The beat goes on

 
Windshield, repaired. Re-faxing the loan application, done. Fic writing, continues (almost to 3,800 words; this was a good day as far as writing goes). Workout, finished (after I got back home). Visa process? no luck, I was running back and forth between home and town for different things all day, my only real break coming during the windshield repair, which was also when I did the majority of today’s composition.

I’ve run into a snag on one of my goals, that of working my way through the stored boxes from Susan’s and my last several moves. The notion of dealing with the contents of one box a day … well, the bottleneck there is that once I take stuff out of a box, I have to put it somewhere, and there isn’t a lot of ‘somewhere’ free just now. We bought our current home in an estate sale, and most of the property of the previous owners was left inside (what Susan calls “the dead people’s stuff”), and we really need to clear out most of that before we have enough free space to devote to those of our own stored possessions that we don’t wind up giving to the same thrift stores that are gradually soaking up the previous owners’ leftovers. It’s a process.

Susan is studying Mandarin (Pimsleur CDs) in anticipation of our upcoming trip to China. I suppose I should start doing the same thing; I don’t anticipate getting much use out of it here in the U.S., but it might help some — at the least, the effort would show respect — a month from now. It’s just, Susan can study during the day, since her job involves a lot of driving, but my own schedule isn’t necessarily that flexible. I’ll see what I can work out, I’m just not completely there yet.

I’m not satisfied with everything about my life right now, but I’m fairly well pleased with what I’m doing about it. I’m only sorry circumstances couldn’t have allowed me to start about two months (or years) earlier.

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Grammar/language peeve of the day:
flaunt/flout

Not sure where this one comes from, other than people simply not bothering to learn the actual meanings of words that sound vaguely similar, but here goes.

flaunt: to display ostentatiously or impudently [flaunting his superiority]

flout: to treat with contemptuous disregard [flouting the rules]

Get it? One is a display, the other is a treatment. Sound alike, but nowhere near the same usage or meaning.