Vanessa returned to the office today, and she read my email asking when I'd be receiving the other half of my book advance as well as my grant, since I'd completed my payment-dependent tasks well over a month ago. 

Instead of replying to me, she copied me on an email asking my (idiot) editor for approval. Said editor included me on her one-word reply that said "Approved."  So yeah, now I'll have a nice chunk of change coming my way.

Why do we have contracts and automated systems if I still need to manually babysit someone else's process?

The Arden Museum is doing an exhibit on authors from Arden.

They asked me for a bio.

http://www.rmbryan.com/about-rm-bryan

Maybe you've heard this already, maybe you haven't. 

Kyle Jean-Baptiste, the youngest and the first African-American actor to play Jean Valjean on Broadway, 21 years old, died either last night or this morning. He fell off of his mom's fire escape. 

I saw this video before, and it bugged me how hard these guys were on their mics (come on! let the mic do the work! it exists for a reason!), but I wanted to share it with you, if for no other reason, than letting his delivery of  "before you chain me like a slave again" resonate in your viscera, and how he sings "I am warning you, Javert" at 2:08. 

Whatever your art is, keep practicing. 

is the average of what I spend cleaning. That's dishes, kitchen, laundry, vacuuming, cleaning the table, cleaning up after people in the bathroom. I work 14+ hours a day, and every day is the same. Pizza or fast food left out on the floor, milk from breakfast on the table, pile of dishes. So that 2 hours after a long day, I'm spending it cleaning up after everyone in this house. I get that people have long days, and I get that the last thing anyone wants to do after a long day is pick up after themselves, but it's getting really close to me picking everything up and throwing it off the balcony to save space. And that sounds like a really great idea right now.

If we lived in any other climate, this place would be contiually filled with bugs. Instead I'm putting up with everything being sticky, or crumbs, or wondering what that smell is when someone decided to move a cup somewhere and forget about it. I'm tired and I just want a little help, and a little respect about how I feel around this damn place.

50/50 would be amazing, but right now I'd even settle for 20% effort rather than 0.

Apropos of nothing: I've had "The Famous Polka" by They Might Be Giants stuck in my head for several days now.  Early this afternoon it was temporarily replaced by Woodsy Owl (and the Ad Council)'s "Give a Hoot, Don't Pollute" jingle/song from 1979ish, but now it's back in full force.

I played it for Matt since he hadn't heard it before, as it lives on TMBG's lesser-known "Miscellaneous T" 1991 album, which is a fab compilation of B-sides and leftovers. Listening to the song didn't remove the earworm. *shrug*

In other news, I was in East Peoria, Illinois this entire week and it felt good to work. I was a touch rusty because I've barely worked this summer. It can be nice to have your summers off, like a kid. But it sucks balls to have no income.
Things seem to be picking up for the autumn, but not at the velocity I'd like.  My publisher owes me a substantial wad of cash. I hope they send it soon. I emailed them a polite "When should I expect this check?" today, but got an out-of-office auto-response back: Vanessa took the afternoon off. 

Vanessa.

OK, that's all I got for here. Got lots of stuff to do. Joe Trainor's bachelor party is Sunday, and as Best Man, I've got tasks to check off now that I'm finally home.

Your pal,
Jill
 

https://www.reddit.com/r/ardenhouse

I got a message the other day informing me of an appointment on Monday 02/Sep/15.  Corrected swiftly to Wednesday 02/Sep/15.  Which got me to wondering how far in the future it would take before 02/Sep/15 was a Monday.  (It turns out that it'll only take 100 years, until 2115.  Isn't it nice how two-digit years have slid back into common usage as memory of the Y2K panic fades?)

But I noticed something as I was checking through the centuries, and that is that September 1st ??15 will never be a Monday, and it's all because of Pope Gregory.  Moving forward 100 years from 2015 to 2115 moves us back two days in the week, because 100 years = 100 * 365 + 24 leap days (which would be 25 if not for the Gregorian calendar rule where 2100 doesn't get one), or 36524 days total.  36524 days is 5217 weeks plus five extra days, or 5218 weeks minus two days, so the weekday moves back by two (or forward by five, which equivalent in modulo-7 arithmetic).  So the same thing happens going from 2115 to 2215, and 2215 to 2315.  We've now gone back six days.

And then we go from 2315 to 2415.  This time, though we have our full 25 leap days, because of the 400-year rule from the Gregorian calendar, so we only go back one day.  So now we've gone back seven days, or a full week.  If we started on a Tuesday in 2015 (as September 1st will be), we'll go back to Sunday in 2115, Friday in 2215, Wednesday in 2315, and back to Tuesday in 2415.  And 01/Sep/15 will never be on any other days of the week.

The Julian calendar didn't have this problem (problem?  Maybe that's a bit strong; it's really more of a characteristic), because it always had 36525 days per century, and always went back one weekday in the same interval.  So any given date would hit every day of the week for a given two-digit year suffix.

Who is it we have to blame for the seven-day week again?  Babylonians?  Wonder if we'll ever be able to get rid of it...

So I missed the big one, but I may get a second swing at it soon. We'll see.

Honestly this life is pulling me so many directions, I'm at the point where I'm going to say jesus takes the wheel. Each month I'm working about 60% of it, and that's fantastic news. I'm to the point in my career where I can finally start running up the stairs, climbing to bigger jobs and working towards getting on much larger things.

Still, feels empty. or lonely is the better word, and I don't now how to fix that. No one I started with is still racing with me, and that's cool. I understand. And I'm excited to get to this launch point. Just thought I'd have more people to talk to about things, and not wondering where the next run of motivation comes from.

That sounds arrogant doesn't it? I don't mean to. It's the one area in my life I'm feeling vaguely in control of. Which usually means at this point everything will start hurtling out of control.

I need more drives through the starry desert night. I need more mornings on an ocean liner through winter kissed mountains.  I need tea and quiet thoughts. Cat footprints across keyboards.

I've overhauled www.rmbryan.com. I have an email list you can join, some social media links, including goodreads, and a fledgling podcast where i read from the books.Next up, finalizing the DRM-free ebooks.

The Good Husband award goes to Mr. Jack Houser, who spent most of his day today scanning photos of his in-laws for their 50th Anniversary party slideshow (party is in September).  We have miles of photos to go before we sleep.

The Great Husband award goes to Mr. Jack Houser who did the above willingly and with a generous heart, despite losing his own father to cancer this year.