Life, Nevetsized

Pin It

All---

So usually when I talk about things being Nevetsized, I'm talking about putting a dark, morbid, cynical, vaguely existential, dryly satirical spin on ordinary things.  (Like, incidentally, all the cool swag at the Cafe Press shop.)  I might describe a comment such as, "All those job applications you never heard back on are being used to create the perfect profile for psychological torturing you on your 30th birthday," and tag it as, #HiringNevetsized.  As a for instance.

But today, I want to just let everyone know a little bit about what's been keeping me busy.

First and foremost, I have been able to hit some good milestones on my writing.  As I'm mentioned in other places, Sublimation is in final edits.  I have those back and am working on finishing them.  Then it's just a matter of tweaking format, and the novel will be out for query.  I have also completed the first story featuring Solomon Matthews, aka "The Death Reader," a circuit-riding defense attorney and forensic anthropologist in the American old west.  A couple other shorts are nearly finished and ready for submission, as well.


Second and also foremost, my wife and I have bought our first home.  It was a whirlwind process that began a couple days  after Christmas with us saying, "Hmm, well, let's start looking around to see if maybe we want to think about buying a home in this area," and ended with us closing in the beginning of February on a 1966 ranch home situation on about three and a half rolling country acres.  It's a beautiful house on a beautiful piece of property that has some well-established landscaping near the house and then a lot of room to work with as we develop our little hobby farm for ourselves.  It's truly a wonderful place, and home-ownership has been treating us well, but I can't say that I realized just how time-consuming the whole process was going to be.  We're still moving in in a lot of ways, but overall it's more like we're settling in now and getting the feel for country life and taking care of a house and a property that is entirely our responsibility.

Writing and home-ownership are only a part of Life, Nevetsized.  In case you're unaware, I also work a full-time job in IT management.  From about last August until about the first week of February, I was working 70-hour work weeks and we were still falling behind.  We are now starting to get caught up, and work weeks are back down to 40 to 50 hours, but the nature of my position is such that the buck stops here, and sometime there are a million bucks at once and there's no predicting when or where those bucks will arise.  To stretch a metaphor well beyond acceptable limits.

I also serve as a certified EMT on volunteer ambulance that serves the town I work in.  It's also the town we used to live in.  Now that we're out in the country, we're well outside the limits of acceptable response time so I've gone down to serving only a couple nights a month, on which occasion I stay with friends in town.

Since last fall, I've also been teaching English as part of a major program that reaches out to international adults.  The program has about 230 students overall.  The class I help teach has about 16 students, mostly refugees.  This is one night a week, about an hour a way.

Additionally, in December I took on constructing the on-line cultural anthropology class for my university, and this spring I've also been teaching the in-class cultural anthro course, which I do about every other year or so.

That's pretty much what life is, Nevetsized.

Oh, and, living in the country, there's not really internet at our house beyond tethering through my Droid.

.Nevets.