idle musings

Thunder?

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I thought I heard thunder while I was working, but it could just as easily been a kaiju belching given how this year has been going. I think its marginally less hot and sticky tonight but I couldn’t swear to it.

Still, its been a long but productive week as we inch to the halfway point. I’m sure in a couple of days I’ll be blinking and wondering what happened to the week.

I am meant to be on leave from the end of this week, but things are happening with and for a member of Lady M’s staff that may necessitate her working anyway to cover for his imminent paternity leave. Given how tired from broken sleep I am, it is possible I’ll sleep through my whole leave. Unlikely, I’ll grant you, but possible.

Here’s hoping for more burping kaiju.

Careful Choices

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I’m finally getting head around the Amazon Merch scheme, in as much as how the Tier system works: essentially they are labelled with numbers that correspond to how many products or designs that you can sell at any one time.

As of the time of writing, I am in the basic level called Tier10, which allows ten designs. For the curious they can be found by searching for Ludd Clothing on the Amazon website. My original reading of the documentation led me to believe that this meant I could have multiple items with the same design so that there would be ten designs but umpteen items based on those designs.

Its not quite so generous – understandable from a quality control point of view – being ten designs including variants such as t-shirt or sweatshirt. The tier level won’t go up until I have sold ten items and the designs manually checked. The next tier is 25.

So I’m carefully monitoring and adjusting what I have up there while continuing to expand the RedBubble Ludd72 range of designs that includes clothing, stickers, prints, phone cases, and all sorts of odds and ends.

Depending on feedback I may change around what is on offer to differentiate between the stores more, but if nothing else the whole exercise has been good practice reminding me of what I can do with Photoshop Elements.

In the meantime, here’s a quick and totally mercenary nudge to buy my stuff?

Feeling Hot Hot Hot

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Well we won’t be going to Disney this year, but the heat today in the South of England is roughly comparable to the weather we’d have had out there anyway, so maybe this is nature’s way of apologising for coronavirus.

We were due to get the results back from Lady M’s MRI scan this morning, but the specialist got called in to perform emergency surgery first thing, so we’ll talk at some point this afternoon. Work sent me home so I can look after her, so it at least gives me a chance to catch up on work emails rather than be front of house. On the positive side, the leaks from upstairs have been fixed, so that’s a good thing.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m back to the fridge for cold water. Stay hydrated everyone!

People Like My Stuff?

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No matter how many times people admire my artwork I’m still caught in the imposter syndrome trap of not believing it – because my brain insists that it’s all a trick and I’m being set up for a fall. Yay for survivor-brain and being a burnt-out ex-gifted child. Okay, this is a roundabout way of telling you I had the amazing news that someone has actually bought one of my redbubble designs in the last twenty four hours, so somebody in Canada has the dubious honour of being the first person in the world to wear my artwork on their face.

Whoever you are: thank you very very much, you mad fool. I have raised a glass in your honour this evening.

I also this morning received an acceptance email to be able to sell through the Amazon Merch program. If nothing else it has forced me to work out how to do transparencies for png files, let alone work my way through the extremely unintuitive user interface this evening (which has led me to drink the rest of the bottle after first saluting my Redbubble customer).

So – that’s a nice thing that has happened today, and I shall use it to beat my imposter syndrome with a massive stick on an ongoing basis.

Workspace Shenanigans

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I’ve been rearranging my home working space today to take advantage of Lady M getting a second screen from work so that I can reclaim my aging Xerox monitor (17 years and counting). I have daisy-chained screen adapters from digital to vga to hdmi to work with my very cut-down aging laptop, and have grabbed a spare stool in the spare room. I’m using one of the glass-topped desk units that came back from Switzerland with Lady M just tucked inside the room – so the real test will be tomorrow when it’s time for D&D.

Why all this effort? Well my leg is still spasming and generally hurting every time I’m sat for any length of time on our sofa, so I’m hoping that a slightly different seating arrangement will help my leg heal properly. We’ll see. In the meantime I’m carrying on with setting up items on the redbubble site and have finally managed to get Amazon to accept my financial and tax credentials so that I can sell Kindle writings and potentially more merchandise through them

Fingers crossed, and all that.

A Long Week

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Well, what a week that’s been, and there’s still more to go. We’ve had libraries reopening, the wait for an MRI still ongoing for Lady M, aches and pains, and life going on.

I can tell the Lady M is starting to feel a little more comfortable as she’s making noises about logging in to work again. I still see her getting very drained very quickly so we’ll see what her management say about some limited hours. Hopefully it will stop her brain exploding a while.

The library reopening has so far gone smoothly enough, with the public largely pleased to see us, even with the limited service available. It’s all new, and a bit odd, but its working. I’m back in on Friday and I know the time will just fly by.

And myr s has an amazing new haircut, having had their first experience of a barber’s shop. They also got a new job confirmed today that I think they’ll really enjoy, so a great day all round on their front.

I’ve even heard from the Charleesi, who is decidedly not resting on her laurels but is trying some freelance writing while the job hunt continues. She’s a grafter with a lot of talent and determination so there’s little doubt there’s success to follow.

And me? I’m exhausted, but there’s nothing new there. I’m worried for Lady M, and missing myr s something fierce, but we’ll get there in the end.

Oh? Sunshine? Again?

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I thought we’d had all the good weather we were going to have now that people have been out and about more. I am pleasantly surprised therefore to have clear blue skies and sunshine all around as I go to pick up my prescription renewals.

Last night’s DDC game was fun for me, if no one else, in that it allowed me no small amount of GM sadism. The group is still investigating the buried remains of an old goblin temple, and had discovered several very old sets of remains from what looked like a pitched battle.

Beyond an open archway was a large room with benches along the walls and an enormous carpet that smelled awful. Rather than just take this in as a bit of scene dressing, there then followed real fear as they tried to investigate for traps, or some nefarious purpose to the carpet. At one point they thought the carpet might leap into life and try to eat them.

It was only when someone tried to flip the carpet, and the corner tore off wetly in their hand, that they accepted that their GM had been telling the truth the whole time – that it was just a carpet and there were no traps.

Okay, I may have used the “are you sure?” and “which corner are you reaching for?” approach, but I think I have done my job well in instilling caution in my players. I’m sure the next carpet will be just as innocent.

Would I lie to you?

Low Spoons

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We’re not gaming tonight, as across the board we’re variously at a low ebb, ill, depressed, exhausted, in pain, and/or all of the above. So that’s fun.

Instead I’ve been playing around with photoshop some more while watching a boxset and occasionally exchanging texts.

There’s a lot of rough edges but I’ll keep tweaking it, and it’ll be interesting to see where it goes when I’ve the energy to explore it further.

Making the Most of Things

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A colleague told me yesterday to try sitting on a tennis ball to relieve the pain that she believes is sciatica. So that happened. I shall keep an eye out for a spare, I’m sure I’ve seen one knocking around somewhere while cleaning out the library.

It’s fine. Its just pain. As long as I keep active nothing seizes up too badly.

As a morale boost though some Discworld merchandise themed around the Assassins Guild arrived at lunchtime. I used to have a diary at work based around the same organisation, and I do miss it, if only for its sleekness and the bemused expressions of colleagues.

Today had at least a portion of it devoted to arranging risk assessments for next week, so there was some productivity at least. In other news I got a bit bored and started photoshopping more pictures of myself:

I need to get out more

At least if I go missing mysteriously there will be plenty of options for alarming photos for the media. Oh well, time for bed I think.

Guerilla Tidying

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Psst, there’s an advantage to being a library manager during lockdown. I get to go in there when no one else is around and sit and read and look after the books.

The libraries, I am sure of it, get upset if left alone too long. I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve had systems play up, or books slip from shelves when they’ve been alone for too long.

One of my libraries is due to be decorated this week, so I joined a couple of other managers to do some preparations ahead of the workmen arriving. Vulnerable books have been relocated, outdated paperwork shredded, and access points cleared so things can be quietly and efficiently completed with a minimum of annoyance to the library itself.

I could swear that the library is all aquiver about the attention its getting after weeks of quiet – its certainly been good to see colleagues again and to do something practical while maintaining our distances.

One or two books may have been perused in the process…