Getting my bearings...

The. Snow. Is. Still. Falling.

Albeit not with any enthusiasm. In fact, for a few minutes, it seemed as though the flakes had stopped coming down, but the lack of visibility past a quarter mile hinted strongly that snow-free air was a purely local and temporary phenomenon.

When I cleaned off the car, there was an easy six inches of white stuff on top. Since coming back inside, however, the roof of the Ford has again disappeared under a thin layer of snow.

Hopefully, the weather will not deter the fellow from whom I've ordered firewood, who said he'd be by today to deliver it, but my experience living in Pagosa tells me not to stand on one leg waiting for it. (Frankly, given the way some folks do business in Pagosa, the issue would be in doubt even if the weather were warm and the sun was out!) Until the wood comes, though, I'll be living in an electrically heated house.

I appear to have fallen out of the habit of looking closely at the work I receive. That, or my clients have fallen into the habit of making things more difficult, or perhaps its a mix of both. For example, one direct client I'm working with keeps sending me versions of the same English document with new Russian edits to translate, requiring me to page through what is now a rather substantial file looking for text written in Cyrillic (with an occasional word thrown in, written using Latin letters).

I finally hit upon a solution that makes it easier to use Wordfast (my preferred translation memory application) and to count the number of source and, eventually, target words, but there's no getting around having to page through the file.

Still, it's nice to know that currently, I have 5,000 words in one assignment and a mixture of 4,000 new words and 4,000 "pretranslated" words in another. With any luck, I ought to be finished with them all by the close of business on Thursday.

But that assumes that I get down and do some work today. Like, now!

Cheers...

P.S. My standings in the LJ Idol writing competition took a dramatic turn for the better over the weekend, so thanks to all who voted to keep me in!

Scooting along...

I managed to catch a glimpse of the sky during one of Shiloh's Call of the Wild moments today, and it seemed to me there were patches of blue here and there, but not enough to turn the tide. It's dark now, and although there are no stars out, I can make out some lights from businesses along Highway 160, a little over a mile away.

The wood seller came through, and I feel a little like a character in a Robert W. Service poem, happily stuffing logs into a wood-burning stove and enjoying the warmth. (Of course, I have to make sure I don't go overboard with this exercise, for even though we had the flue cleaned thoroughly just recently, there's no telling how much creosote might've built up since then, and a chimney fire is not something I really want to deal with. Ever.)

I've completed about 3,000 words of the item due Thursday, which is entirely inadequate, but it's been that kind of day. I may do another 1,000 words or so, then I plan to get a good night's rest and hit the ground running tomorrow morning.

Maybe by then it will have well and truly stopped snowing.

Cheers...