Writing this Thursday evening for posting Friday morning at my normal time.

I had a busy day today. This morning I started with transcribing letters from Saudi Arabia. I managed to get four items documented in my files. I made a count of the letters not yet tackled. It’s 29. So if I can do four a day, the transcribing job will be complete around the end of April. I can deal with that.

Next, after a few stock trades and my usual breakfast, I scanned poetry critiques and saved them electronically. Each scan requires proofreading and some formatting to make sure the scanning was accurate. I managed to complete critiques for four poems, a couple less than my typical workday. After that, I counted the poem critiques still do be done in the small notebook. It’s 69. If I can average five a day, I can finish this notebook by around May 8th. I’m good with that. However, still looming in the background is the larger of my two critique notebooks. I’m actually not anxious to shift to that.

While I was doing that, I received a call from the admin assistant of  the local insurance agency for my homeowner’s policy. Last week I received a letter from the national company, saying they were aware of the repairs needed to the house (certainly from their rep came out to evaluate our water damage claim that they denied) and asked to submit evidence we had repaired the damage, implying they might drop our coverage if we hadn’t. Last week the agent said she would come out and look at it. So the admin assistant said the agent had been at our house today and wanted us to submit invoices for the repairs.

I have to tell you that this irked me. They refuse to cover our damage, threaten to cancel our coverage, the agent comes out to look at our house and never even knocks on the door, then asks us to submit receipts to her? And doesn’t call us but has the admin assistant do it? I told the admin I was very upset. She put me on hold and in a few seconds the agent came on. I said I couldn’t believe she didn’t even knock on the door—most of the damage, which has already been repaired, is viewable only from the inside or our deck which is reachable only from the inside. She said would come out on Friday. Meanwhile, despite my displeasure at this company, I sent electronic copies of the receipts.

After that, I headed to downtown Rogers to attend an author event. I wasn’t the featured author, but I know the two women who were featured and their two book cover artists. I went mainly to support them. The venue was the Rogers Experimental House, which is the headquarters of the Artists of Northwest Arkansas; it was their meeting. The presentations and readings were fine, but then they transitioned into doing art exercises based on the readings from the books. I don’t do art, so I used the time to brainstorm my writing and make a to-do list of sorts.

From there, it was on to Scooters for a large house blend, then to the Rogers Public Library. I had two and a half hours to kill before the meeting of the Scribblers & Scribes, my writers critique group. We had eight people attend, Four people shared writing, and one passed out a copy of a short-ish book for s to take home and review.

We had one tense moment when, on one of the pieces shared, we disagreed on the effectiveness of the writing and suggestions on corrective measures. Protocol on how critiques are given were broken. I don’t know if I’m the only one who noticed it or if others did. Now I’m trying to figure out what to do about it.

It’s now just before 10 at night. The day is winding down. Tomorrow will be busy around the house, with no outside appointments. Plenty of time to transcribe, scan, maybe edit a little, complete a few stock trades and a little yard work.