STATUS: Wednesday, August 10th

The Daily Report

August has proven to be a bad month for plans. Yesterday one item at the top of my list was to confirm my hotel reservation for WorldCon, after there were some shenanigans back in July with one of the convention hotels being still under construction and some other administrative screw-ups by the con itself. In the process, I found an email from Friday that got ignored as spam, saying that due to ongoing renovations at our hotel (not the one under construction!), we were being relocated to another one twice as far away. I think the reason it got filtered as spam was that there were several dozen other recipients CCed on it with whom I had never corresponded.

Yes. The hotel open CCed everybody affected, broadcasting our email addresses, situation, and the hotel we’re now staying at to a random assortment of strangers. It’s not too likely to result in anything bad, but that’s not really the point. It’s very distressing, and frustrating because it’s entirely the fault of the hotel/the person who sent the email, but there isn’t a remedy. The arrow cannot be called back to the bow.

Cue me dealing with the fallout of this, figuring out the logistics of two physically disabled people getting around downtown Kansas City, making fallback plans, talking to the staff at the hotels, and dealing with the shot of travel-related anxiety created by uncertainty and change.

After finding out as much as we can about the area (and realizing that I’d stayed in another hotel very close to it before, as a teenager), we did decide that the new hotel can work and we’re actually looking forward to staying in it. But it basically destroyed my work day.

I’m impressed with the staffer at the new hotel; less impressed with the one at the hotel that bounced us. It’s not so much the renovation thing. I do think it’s odd that they didn’t know they wouldn’t have enough rooms until less than two weeks before, but maybe something took longer than quoted and they were keeping their fingers crossed it would be done under the wire. I can roll with that kind of thing.

It’s the handling of it. It’s the mishandling of private, personal information. It’s the fact that the initial email on the subject contained multiple points misinformation that I’m not going to get into, but which the staffer at the new hotel had to immediately and very apologetically correct. She got left on the hook cleaning up a situation that was made messier than it needed to be.

Anyway. That was my day yesterday. Figuring out the logistics of downtown Kansas City and talking to hotel people about hotel things.

Considering the impact of WorldCon, I had already planned on putting Tales of MU on vacation for the two updates closest to it (the Friday I’m there and the Tuesday after I get back). The vagaries of the summer have already got it down to once a week for the end of July and August so far.

Given all this, I’m officially calling it a reduced schedule for August: once a week, irregular. I hate to do this so soon after establishing a regular update pattern (and it will mean less money, because of the Patreon model), but it’s better than burning out.

Financial Status

Not much to say here. September will be leaner than expected because of the reduction in Tales of MU output, though the continued growth of other revenue streams could help mitigate that.

State of the Me

Did not sleep well last night; combination of heat and anxiety.

Plans For Today

Going to be finalizing the judging of the stories for the first gender challenge, with an eye towards announcing the winners and posting the round-up today or tomorrow. Today is the plan, but lack of sleep may catch up with me towards the end of the day.