My Week in Review

What a frustrating week it's been! Of course there have been good points to it, but overall, it's been one of the more frustrating weeks I've had in a long time!

This week I've been working from home building the control panels for my friend's company. My friend's client is supplying the parts, another friend is mounting the wire channels and then I put the components on and wire them up. Sounds simple, right? WRONG! The client company has decided to "trickle" the parts to me, so I spent a lot of time this week waiting for parts to arrive. Thursday, when I got my box of parts for the next panel, when I went to assemble them, I found wrong parts and missing parts! I immediately called my friend and he said he would get me the parts as soon as possible. The client held him up until late Friday afternoon which meant that I couldn't work all Friday and now have to work Saturday to make up the time. The most frustrating part of it is, despite the client's delays in providing the parts, they are still expecting me to have one panel built in a day! So far, in five days, I've been able to finish three panels. Wednesday was another washout, waiting for parts. So.. Now I have to build two panels over the weekend, and to make matters almost completely unmanageable, I came down with one of my killer headaches late Friday evening.

I was supposed to get up early this morning (Saturday) and take my broken old computer monitor to a special IT equipment dump at 9:00 am, but thanks to my headache, woke up at 11:30! So, I've lost my entire morning and I still feel like someone hit me in the head with a crowbar or something equally as hard. What a week, I tell you!

But, like I said, there were some good points. I found out this week that I will be getting paid for these panels at a rate very close to what I made working for Grantek last year. That will help ease the financial crisis we are currently in. It seems as though my life these past few years can be described in three words: "Feast or Famine". Right now, we seem to be in Feast mode! It has been unfortunate that the Famines have outnumbered the Feasts these last few years, so we are "behind the 8-ball" so to speak! This job will really help us out. It's just too bad that it doesn't look like it will continue past the end of July, but I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

An online group of aspiring writers I belong to is hosting a summer writing contest this year. I don't know what the prize is yet, but we are planning to publish the best entries in a compilation book and see how it sells. I had the distinction of being the first entrant, but my story needs a lot of work to bring it into contention! The neat thing about this contest is, it's by invitation only, and the group is prepared to help each entrant to polish up the story with critiques, suggestions and support throughout the duration of the contest. In my view, the prize is less important than the successful entry itself. The real reward for entering this contest is the education I will get from having a group of my peers go over my story and point out, gently, of course, the many flaws and weaknesses in it. It has been my observation that most bloggers are also talented writers, even though they may not realize it! So, with that in mind, I'd like to invite any of my readers who would like to join a group dedicated to the cause of helping aspiring writers attain the ultimate goal of becoming published to click on this link: http://z14.invisionfree.com/B_and_N_Writers/index.php?] You'll need to register for the group (it's free!) and once you've done that, feel free to browse the entire site! One thing I must mention, though, is that the important parts of the site are protected from the public - meaning only registered members can see them. This protects our "first-published" rights and allows us to post our work on the site and still have it considered legally "not published". I understand that is important for when we DO want to finally publish our work.

Another good thing this week has been our weather! Wow! So nice and crisp and cool, yet bright and sunny! No complaints on the weather from me! Which reminds me, this headache I currently have can't be weather related then. I wonder what set this one off?

Well, I seem to have run out of steam on this post! LOL! Have a good weekend everybody!