Busy busy

In my little world at work, things generally slow right down at this time of year. Folks usually have other kinds of shopping on their brains other than flooring. At least that's how it was in 2001 and for a couple years thereafter. There'd be full days in December when no one came in and the phone didn't ring.

Not so in 2007. Yesterday was the only quiet day this week (Yay! I edited almost 3500 words of Quest to be Queen bringing my total in the complete column up to about 47K!). Today was flat-out busy. Had a sales rep, but even without him I had almost non-stop customers in the morning, quotes to write, product to order, freight to arrange, etc.

I've got one more week of work before two weeks off for the holidays. My boss guys have always booked off their kids' school Christmas vacation. Most of our customers don't really want us in their houses over the holidays anyway--with the likely exception of the new houses that no one is living in yet, but they're waiting. Oh, well, The guys haven't had any time off since LAST Christmas either, with the exception of a couple of extra long weekends. I'm thinking we all deserve it.

I'd really hoped to have Quest off to the critters before shutting down for the holidays, but that no longer looks remotely possible. I'm about 2/3 done the edits, and even though on a good day I can do nearly 5k, a whole week of good days wouldn't see me to The End. And of course, if I'm pushing that hard, it increases the odds that I'm not noticing sentences that don't quite work.

Must say that after the heavy themes in Marks of Repentance, it's fun to be playing with fairy tales, nursery rhymes, and silly songs. The segment I concluded today touches on: the princess and the pea, old MacDonald had a farm, a needle in the haystack, spinning straw into gold, sleeping beauty, and the dairy fairies. Never heard of dairy fairies? Well, then, maybe there's a few things I invented and tossed in the mix just for entertainment.