Taking a break

Happy Tuesday!
Thanks to an extended network outage at one of the offices I serve I got to work late yesterday. This means that the deck sat idle for one more day. The project started last weekend and at this point 75% of the wood surface has been stripped and is ready for cleaning and sanding. I am hoping to finish the harsh chemical phase either tonight or tomorrow, weather permitting, and move to the sanding and possibly starting the painting this weekend. I can't tell you how much I didn't miss working with harsh chemicals again. The nostalgic sting of chemical burns on my arms brought back ghosts of crappy jobs left long behind. The tightness around the chest when you get a faceful of fumes. Good times...
I've finished book seven of the Dresden Files and now I face a dilemma. I purchased those seven books as e-books at a huge discount. "Huge discount" is also known as "a rational price for e-books" in my world. 
The odds of the remaining books being discounted any time soon is pretty slim, and for as much as I'm enjoying the books while I'm reading them, the odds of me revisiting the stories are also pretty slim. It might be time for me to venture out and see if I can suffer through visits to my local library without damaging my anti-social persona.
Until then I'm digging into some titles that have been sitting on my to-do pile for a while now. More on them if they tickle my fancy.
Reading through the Dresden books did give me some food for thought. I am back to sketching out my story ideas and was struck by the effect of a forced first person narrative. Since the universe I am imagining has many moving parts I am considering pulling together a few first person narratives in essay or short story form to help me flesh out the rules of the world. A day in the life of a mining-crew engineer. A day in the life of a trading-base vendor. How do people inhabit these scenarios. What is their motivation for maintaining the infrastructure I'm forcing them into... sounds fun and something that may provide content for my larger narratives.

I really need to find those writer-workshop podcasts I keep hearing about.
Time to prep for work!