Trying to be productive

It's difficult in the summer. Everything slows down, including me. In previous years I've managed to wake up about 6am and start the day with some weeding, but this year Sophia (Daniel's cat) keeps waking us in the night. As she did with him last year. She's adopted us temporarily in his absence, it appears, and while flattering it's also rather a nuisance. It means I don't wake in the morning until about 7am, and that's with the cicadas chattering so I don't feel rested.

Anyway, I'm managing to do a couple of hours of housework/pottering when I'm up and past the needing-coffee stage. Opening shutters, cleaning, bin-emptying, laundry, mopping, whatever. Then I take a cool shower (bliss!) after which I switch on the a/c in the living room where the computers sit for the summer.

But oh, how easy it is to find the hours rush by as I read email and forums, catch up on other blogs, follow links to more links, and end up doing nothing constructive. Of course after an hour or so my arms or eyes will get tired, so I take a break, but it's only to pick up whatever novel I'm reading, or to put a few more pieces in the current jigsaw. Occasionally I make a brief foray out into the rest of the house, but not for more than about five minutes at a time until the evening when I cook. Even that's minimal at present. At lunch-time we eat cold food anyway.

What's worse, I have several useful things to do on the computer, which I've listed. Catching up on my web-sites, checking links, making modifications. Ensuring the accounts are up-to-date. Sorting out my online photos, and scanning some more. Doing a back-up and defragmenting. Writing review for the much-neglected Ciao and Dooyoo sites. Or even updating a few of the old ones, where information has changed.

Do I do these things? Well, I didn't last week. Yesterday I did catch up on two weeks' worth of accounting into Quicken. Today I started by creating yet another two blogs to get my mind organised - I'm not sure how I'll manage to keep up with so many, but I hope to. Then I spent some time updating my old books site with all the fiction I read up to the end of 2004 (which I had written long-hand in a notebook) and including some links to my book reviews blog.

But all that took most of the day, or at least most of the time since 11am when I turned on the a/c.

Tim's out tonight at 'Lighthouse', a church group for international students. He leads the singing on his guitar, and also enjoys playing games and so on at the beginning. He commented as he left the house at 7.30 that it's already beginning to get dark earlier. He's right. It's now 8.15pm and totally dark. Last week Tim had to put on his sun-hat to go to Lighthouse. A couple of weeks ago it was still reasonably light at 8.30. One thing I miss about the UK is the long light evenings in the summer. Then again, it's just as well it gets dark early because at least the temperature cools down a bit after the sun has set.