Diva Flouncing

The water heater cabinet repairs are finally finished. The time management ended up being as bad as ever. "We'll come by around 10 when we first get on the property" turned into a "we're running late, and it will be about an hour and a half" phone call at 11:45, which turned into a "we have to run by the office, but we'll be back in two hours, tops" phone call at 4:30, which turned into them showing up right before 8 -- at the beginning of the Grimm season premiere. Grrr. But it only took a few minutes, and now I'm free. Until the next thing that has to be repaired.

But I still got my picnic. I finally got smart and was driving to the parking lot near the park I like instead of taking a little more than half an hour to walk there so that I could spend more time walking in the woods and less time walking in the neighborhood. But then once I was in the car, I decided that meant I could drive anywhere, so I went to the lake nearby and sat on a nice, flat rock shelf where I could watch the sailboats. I got some good quality thinking done, so I'm ready to plunge into revisions today. Going out to the lake for the afternoon has long been on my list of things I need to make time to do since I like water and since the lake is so close, but I never manage to do it. This way, I managed to combine a little Fall Fun Fest with some work.

It's going to be a busy week because I'm leaving for a convention on Friday, and there's stuff I have to do to get ready for that, including finishing the knitting so I'll have something semi-costumey to wear and putting together some preliminary promo materials. I also have to do some revision work because I have to get it done and because I need to have a piece ready to read. I got my schedule for the convention yesterday and since I only got scheduled for two programming items (a reading and one panel), I had a moment of contemplating pulling out of the convention and then not having to worry about this stress and having more time to work on the revisions. I'm not sure quite what's up with that because just a week or so ago the con chair had sent me a list of programming she was planning for me, and none of that was on the schedule they sent. The schedule included a list of all programming and a note to let them know if there was anything else you wanted to be on, and most of the panels had at most two or three people on them, so maybe their "final" schedule was more like the programming survey other conventions send out ahead of time, and they actually want you to schedule yourself on other stuff. At the moment, I'm kind of torn between pulling out to get some work done and going and taking advantage of the light schedule to do what I want to do instead of what I'm programmed to do. With so little on the schedule, it's not like I'd be missed, but I think it could be good research and a chance to start building a little buzz. It's probably better to have people wondering why I'm barely on the program than to pull a diva flounce. You should never pull a diva flounce unless you're absolutely certain they won't just say "okay, whatever" instead of meeting your requirements to get you to stay, and I don't think I yet have the stature to make anyone cater to my wishes. Even when you do have the stature, you have to use it sparingly and only in cases where it's truly an issue for you.

And now to start tackling that to-do list so I can maybe someday achieve the stature to where I can say "Two programming items? Um, don't think so. Not worth the trip" and have people say "No, don't leave us! We'll put you on anything you want!"