How's your week going?

Listening to: The Most Dangerous Predator: Twilight Original Score - Carter Burwell

Location: Orthanc

Another week draws slowly to a close and I'm absolutely cream crackered. Which wouldn't be so bad if this was the end of the *really* busy week at work, but that's next week so I have the joy of being completely, insanely, don't bother having any breaks busy yet to come. All done in high heels because the smart work trousers were not made for people who are only 5"2 (and you really don't want me to hem things if the hem is meant to last more than one day) so there will be aching feet/ head/ throat from all the talking/projecting against background noise.

Thank god it's only this bad once a year.

I'm off to the North again this afternoon to visit the pater, and apparently we're trogging off to Carlisle tomorrow for a little jolly (but at least I can sleep in the car on the way.) Other than that, I plan to lounge around and do some reading and writing this weekend. I'm lending my dad some C.S. Friedman books, as well as Mark del Franco and Anton Strout (books, not the peeps themselves, obviously) so he'll have something new to read along with the Charlie Stross books I got him for his birthday. And with any luck he'll have some books I haven't read and we can swap.

So, does anyone have anything exciting planned for the weekend?

Update
Project: Unnamed UF
New Words: 5,786
Present Total Word Count: 46,021
Goal: 80,000

(Almost) all the leaves are brown...

The last four days have been nice and relaxing and full of sloth. There, I said it - I was bone idle. My brain was fried so I've spent most of the past four days re-watching Supernatural and reading a couple of Phil Rickman's Merrily Watkins novels (crime with a paranormal/ Deliverance (as in exorcism) twist.) Good stuff, and nothing like the books I'd been reading prior to that, or anything like the book I'm writing so it was a bit of a headspace holiday.

I'm now on Day Five of the holiday and I thought I'd better get some writing done, just to get back into it before I head back to work; but the drain man's just arrived so I'll blog first and write when he's done. (Victorian drains - you've just got to love them. Sigh.) The dogs are bemused, the tap's running in the bath, and a no-doubt fragrant odour is wafting in the hot sun in as welcome a fashion as a bloated rat at a barbeque. Hopefully, most of my neighbours are still at work.

In other news...I've re-visited a flash piece that didn't work too well and I think I've figured out how to make it better (and, by virtue of it being me, longer.) I've sketched out the first page or so and will work on that as a 'down-time' piece to give me a break from the unnamed one - I shall have to think of a working title for the unnamed one at some point; at 40+K it ought to be called something other than Unnamed UF, eh?
In other, other news...it's boiling. Autumn arrived with crisp air and hazy light, the sound of rooks in the trees; and now, the sun's out, the air is muggy and yellow (thunder on the way perhaps?) and the collies are restless - only one walk so far today, so they're feeling fractious. More exercise for me later then. :->

Back to the day job tomorrow which is good, although it does mean that I'll have to leave the house early as the kids are back at school from today so the roads will be clogged with the school run if you hit it wrong. So I need to be on the road for 07:15 at the latest. ::phbbbbt:: And in a couple of weeks the universities crank up to speed to welcome all the new and returning students and we'll all hit the ground running and won't really stop until mid-October when we'll all collapse into jelly-like heaps and gibber quietly in our offices. But it's all good fun, so bring on the circus!

Right. Enough chit-chattery. Time for some work.

I'll leave you with an update of where I got to last:

Project: Unnamed UF
New Words: 2,392 (over 2 sessions)
Present Total Word Count: 40,235
Goal: 80,000 (although, the first draft is likely to be waaaay longer as I'm pretty sure that I started it in completely the wrong place. Nice to know that there are some constants in life.)

[metrics] UF (Day 53/90) - (Bank Holiday Monday)

Project: Unnamed UF
New Words: 4,686 (over 2 sessions)
Present Total Word Count: 37,843
Goal: 80,000

Tilly's undergone testing on her shields and has signed a contract for more training on how to control her power - a new plot element cropped up in writing this, so Tilly's contract specifies that if she can't control her power within a set timeframe then she'll be deemed dangerous and will be dealt with by the Magister who holds her contract.

It's still messy, but I can see which things can be tightened and smoothed in revisions so it's not all bad. I'm likely to finish considerably over the word count I'm aiming for but, again, we'll see how things pan out once the revision process has been done.

All in all I'm quite pleased at the progress I've made and have to point the finger at word wars for the assistance.