My Novels

Saturday, January 05, 2008

New year, new beginnings

And then again, return to some familiar territory.

First, I have accepted several freelance assignments from the newspaper. There's a special section coming out in March profiling local people, and I had already written two profiles before I left. When I picked up my check Friday, Amanda (news editor) asked me if I'd like to finish the other three profiles I'd started and I agreed. I will get paid a set fee per article, and can sign out and use the camera for assignments.
So this is a good compromise; I get paid for writing, but can work on my own, do interviews when convenient, write the articles at home. No office position, and that's good in that I can still have lots of time for other activities and yet get out among people for interviews AND still have my byline in the newspaper. I also have ideas for regular columns, but will wait and see how I like this new arrangement.

I have already lined up one interview for next Saturday, and trying to set up another one for this coming week.

The bitter cold abated today, and I went on a long bike ride, then took the dogs on a walk. Overcast and mild, just right for being outdoors. Temps will remain in the 50s/60s for the next week, which will help keep my heating costs down.

The woman over the animal shelter volunteer group also called me, and we must have talked an hour. She was thrilled I plan to do some volunteer work, and also write some articles for the newspaper about the rescue efforts, etc. Additionally, I may help out with their website, and take photos of fostered pets up for adoption to update on Petfinder. In a few weeks, the woman and another volunteer are going on tours of animal shelters in two nearby larger cities, as a way to get improvement ideas for our local shelter. They invited me to go along, and I plan to -- possibly taking pictures and writing an in-depth article for perhaps Lifestyles.

Today I talked with my mother-in-law and the reality of bro-in-law's death seems to have sunk in. I don't want to go into things here, but there's a cloud of uncertainty still about his death. There was an autopsy and the results haven't come back yet. So we'll see, I guess. About the only thing that could have made DH's death worse would have been something unsavory about it all. I feel so sorry for my sister-in-law.

Sister's mother-in-law is having health trouble again, back in the hospital. They are all so stressed out by her situation, it's a real ordeal.

And with that update, I'm outta here for now. I added Twitter to the sidebar, so there may be more frequent updates than on the blog.

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