This year has flashed by. I’m not panicking about it, just feeling slightly sad. Owlet’s post for last month is still in draft form, and her next one is due tomorrow (ah ha ha, that’s not going to happen). For all the time I’m spending at the computer, not much of it has been writing in any form.

I’ve been tangled in horrible paycheque luck these past three months. The most recent snafu is that accounting has recently discovered that no, Canadians can not in fact be paid via direct deposit, which is a complete contradiction to what they said when I checked with them in early October. The direct deposit option was being promoted as a quicker way to be paid, and after the really, really, really late payment earlier this fall, it had sounded like a good idea. Everyone is horrified and apologetic, and I’m waiting to be paid. The accounting department is swamped because two of their full-time employees retired this summer, and the new employees are making mistakes and working more slowly. There’s not much I can do except wait. Which is stressful on its own, of course, because not only can I no longer schedule an expected payment date into my agenda and work out a household budget with any confidence as I used to (it used to be four and a half weeks from the Friday of the week my invoice was sent through, like clockwork), but I can’t even expect the payment process to be flawless (other than slow). I’m sure it will get better… eventually.

I’ve been prebooked to copyedit another book on math, which is great; not only do I already have a stylesheet for the other book in the series, but my December work schedule is taken care of. I’m also slowly working through a private editing project of picture books, which is fun but challenging on how to schedule it into my other work, as well as how to think about it/approach it and put my thoughts down on paper for the author.

I recently applied for a copyediting position with a quarterly magazine incredibly relevant to my interests. The editing sample they asked for consisted of working over a five-page article, which took me a day and a half because it needed a lot more work than the example they’d provided as a guideline, and I was constantly referring to the house stylesheet and making decisions in a bit of a murky situation. However, a zillion other people also applied (many non-professionals as well as professionals). Yesterday they announced the position had been filled (by a professional), and that they’d been spoiled for choice with a lot of perfect people, but they could only choose one. I am moving forward, disappointed but not devastated, assuming I am one of the perfect people who didn’t get hired. It would have been more lucrative than my ongoing freelance job with the publisher, and the work would have come at four predictable, reliable times per year, so I could have organized my schedule around them. But it wasn’t to be.

Our fall concert went well last Saturday. We brought Owlet, and it was her first non-Canada Day concert. As always, I wish I’d done better, and hoped the people sitting closest to me weren’t hearing the sludgy mess I made of quick finger-twisting bits. Our next concert is in March and we’ll be doing Beethoven’s seventh, which is very exciting for the celli and bass. Up next for me is our Christmas studio recital, which is a bit later than usual this year, on December 21. I’m working on a transcription of Wagner’s “Song to the Evening Star” from Tannhäuser which is asking a lot of me in the letting-go department.

The furnace went on the fritz a couple of weeks ago, necessitating repair. We had the money, but it meant that the optometrist appointment and new glasses I was planning on didn’t happen, and isn’t going to for a while. (See above re. unreliable payment schedule.)

I think that’s about it. Knitting is at a standstill, because the shawl I’m working on is now at the 400+ stitches per row point, and there is always something else that has to be done instead of knitting a row. I’ve spun a couple of yarns, but I’ll save those for another post.