It's been pretty darn difficult to motivate myself to do a whole lot of actual Work at work this week. Heck, "week" is a pretty strong word for what is ending up being only two days. My mother is flying off tomorrow to study lion poop in Africa, so I decided to take the whole day off since taking her to the airport would eat up most of my morning anyway, and what's the point of working the second half of the day right before a holiday?

Besides, I really need to get some work done on my house in Slidell. Kat moved out last week from the house that I've been renting to her for over three years, and headed off to Oregon. Since this house took very minimal storm damage it's Prime real estate, and I already have someone interested in renting it from me. Actually, it's a good friend who lost EVERYTHING during the storm, so I'm renting it to her for the cost of my mortgage only, on a month-to-month lease, with the understanding that she'll help me get things fixed up and cleaned up while she's there. There's no way I could have charged her more to stay there. I can't make a profit on someone else's misery. This woman had just gotten her life back together after a divorce and had purchased a condo on Lakeview Drive in Slidell... two weeks before the storm hit. When she went back after the storm to see what was left she found the slab. That's it.

So, tomorrow my plan is to rip up the carpet in the back room that took about a centimeter of water--just enough to soak one low spot in the center of the room. Kat told me that the water came within an inch of getting into the main part of the house. Heck, if a boat had gone by it would have swamped it. The garage did take water--about two feet or so, and enough to kill the water heater and washer and dryer. Then, a huge cedar tree fell and pulled the electrical box off of the house. Kat was without power for about a month because of all that. Ugh. And then, another tree fell over in the front yard, which ripped up the water line. So, she was without water as well for several days. No wonder she fled to Oregon! All she has to worry about there are volcanos.

I also don't plan on putting carpet back down in that back room. For one thing, carpet's expensive, and for another, finding someone to actually install it would be an adventure, since, oh, about 50 THOUSAND people are having new carpet installed. And so, in the "it's good enough for that crappy house" category of decision making, I've pretty much decided on stick-on tiles. Less than a buck a square foot. And I can do it myself.

And, my NaNo progress is pretty fucking dismal. Right now I plan on extending it to the end of December, though I still don't think i can do 50k words of short stories. However, the last few days have been a lot better as far as ideas coming together, and I've found that when I do get uninterrupted time to write, it's flowing a lot more nicely. Who knows... maybe I can make it to 20k by the end of the month.