edward Burtynsky’s African studies — beautiful colors of the salt flats — and quarry photos
• Zac Henderson’s “draped stone” series and “dark matter” series photographing magnetism with fun lighting and colorways

Stuff I did:

• 6 hours consulting
• 4.5 hours writing
• Went to Galactic Homebrew Website Club — as a followup, I wrote about the emotional challenges of blogging
• Gave editorial review for a couple blog posts
• Paid my business taxes for the first time! Only had to call the IRS for guidance twice 😂 Hope I did ok 🤷‍♀️ Added to to-do list: engage CPA 😳
• Researched hotels for an upcoming trip
• Baked ‘powdered donut cake’
• One walk with a friend — took today as a chill skip day
• One appointment

Reading:

• Read The Sad Ghost Club
• Started reading Heart, Haunt, Havoc by Freydís Moon
• Continued reading The Expanded Mind — totally digging it
• DNF’d Hanging Out by Sheila Liming and Something Wilder by Christina Lauren
• Added 3 books to my TBR — most intrigued by The Worst Journey in the World, a graphic retelling of a memoir by a member of Scott’s tragic Antarctic expedition, but it appears to have a limited US release

Words I looked up / concepts I learned:

• ekphrasis
• tumbrel

Pretty stuff I saw:

• The “Eye of the Sahara” (Daily Overview)

Website changes:

• Created a Website Wishlist of changes I’d like to make to my site

My husband moved his office downstairs this week — we’re swapping spaces between his office and my reading/ chilling spot. He’s been wanting to for a while, but there’s no internet downstairs and wifi doesn’t cut it. Then he realized that the previous owners had installed phone jacks using cat5 cable instead of pots, which he could reconnect/ reconfigure to create an internet connection downstairs using the existing cable 🦾 Now I’m excited to have a new space to decorate for my reading room *rubs hands together*

Stuff I did:

• 10.25 hours of consulting work
• 3.75 hours of writing
• Finished calculating my business taxes! Now I have to figure out the best way to give them the money and the paperwork by Tuesday 💸
• Rewatched Dune
• Baked zucchini bread, vanilla scones, and cornbread
• Published my 2023 Q1 check-in
• Walked with a friend twice

Reading:

• Read The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches and Overview Timelapse
• Finished reading What It Is by Lynda Barry
• Started reading The Extended Mind by Annie Murphy Paul and Hanging Out by Sheila Liming
• DNF’d Join the Future and No. 5
• Added 6 books to my TBR

Words I looked up / concepts I learned:

• troglobites
• buffing – via Things I Learned Looking Up Other Things
• gimlet eye
• exigence
• erasure (in heraldry) – via Things I Learned Looking Up Other Things

Pretty things I saw:

• Painting of a flaming tiger by Jey Parks
• Clare Leighton’s wood engravings
• Embroidered Cuban handkerchief from the early 20th century

Stuff I did:

• 6.5 hours of consulting
• Did my 2022 household taxes 🦾
• Worked on my estimated quarterly business taxes 😳 I also called the state and confirmed that I don’t need to pay them quarterly business taxes, just the feds 🙌
• Reflected on seven months of Kindle Unlimited
• Put together my March listening report
• Walked with two friends over the weekend, plus two times during the week, at new places even!
• Baked apple crisp and made peanut butter pie
• One appointment

Reading:

• Read The Girl from the Sea by Molly Ostertag, In. by Will McPhail, and Starlight by Lisa Henry
• Finished reading Effortless by Greg McKeown and Gladiator by Anna Hackett
• Started reading What It Is by Lynda Barry and How to Read Now by Elaine Castillo
• DNF’d Ten Steps to Nanette by Hannah Gadsby
• Added 2 books to my TBR

Words I looked up / concepts I learned:

• insuperable
• steganography
• bricolage
• mimesis
• Custom of the sea 💀
• “The terms ‘highbrow’ and ‘lowbrow’ come from phrenology, the nineteenth-century science of regarding the shape of the skull as a key to intelligence.” (The Marginalian)

Things I liked looking at:

• Great commission piece of Sleeping Beauty in Jeffrey Alan Love‘s latest newsletter — also loved the final simple lighthouse illustration at the end of the newsletter
• Cool accidental double screen print by Dan McCarthy and Glenn Thomas
• Drone photos of the tops of skyscrapers from the Highrises project by Chris Hytha and team (via Present and Correct)
• Fun duck screenprint in orange and the color palette in this print of an abstract wall mural
• “Tar”-dipped landscape paintings from Minerva Cuevas’ Serie hidrocarburos

This week I learned:

• Milk is sold in bags in Canada 🤔