It's Beginning to Feel a Lot Like Christmas

I had a meeting this morning to meet with my new client. This is actually an agency, so there will still be a client beyond that, but I'm working through them, and I'm a contractor rather than a regular employee, which to me means it's the best of both worlds (aside from the benefits issue, but I was already providing my own benefits, like health insurance). I can probably have fairly steady work with these people, as steady as a regular job, but I work at home, set my own hours (as long as I meet deadlines) and take on as much or as little work as I can handle. When I'm not on a book deadline, I can take on more. If I have a book due, I can do less. This may help keep me from burying my agent in manuscripts, since I can write them almost as fast as she can read them, while paying my living expenses and adding to the World Domination fund (a good plan for world domination requires capital).

Though it was a little embarrassing to open my oh-so-professional-looking notepad and find that it had dust in the creases. I haven't had to meet with clients in a very long time. It sounds like I should have taken that "vacation" in November because I'll be rather busy for the next month or so. Then again, being that busy may mean that I can afford to take a real vacation. Or that I can add some days to a trip to New York for a conference early next year and maybe even splurge on my own hotel room instead of sharing (which is the biggest stress of a conference for me).

I'm actually starting to kind of get into the holiday spirit. It started with choir Wednesday, where we're finally digging into our Christmas music (including some old standards in creative keys). But this morning driving across town on a grey, misty day really got to me, since it meant that any lights that were still on really showed up, and then when I stopped by the grocery store afterward, I had to walk through the forest of Christmas trees to get to the door, which really flipped my "Christmas!" switch. I may even put the Christmas music back into the iTunes playlist, and I'll be baking some cookies this afternoon, since the church cookie sale fundraiser is this weekend. The Christmas decorations may go up this weekend, too.

I'll have to get the decorating done before Sunday night, though, because there will be some good TV. First Once Upon a Time, which I'm really loving, and then the channel formerly known as SciFi is doing a two-part Neverland miniseries, and the cast looks astoundingly good for this kind of production. Of course, next Tuesday they're showing the Christmas episodes of their summer series, though Haven is requiring real creativity to get a Christmas episode, since the entire series so far has been set in a single summer.