Great, just great. My consultant cheque finally arrives from the US… and the Canadian dollar hits a 30-year high, being worth around three cents less than the US dollar.
I can’t believe I’m almost going to lose money on this. I wonder how long I can sit on it. Or maybe I’ll just race to deposit it as quickly as I can.
So just when I think I’m ahead on this work thing, an emergency arises on the project I worked on last spring. Guess what I’m doing for the next eighteen hours? Good thing I’m well along on the other project and it’s only due next Tuesday. Also good that I got a lot of sleep last night. Not as good: the fact that I have been downing Excedrin Extra Strength With Codeine for a persistent headache.
But that is not why I am posting! I am posting to share this:
SPARKY: Bye bye, Leo eating cricket bugs!
[Leo is a leopard-patterned fat-tail gecko who lives with the caregiver. He dines upon crickets. The boy says goodbye to him every day before he leaves.]
HRH: Um. How many words was that?
CAREGIVER: [counts] Six.
[There is a pause.]
CAREGIVER: He’s not normal. I love him, but he is not normal.
I finally updated my freelance site. CSS and all.
And damn, I just realized that I have to update some other links as a result. Argh.
I am now going to go crash. I really, really hope I can sleep, and that I’m not beyond the too-tired point.
Just sent in the first part of the project, and I’m all wibbly because I don’t think it’s as reduced as they hoped it would be. The problem is these characters talk to one another a lot — the dialogue is kind of the point of playing, as in many social simulation games. It’s been incredibly difficult to rewrite the dialogue so that it says the same thing in fewer words, while keeping the age of the characters and the age of the audience in mind. I effectively lost the last two days of work too, because there was a miscommunication between us and I’d been cutting out entire useless scenes, only to discover two days later that everything had to remain intact: there had to be the exact same number of lines in the final product. So Friday, yesterday, and today were spent restoring and rewriting those deleted scenes to use the fewest possible words.
Argh.
If I could have deleted scenes that don’t affect the action, I could have reduced the script by a fifth! They would have loved it!
Now I shall mope until I hear back from the client. And maybe eat lunch, as I’ve been working since five this morning to meet this deadline, with only a pancake and a cup of tea to keep me going.
[LATER: Yup. They’re disappointed. My hands are tied! Tell me I can delete entire lines — nay, entire unnecessary scenes! — and it will work!]
Excellent ritual last night, lovely and grounding and introspective (which is what we all needed). It ended up coming to me remarkably easily in plenty of time, thank goodness. An excellent meeting all in all, actually. I’m excited about studying something again, which is nice. It’s draining to constantly provide something for others to do, and for everyone’s good intentions about holding workshops or presenting research it rarely seems to actually happen. It’s a relief to have a topic to cover the next few months’ worth of meetings, and a topic I can learn about too.
Hurrah, more thunderstorms! I love thunderstorms: I’ve got windows open to smell the water and wet earth as well as to hear the rain. The storm and Yo-Yo Ma playing Ennio Morricone are providing my work soundtrack today.
I now know the difference between an Axel, a salchow, and a toe loop. What I’m not clear on is why Axel takes a capital but salchow does not. Axels are named after Axel Paulsen, and salchows are named for Ulrich Salchow (heck, even loops are formally called Rittbergers although you never hear the term), so why aren’t both capitalised?
This morning at breakfast:
LIAM: Mama sitting in Dada’s chair.
AUTUMN: [counts the words in the sentence and notes the use of the word ‘in’] Er, yes. Yes, I’m sitting in Dada’s chair.
LIAM: Dada! Come sit! Come sit in Mama’s chair, Mama in Dada’s chair.
And yesterday, we met a lovely cinnamon-coloured rabbit on our back porch. He lives next door and is called Switch, although Liam called him Peter while feeding it his raisins and giggling when the bunny tickled his hand with his nose. The neighbours were nowhere in sight but their back door was open, so we assumed it was theirs although we had no notion they owned a rabbit. HRH did track them down later though to make sure (a) the rabbit was allowed outside, and (b) that it was okay for it to wander over to our deck and visit with us. It’s very sweet and easy-going, and Liam adored it. It was nice for him to be able to pet something, seeing as how he can’t exactly cuddle his fish and the cats are avoiding him these days as he has been attempting to pick them up by handfuls of fur.
Back to editing the script. Break’s over.
To everyone who has left comments or sent me private emails assuring me that I Did Not Suck: thank you, but I wasn’t worried that I did. And upon rereading my post I have reassured myself that no, that’s not what I said; I expressed my disappointment with my experience. I just didn’t enjoy myself. I’m not enjoying much these days.
The first part of the project finally arrived yesterday, almost a full two weeks late. And sure enough, they want it back two weeks earlier that the original timeframe defined. On top of that this project functions on a monthly billing schedule, which means I’m not going to see money until mid-August. After blocking off the last third of June and deciding against bidding for another job, this makes me very, very cranky. I have bills, and my savings are dangerously low. Also: monthly? That implies working for more than one month, which I highly doubt is the case here. The original timeline was for a four-week delivery, and with things being late, voila, we are already behind (as is usual in this industry, I understand). I did a bit of detective work last night and located the product for which I am doing this editing, and it’s scheduled for release this fall. I can understand the rush caused by the late delivery of the translation, but it irritates me that my schedule and finances are negatively impacted by it.
So that contract that was supposed to begin on June 22 at the latest has been bumped to the end of June. This means that I could have actually applied/bid for another contract elsewhere that began mid-June and went to mid-July or could have ended earlier, depending on if I bid for all or only part of it.
This is the part of freelancing that I detest. When someone makes sure you’re free at a specific time and then the project gets delayed thanks to the third party you’re both waiting on, it’s hard to stay Zen.
Liam and I took the bus out on a trip this morning and he is now the proud owner of a leopard molly, a silver molly, and a black molly. Let’s see if their lifespan is directly proportional to their higher price. Also, I am not allowed to look at birds in shops anymore. They keep falling in love with me, and I keep falling in love with them. I would have walked out with three sun conures and a Quaker parrot today if I’d had the money and the space in which to keep them, and the time to give them the attention they require.