It’s been a scrambled-up-schedule kind of weekend and day–to quote poet Robert Burns, “The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft agley…”  Well okay, my scrambled days weren’t nearly as desperate as those of the poor wee mouse, but my head’s spinning some.

Saturday morning was spent catching up from Friday’s Verbal to Visual videos and seminar which I missed when I had an unexpected editing job. Saturday afternoon I went to a workshop called “Designing Your Book with MS Word.” The workshop leader had asked us all to bring our laptops, so we could learn hands-on, which would have been a great idea if we’d all had the same version of Word. As it was, our group included Word 2003, 2007, 2010, 2013 and 2016. It certainly was a clear indication of how much Word has changed over the past few years.  I suppose I should consider upgrading to 2016 one of these times (I have 2010 which I’ve stuck to because it is the “standard” for editing). Has anyone out there tried 2016? Maybe I’ll wait until it’s considered the new standard, and the inevitable glitches of new software have been worked out, eh?

Sunday I woke with a plugged-up ear, and feeling very dizzy as a consequence. Lovely. I had plans to go out and about, but ended up laying low all morning, which was fine as it was pouring rain. I spent some time reorganizing my binder of notes about freelance writing, building one’s platform, writing e-books, improving my blogs and websites, and similar topics. I also went through the notes, and made a to-do list of things I really want to get to. In the afternoon, family dropped by, and I helped my grandson with some spelling issues he is having.

Then I got into a long, rather convoluted discussion with a whole variety of people on my personal Facebook page, about the whole issue of  the situation in the Middle East, and the events of the past week in Beirut, Baghdad, Paris, et al, and the refugee situation…  Well, as one of my friends put it, after I posted this morning that I have gathered enough viewpoints to ponder for some time to come, and that I will therefore no longer be part of the conversation, she noted, “This issue sure has brought out the true colours of people.”  I must say I was surprised by comments from some people. But overall, while there was a wide variety of perspectives presented, most of the conversation was in a reasonably respectful tone.  Still, after getting drawn into another half hour of discussion at 5:20 a.m. and messing up today’s schedule from the get-go, I had to put my foot down and withdraw.

Monday is always a busy-schedule day, and this one was no exception. Another short-notice editing job has caused me to put some of my regular Monday chores off till tomorrow. I hope there aren’t too many surprises in store again!  (Actually there are already two, but one of them is a short and easy one, and the other isn’t until the late afternoon, which is okay).  I had several students today, that editing job–and, oh yes, a strata council meeting which is also not part of my regular schedule.

Scheduled bedtime is a half hour ago, so I’d better stop rambling!