the deep moans round with many voices

1. I ended up buying two things at the service auction despite my best intentions. *sigh* Well, one of them is a birthday gift to myself, and the other is a seat at what should be a very good dinner, and it's all to support the church, so... whatever!

The live auction ended around 9pm, and I was doing various clean-up things until 9:45pm. Bundling tablecloths, putting all unsold items from the silent auction onto two tables for people to hopefully buy on Sunday (and rearranging unsold artwork on various easels behind those tables), putting sold-but-unclaimed items on yet another table for eventual pickup, gathering bid sheets and handing them to the church secretary for scrap paper, folding tables and moving them into the closet or upstairs to the arch room or downstairs to the basement, moving small cafe-style tables over to the side and positioning chairs around them for coffee hour in the morning, etc., etc. I end up doing a bunch of heavy lifting in these circumstances, mostly because I physically can and am therefore willing.

I also acquired nine slices of roast pork -- leftovers from the dinner that preceded the auction -- which will make for some nice meals this coming week. I'll just have to remember to buy and cook some accompanying vegetables.

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2. This afternoon UPS delivered my out-of-print canon material for Yuletide. Yay! I reread the first chapter, which is as entertainingly ridiculous as I remembered, and I am renewed in my conviction that my recipient's prompt is exactly what I myself would have wanted if I'd been the one to request this canon, and in fact is a story I might have written completely unprompted and of my own volition if I'd owned the canon before today.

To be honest, I am almost suspicious of how perfect this situation is. But hey, I guess things have to work out sometimes, right? :-)

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3. I applied for a small consultancy project today, which may or may not pan out depending on whether the organization in question has funding for the position I was tentatively offered. This is the downside of networking -- on the one hand, you learn about chances you'd never otherwise be aware of, but because they're not official job postings, there's a lot more uncertainty involved. I do hope it pulls together, though -- I mean, A) I could use the money, and B) it would look good on my resume.

I stuck a bunch of citations into my essay, edited to add a couple more supporting points and thus raise the wordcount, created a little 'works cited' page, uploaded it, and confirmed that yes, I was submitting my assignment for grading. It is not what I consider great writing, but it does answer the topic, and it does so in the correct format: a thesis paragraph, some example paragraphs, and a conclusion paragraph. (In other words, tell them what you're going to tell them, tell them, and tell them what you told them. *wry*) Next time I will try to bring in some sources beyond the basic course textbooks, if only to give the illusion of more commitment. In truth, I happen to own several topic-relevant books for unrelated reasons. It shouldn't be hard to flick through and find a relevant passage or two.

The only outside book I used this time was my trusty copy of Writing Research Papers: A Complete Guide, 8th ed., by James D. Lester, because MLA citations, what even. I have always been grateful to my high school's English department for giving every incoming freshman a copy of that book. I never found it useful as a writing guide, but as a handbook for citation format? INVALUABLE.