Post Snowpocalypse Maintenance

For those who may not have experienced three feet of snow on their roof, there are aftereffects.  The snow starts to melt, and slides, and fills the gutters, and melts and refreezes, creating ice dams.

A homeowner can ignore these, hoping the weak winter sun will melt it properly so it does no damage, but that’s dumb, because it’s still in the 20s at night, so there’s no “proper” melting possible.

So today, to prevent major roof damage, my heroic husband went up and cleared part of the roof, then emptied the front gutter (the one on the side of the house away from afternoon sun—the back of the house didn’t have ice dams).  Here’s some of what he pulled out:




And, after working for two hours on the roof (up and down the ladder, chiseling at the ice, pulling two-foot-long chunks out and tossing them), he helped Number Two finish building this:


That fort is built with probably half the ice chunks, chinked with snow like a log cabin. Pretty cool, huh?

Me? I did grocery shopping, client work, committee work, and dinner. I’m such a good little housewife. *sigh*

Wrapping Up 2008

I have no posts in 2008 labeled "Goals."

None.

Of course, according to my final post about 2007, I didn't set goals. I made plans.

Let's see how I did:

Exercise

I did very well through May, when I got swamped with work. From May through August I occasionally missed my goal of 2.5 hours per week, and then I was totally inconsistent, with some weeks in the fall good, some bad, and then nothing at all in the entire fall.

Compared to previous year: 126 days of exercise compared to 301 in 2007. Ick.

Goal for 2009

I dunno. I started again this week, went to the club yesterday and today. I'm just going to try to go every day, except when I can't.

Weight

No change. Nothing different in my plans for 2009, either.

Entertainment

I read 95 full books, a falloff from last year's actual 107. I also started but didn't finish 40, and tracked 7 additional novellas.

I saw 22 movies in the theater, 8 fewer than last year, but 35 on DVD, up from 17 in 2007. Plus two on TiVo, two on TV, and two on DVD that I didn't finish.

I won't go into the TV I watched live or TiVo'd, I do that during the year. I also watched the following on DVD:

All the Buffy seasons
All the Angel seasons
Prison Break season 3
Entourage
Roswell season 1

Goal for 2009

I always strive to read 100 books, but I think I'll keep better track this year so I can push myself if possible and make the goal. I don't expect as many movies in 2009, probably about the same amount of TV. Once I finish Roswell, I might give Bones a try.

Work!

Okay, this is the biggie. Here's what I accomplished:

Overall writing

Fiction: 184,486 words (includes totally new text and added words during revisions)
Nonfiction: 57,855

That's a total of 242,341 written words in 2008. That's more than 60k less than 2007!

Goal for 2009

Whatever I manage to do, based on my circumstances.

Project breakdown

Fiction:
Submitted 8 projects
Sold 2 novellas
Wrote three novellas
Revised three+ novels

Compared to plan: Did two of the revisions I planned, started both of the sequels plus another book, though not the one I intended to.

A reminder of my plan for 2009:

1. Revise Under the Moon until it's ready for submission
2. Process critiques for Hummingbird and prep for agent review
3. Revise Fight or Flight again, if Agent Awesome so decrees
4. Do first round of revisions for More Than You Know and submit to critique partners
5. Finish Zoe WIP

What else did I do, that caused me to write so much less in 2008? Well, let me tell you:

Nonfiction:

1 20-page report
58 articles
74 biographies (short ones, not book-length!)
21 autoresponders, 4 ads, and a few miscellaneous things

Editing/Proofreading:

Approximately 3,579 pages, some being full editing in hard copy transferred to computer documents, some being small projects that I typed a list of corrections for.


Critiquing:

40 pages for LM
55 pages for M2
184 pages for M3
402 pages for TM
491 pages for JW
506 pages for VB
783 pages for VS
1,011 pages for M1

for a grand total of 3,472 manuscript pages! That amounts to roughly 868,000 words, though it's probably more than that because some people don't use standard format.

I think I only sent one full book out for critique in 2008. I'll make up for it this year!

Judging:

I judged 9 stories with just a scoresheet, and 279 pages that required comments as well as the scoresheets.

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Okay, I'm tired just adding that all up! I will no longer feel like a slacker! Such occasions are surely few and far between, with that kind of tally, wouldn't you say?

So that's all. Goodbye 2008 (a few days late) and hello 2009! May it be better than productive for all of us!

OMGWhatACatch!

Everyone watch this--it's not your typical sports highlight. :)