brace yourselves, summer is coming

It has begun. We've had our AC on for a few weeks now but it hasn't really created a drastic difference until this week when temps have started ratcheting up again. Summer is coming. I must prepare my habitat. Scorching to death outside---blankets, hot cocoa, and fuzzy socks inside. Too bad I can't sit wrapped in blankets at work, this place is freezing!

I hope my book review post last week lived up to your expectations. [Edit: It's currently gotten 60 views which is my all-time high for a single post. Thanks, guys!] A friend told me that she enjoys my reviews because she knows I'm being honest. That should be part of my book review slogan: I may not be nice, but at least I'm honest! Age is turning me into a more demanding and less tolerant reader, haha.

Some of you may remember that I was working the "middle shift" while I waited for the powers-that-be to hire a new morning coworker for this position. That circus ended up taking two whole months and is a story all its own, but we finally landed a keeper. She started a week ago Monday, which means that I shifted back to my regular schedule last Friday. It's amazing how working a different shift for two months can make me forget how slow my usual shift is. Don't get me wrong, I'm super happy to have a coworker again and it's nice to take a step back from the more frantic pace of covering both shifts, but my brain and body have both been two steps behind all week. I'm so tired. Why am I more tired now that I'm going into work later? Mysteries. The reality is that the timing just aligned perfectly with the end of Spring semester so campus is d-e-a-d right now---a fact that's always more obvious from 2-3 in the afternoon. And Go Set A Watchman is sitting, finally delivered, in my mailbox at home. Mocking me.

With Spring semester over I have a lot more time on my hands and I'm still figuring out how to use it wisely. I'm set up to take a Summer course but it doesn't start until the end of June and the student journals don't run over the summer. There is a small potential exception on the horizon. I was invited [along with probably most students that worked on a journal last semester] to apply for positions on the editing board of a brand new student journal that's just getting off the ground. The premise of this journal is "leadership" which doesn't really grab me from the get-go but the opportunity to work as a member of the founding staff offers some pretty good experience. Applications are due by tomorrow so I'm on the waiting train for at least a week before I hear if I'm in, and while I hate waiting for responses to stuff like this it's kind of nice to anticipate the possibility of something.

One of my efforts to make better use of my free time has been to allot the first hour of my day as "writing time." Thanks to a massive migraine on Monday and general schedule adjustment fatigue, my record for this week isn't fabulous but I am getting excited for it. I just have to rename one of my MCs first... I know there are authors who can get rolling on a story without feeling totally solid on their character names but I can't work that way, especially for a main character. It's not like a pregnancy [I'm not pregnant] where you can have an adorable place-holder name until the baby is born. For me, knowing a character's name is a vital part of knowing that character so I was rather disappointed when I realized that the name I'd picked initially for this particular heroine just...doesn't fit. Back to the drawing board---I mean baby name sites! This is probably why I keep getting coupons for Similac in my mail...