Back to the Grindstone (yay!)

Yesterday morning I took a nice walk over to the library and loaded up on reference books for that mystery idea, and then in the evening I got news about a potential project that I need to do a proposal for. Since that's closer to guaranteed income, I guess I now have something to do during the TV hiatus, and it should be a lot of fun, especially if it comes through and I get to do the work. I can keep researching the mystery in the background while I do that work. That's going to involve a fair amount of research and development to do it right.

So, that was a pretty good day -- a nice walk, some new books and the potential for work and money. Plus, I made great strides yesterday toward cleaning out one of my e-mail in boxes. A few years ago (yikes, that long?) my ISP changed their e-mail security settings, so my ancient version of Entourage would no longer work with it and I had to start using webmail. It took me a couple of years to replace my computer and get the new version of Office, and then it took me still longer to try to set up Outlook, only to find it's somehow still not working right. All this time, I've been treating my e-mail situation as "temporary," which means everything just sits in my in-box, since at any time now I plan to download all my messages into a real e-mail program and then sort and deal with them.

Now I've started to realize that there are some benefits to the webmail setup, as I can access my e-mail from anywhere or with my phone. I don't really do that much e-mail stuff offline anymore. And then there's the fact that once I did get Outlook set up for another account I have for my position in an organization, I realized that I really hate the current Outlook (though I loved the old Entourage). So I finally decided to start treating the webmail as a permanent situation, so I set up folders and started moving and deleting old messages. When I get my main personal/business account done, then maybe I'll tackle the public/fan mail account, which is also out of control. I seem to get overwhelmed by the volume of mail and end up just not dealing with it at all. So, if you suddenly get a reply from me to a message you sent years ago, this would be why.

I may still someday see if I can make Outlook work and get used to it, but that may have to wait for my next lull between projects. There are a lot more pressing things in my life right now. Like my still-messy house.

Now I'm kind of tempted to walk to the movie theater this afternoon before buckling down to work. The walk to and from the theater is usually good for thinking. I tend to get great ideas that pop out of my subconscious on the walk home after the movie.