kirabug’s idea files

So I was writing - but I didn’t start until after 10 and sometime around 1 an old friend popped online to say hi, and well, one thing led to another and the next thing I know I’m reading his blog until 3 am. I can’t say I followed all of his writing - seeing as I’m not up on either the latest political scandals or on off-Broadway theater - but he’s still very well-spoken and entertaining. Oh, and he linked to this and this which I thought y’all might find interesting as well.

On a totally different note, the web usability geek in me was amused at the serious cognitive dissonanace I hit when I first started reading Matt’s blog, because he’s using the same Blogger template as my friend Ginia and the two couldn’t be much more different. So, backgrounds and fonts and such really do make an impression - guess I’d better get off my butt and finish tweaking the design and layout for this place. The forum template I’m desigining is functional but essentially a disaster.

And it’s obvious that I’m rambling at this point (I think I’m allowed; it’s 3:20 am after all), here’s a quick wrap-up of the Thanksgiving holiday for those who are interested.

First, I forgot to take pictures. My apologies.

Wednesday I made the mashed potatoes and the sweet potatoes, an act that was punctuated by my overheating my favorite Corning dish empty on a burner I thought I’d shut off and then attempting to pick up the superheated ceramic - which resulted in a small burn on my right hand and my favorite dish in razor-sharp shards all over the kitchen floor. But since it was superheated, they were melted to the kitchen floor. High quality linoleum in the kitchen, obviously. I’m still damned pissed at myself for the carelessness, but have stopped beating myself up because I’m the only one hurt and that’s minor.

Thursday was Thanksgiving itself, which went off pretty much without a hitch. Alton Brown’s turkey brine recipes are excellent, by the way. My family and Nighthawk’s converged here to eat and I think everyone had a pretty good time.

Friday, both Nighthawk and I felt run over by a bus - exhaustion, stress, etc. and slept in late, accomplished nothing. Sinus/migraine all day, possibly dehydration, hard to tell ’cause I can’t concentrate through the pain to analyze it.

Now it’s 3:30 Saturday and I need to sleep. By Tuesday (my next day back at work) my sleep schedule will be total hell. Whee.

So apparently, somebody actually bought a teeshirt from the idea files store the other day. That’s never happened before. It made me grin big grins.

And it inspired me to come up with even more stuff for you to gawk at. Note the image in the top left corner of the homepage - we now have JessieDog Christmas Cards for sale. And, just to make the “robustely priced” nature of CafePress stores complete, I even put the stamps back up. So if you’re made of money, you can now buy stamps!

In all seriousness, I’ve bought at least one of everything that I made (except the stamps) and I’m happy with everything I’ve bought. CafePress’s Direct Printing method (used for the “under 70 degrees = cold!” long sleeve tees and sweatshirts, as well as the kirabug tee) produces a really nice design that isn’t going to chip or flake off - the ink’s printed right into the fabric. I wear mine constantly.

The heat transfer printing does, in fact, look a lot like a high-quality iron-on, but the colors came out really vibrant, and both tees I’ve gotten printed that way (the original kirabug shirt and the “corner office in hell” shirt) are holding up very well.

I’m trying to come up with a design for the new black teeshirts they offer, (I’m thinking something along the lines of “another black teeshirt” or “not goth, just hate colors”) but nothing’s stuck yet. Feel free to suggest ideas in the forum.

Oh, and shipping for orders over $50 is free right now so if you’ve been thinking about buying, this might be a good time to start.

Now, I have to go finish food shopping for Thanksgiving.

So, uh, we were without a database for a little while this evening, but it’s back now.

…

I, uh, think I’m gonna go run some backups, just to ease my nerves.

Which reminds me: if you’re in NaNoWriMo, or you’ve done anything else of note in the past few weeks that you don’t want to lose by freak accident, this is a good time to back up. Yes, right now, while you’re thinking about it.

Go on. I’ll wait.

So let’s see, since the last update, I’ve:

• put together the compound mitre saw only to discover that it doesn’t run. Still have to investigate that.
• baked a total of five pies and four custards, two of which have already been eaten by the crowd at work
• painted the baseboard
• wrote around 6,000 words in the novel, leaving me with only 22,000 or so to go
• procured Bob. Bob is this year’s turkey. Bob is sitting on the bottom of the fridge sulking at the moment.
• gotten way too little sleep.
• locked myself out of the house this morning such that I had to wait for my husband to drive home from work and unlock the door so I could get my keys, so that going to work was even an option
• been damn cold, probably because of all the unexpected outside time today
• decided to go to bed early.

It’s not looking likely that I’m going to succeed at NaNoWriMo. That isn’t to say that I’ve given up, but with just over a week to write just under the allotted word count, and totally knowing that I’m too tired tonight and too busy Wednesday and Thursday, it’ll be one hell of a challenge. But then, only 6,000 of the 42,000 people who tried last year succeeded, and I’ve already written well more than I have on any other piece of fiction I’ve written ever, so I’m not going to kill myself either.