Caz counts it down

brizzledfw

I am on all week (M-F) early starts..with winter coming it gets even harder...but you do to some extent get used to it. (not sure how much worse it is in 'extreme' North though )

Have a great weekend.

cazmanian_minx

Put it this way, by midwinter there's only about six and a half hours between sunrise and sunset... I'm sure I'll be okay, it actually might work out better working in darkness and then going out again at 10 to do the mucking out; it'll ensure I get some daylight every day! However, this may be one of the few times that the purchase of a fluorescent dog collar and blinking LED clip-on collar light go down as a legitimate business expense!!

It's been a busy weekend. I did the two celeb interviews on Friday during the day, started the business file on Friday evening, did the medical file on Saturday, did most of the rest of the business file on Saturday evening and finished it, along with its special formatting and listening through a fair bit of it again (because I'd struggled a bit with the speaker's accent) this morning. After all that, I thought I was fairly justified in spending the rest of the day on the sofa with the remote control and a bag of Penn State mini-pretzels

I haven't been a complete couch potato though. Mr Minx needed some more spuds for supper, so I dug up another tatty plant, washed and dried them all and then wrapped them in a tea towel to keep the light off them. This evening I've been fiddling around with the house blog - one post written and published, one post written and scheduled for next week and I've linked up some more social media accounts. I now have Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube and Google+ on there - must set up a Facebook page for it next. Also registered the blog with Bloglovin' - not really sure how that works yet, so I'll have to have a fiddle around with it at some point.

Tomorrow I've got quite a big task to complete for Mr RPC, so I should think the day will consist of that and eBay orders.

Verbatim

Cor Caz as busy as usual. Did you see/photo the blood moon?

cazmanian_minx

Verbatim wrote: »

Cor Caz as busy as usual. Did you see/photo the blood moon?

I didn't, I'm afraid - too busy pushing out the ZZZZZZZZZZZs

23 eBay orders packed and posted, which put nearly enough cash into the bank account to have YNAB fully buffered for October. I reckon I need less than £50 to have all next month's bills covered and I've got about £35 of that in PayPal already.

Not too much typing today, just a bit of work for Mr RPC this morning. So what did I get up to this afternoon? I went round to the big farm (Debtfree2012 - remember the sheepdog/Mission Impossible music video on Facebook? That one!), as the farmer had very kindly agreed to teach me about sheep before I get some. We're friends on Facebook, but I'd not met her in person before (despite having lived just around the corner for 7 and a bit years!) and I liked her immensely I ended up staying and talking non-stop for two hours while she was trimming her tups for sale and I'm going back on Friday to help with the ewes :D

Tomorrow's going to be a busy one. It's my last shift for the agency and the file assigned came through tonight, so I got it downloaded, then looked at the transcript style and thought something didn't look right - it was a normal focus group, but had been requested as Full Verbatim with Speaker ID. Now, Full Verbatim means that every um, er and ah has to be typed and Speaker ID is very difficult to do with more than three voices - this recording had seven and although they were native English speakers, it wasn't UK accents, so a little harder to distinguish between them, because my ear wasn't tuned into the nuances of different areas. I emailed them to double-check that it really was how it was supposed to be done, as I recognised the moderator's voice from files I've done for that client previously and it never has been before. Half an hour later it got changed to a normal transcript - phew, because they'd assigned me 70 minutes to type up by 4pm and I've got one of the business team files coming in in the afternoon, due back 6am Wednesday morning!

DebtFree2012

Wow!!!! How amazing. I expect to see many videos of your trials and tribulations through the croft process I love the whole dream - as you said in a previous post. You have a life many dream about, enjoy!

Last shift for the agency.....is this as you move over to PR'ing again?

cazmanian_minx

DebtFree2012 wrote: »

Last shift for the agency.....is this as you move over to PR'ing again?

Yup! And the business file was cancelled, so I'm loafing this evening instead

Actually, I'm not loafing, I'm looking up some of the stuff I learned at the farm yesterday about crofting grants and it seems that since I'm under 41 and in a less-favoured area, I'm eligible for grant money to cover up to 80% of the cost of certain projects up to a maximum of £25,000 in any two-year rolling period (once I turn 41, it drops to 60%) :eek::eek::eek::eek: I'm thinking that would cover the groundworks, purchase and erection of a steel-sheet agricultural building with space for sheep pens, hay and feed storage (if I'm going to be making my own hay, I'll save a fair bit on not having to wrap it if I can store it inside - my current shed only takes about 40 small bales and it'll be MUCH easier to borrow a large round baler than find a small one) and space to park the tractor.

cazmanian_minx

As today is the last day before I start my 6-10am shifts, I decided to have a decent lie-in Only stayed in bed until 8, but didn't get to my desk until 10, which was nice. Packed and posted the orders and then sat down for a long session on Mr RPC's stuff, only interrupted by a couple of deliveries and a visit from a neighbour. Also got a couple of loads of laundry through and some ironing done.

What else? I'm ahead on my blogging, one scheduled post went live this evening and there's another one scheduled for Saturday. I've had another comment as well - if it was anyone from here, thank you!

Right, time for bed. Hope I can get to sleep fairly fast.

DebtFree2012

Happy October and Happy New Hours

cazmanian_minx

DebtFree2012 wrote: »

Happy October and Happy New Hours

I'm hoping that as I get more used to it, I won't wake up in a panic at 3am and 4.20am thinking I've slept through the alarm... Actually it wasn't too bad. It was nice being outside at 5.40am looking at the stars, although I did discover that if you put an LED light on your dog's collar so you can see where she is (black dog, pitch black field...), you'll completely freak your horses out! They did work out it was her eventually, but there was a lot of suspicious snorting and bouncing around first.

cazmanian_minx

It's going to be a tight belt month - I've just sent out all my invoices for work completed for clients in September and thanks to my gallivanting around Europe, I'm only due £702.17 in the next 31 days, which is very definitely not enough to cover the bills. At least I can top up with money from eBay now that the last of that debt is paid off.

One thing I'm going to have to watch with these new early hours is that I don't carry on working until 5pm or 6pm, like I normally do - or, if I do work until Mr Minx gets home, that I take a couple of hours to myself in the middle of the day. I have today, because the farrier was here (and undercharged me, as usual) and I had a good natter with James and Billy at the shop, but I can see myself working through solidly from 6am to 6pm with only a brief break to sort the horses, which wouldn't be good.

I could do you some month-end scores on the doors, but they're only £50 different to August's Just for the sake of completeness...

Halifax card: -£4,650.00 / -£4,600.00 +£50.00