Have you ever watched a boat in a storm? Lifting up on the waves, rolling to the side, slamming back down into the surf?  When the storm is too much, the boat takes on water, sometimes it even begins to sink.  Most of the time, no matter how harsh the weather, the ship will right itself.  The storm will pass. The sun will shine again and things will move on until the next storm strikes.  I've been thinking about this a lot lately.  Clinging to the mental image of the ship that survives the storm.

For the past few years, my life has felt like a series of storms.  I'm constantly bailing out the boat and waiting for the weather to change.  See, the problem with becoming more self aware is that you can no longer ignore the painful or unhealthy things in your life.  This is a real catch 22.  You press for growth and change in the hopes of finding peace and a better life on the other side. No one tells you about the middle part.  If they did, we would all stay put in our place. 

Well, I'm here to tell you about the middle and that everything is awful sometimes.   Sometimes, it all catches up with you.  You've spent so much time trying to survive (and even thrive) in the storm that you've totally lost your way.

You know that you are strong.  Others see your strength too.  They continue to count on and even drain you of that precious gift.  You begin to view your strength as a blessing and a curse.  It all starts to unravel.

 That's pretty much where I find myself today. Unraveled.  In the middle, where everything is awful sometimes.

I got an invite to use Google's new Inbox thingy the other day.  If you haven't seen it, it's a layer over Gmail that bundles messages into thematic groups and lets you deal with them in large batches.

It's an interesting notion, though it doesn't exactly match the way I've been using Gmail (which is to use the Priority Inbox, and strive to keep "Important and Unread" clear while letting stuff accumulate in the rest of the Inbox).  Still, that's something that could be managed over time.

The showstopper I encountered was when actually composing a message.  It doesn't include the per-sender-address signatures defined in Gmail.  I waited literally years​ for Google to add that feature, I'm not going to give it up now.

Tomorrow, I actually have a day off. So the Man and I are off to Canberra for the day. I get to see my old Boss and favourite co-workers. (I really miss working there.) Then I get let loose in the Nespresso shop and Costco. (I'm pretty sure they eat toilet paper in this house. Although, the rate we go through toilet paper is probably closely linked to the rate we go through coffee and tea.) 

Plus there will be Christmas shopping. Next week end our tree will go up. Many years ago I had to make the rule that the tree does not go up until the Saturday AFTER my Birthday. Otherwise, these weirdo's would have the tree up in October. 

This weekend will be spent planning the schooling for the remainder of the year ( we do year round schooling) and getting this house in order. 

Busy times. 

We all went through a beading phase once, right? Before or after the knitting phase, I can't remember. I really wanted this to be something I could make money off of.

As you may have noticed, OPW had an outage today. Our host is playing silly games, reporting inaccurate disk space numbers. This caused our database to shut down politely lest it become unable to save your content fully. I am officially Peeved. We're working on it with them.

As soon as I get a moment, I'll be working on a "status.onepostwonder.com" site that is not hosted by the same company, as well as a standby display on the main site for those cases (like today) where you would have been able to see it.

* * *

Today I had a group of guests in the office. These fine folks work for one of our clients. Unusually for us, I'd done a special sort of project for them in which I never actually met their team.

I'm glad that finally happened. There's nothing like face time to help you see folks as talented individuals who need a hand with their highly worthwhile work. As opposed to, y'know, generic timesink #23094823094823.

I want to build a spiral lift for balls, that, as it spins, lifts the balls to higher heights, from whence they can roll down a track or tracks of yet to be rube-goldberg inspired loveliness.

How to build the spiral? How to turn it? 

Actually first, what balls? I have pingpongs around. And marbles. (cue the "don't lose your marbles" quip)

Plan A: Pingpong Lift from stacked discs of carboard. I have a kid-free and party-free Friday & Saturday on tap. And lots of amazon shipped boxes.

Still drawing a blank on turn mechanism. I'm sure something will turn up.

YOU GUYS YOU GUYS YOU GUYS

Somewhere in California, three women are memorizing* lines that I wrote. they're rehearsing and they're gonna act it out onstage. I have proof. 

Copyright Jules Dee Photography, this is Jeanette Godoy and Katie Ventura, rehearsing Pretty Petty Things.  

*I assume. we all know that off book is a lie. 

I was really looking forward to having no rostered shifts for 6 days. 

I really was. I have a lot of lesson plans to finish up and house work to catch up on. (I'm trying NOT to think about the hallway linen cupboard, I don't need to break out in hives. -OMG the winter sheets haven't been put into storage and there's singles mixed in with king singles and doubles. And no, not thinking about it, not thinking about it.)

But the Boss asked for the 27th time today if I'd thought about the xmas decorations yet and if I could please make sure I had them up and done by Thursday next week. (Which would have been fine only I wasn't rostered to work next week) So I thought I had better mention that. Damn it. There go my days off.  

At least my little guy is happy. If Mum's not home there's no Latin lessons. 

It is obvious, even intuitive, that no todo list site (or any other kind) will be perfect.  This appears to have no restraining influence over my impulse to keep searching for the perfect one.

I used Hiveminder back in the day but it was just too often an impedement to simple use, and now I understand they're shutting down, so moot point.  I then went back and forth between Toodledo (also pretty user aggressive, plus it has some assumptions that cause me to stumble) and doit.im (written by crazy people; nice UI but the first time you have to hand-delete a bunch of items one by one it wears thin, as you realize deleting a task is a pain.)

So now I'm on the hunt again.  I want something with a slick web interface that I will use most of the time, plus nice Android widgets with lots of control over what I get.  Ha ha.  Anyway.

RemembertheMilk: An old classic.  I revisited it, but I was immediately reminded of one of my top needs: start dates, or some other way to defer an item until the future.  I don't want to see next month's bills; I couldn't pay them now if I wanted to, and I don't want to.

Wunderlist: No context or other tags.  Wtf?

Google Tasks: I wish, but barely higher tech than paper.

Todoist: Utterly crippled without premium.  I have no objection to premium; I have in turn paid all three sites I mentioned above in the past (and present, for Toodledo) and rtmilk also, I believe.  But not without establishing that it's useful for me.  Todoist requires premium to even have contexts on tasks. Feh.

Zendone: Looks super impressive, to the point of being overwhelming. Once again, though, no start dates as far as I can tell. There seems to be a weird disconnect between different sites: is a due date when you should be working on something, or when you should be done?  I say it's the latter, which is why I use start dates to cover the former.  I don't want to even think about my cable bill until the 1st, but then it's due on the 5th and not later than that.  And so on.

Must resist bad programmer impulses at a time like this.  My todo list, wherever it is, won't get done at all if I wind up trying to write a todo list site.

homestuck has turned into a goddamn Bataan Death March of hilarity.