Day: July 19, 2013

Updates on Progress and Other Things

By / July 19, 2013 / 1 Comment

I am tentatively, and with fear of jinxing, declaring my desktop computer to be fixed. We replaced the motherboard almost two weeks ago and it has not crashed since then.

There are only 35 more coin orders to ship. They are all orders where the person who purchased the coins has not given me an address.

Pre-orders for The Body Politic have been progressing well. We’re almost two weeks in and almost sold out of sketch editions. The books were delivered yesterday and my garage smells like triumph. (Triumph is the smell of 5000 freshly printed books.)

Gleek was laid flat by a migraine today, the second she’s had in the past couple of weeks. Sadly this is likely a gift from my genes. I had periodic migraines for about a year when I was her age. I’m taking it as a sign that we need to pay more attention to healthy eating. Not that I think that will solve the problem, but it is a generally good idea.

I’ve finished up the edits on the Tub of Happiness reprint. There were over a hundred corrections to evaluate and apply. I’ve handed half a dozen image edits to Howard. Once those are done, I can upload files to the printer and call it done.

I got copies of the Jay Wake book back. I’m not entirely pleased with the print on demand cover, but the contents are exactly the way I intended. In a week I will get to deliver these copies and then work will begin on the final iteration.

Travel to the Cascade Writer’s Conference and Jay Wake has been arranged. I’m looking forward to attending a writer event and to supporting the efforts of those creating Jay Wake.

Monday will be my day for shipping things to GenCon. We need to send coins, hats, mugs, and The Body Politic. Also on the preparing for GenCon task list: Banners and flyers.

There is also a preparing for WorldCon task list. Howard has acquired new boots and the new tux will be showing up soonish. I still need to buy Howard’s plane tickets. There is math to do in order to figure out how much capitol we can spend on this event. I also need to do the math “guess how much product to send” dance. At least we’ve arranged for transportation of merchandise.

Salt Lake City ComicCon is in September. I keep forgetting about it because it is a newer addition to the schedule. I should make a list for this.

The Unofficial Anecdotal History of Challenge Coins has done some basic collection, but we haven’t yet begun significant editorial work. Once Howard and I hammer out a process, I expect it to go fairly quickly.

We need a new dentist because I don’t trust either of the two we’ve worked with in the past month. Kiki’s wisdom teeth should probably come out before she heads off to college.

My new car still does not have a name. I’ve been noodling and trying to find one that fits. I’m not sure that I’m going to though. The closest I’ve come is realizing that this new car functions as our family’s sky bison, the friendly white thing that is willing to haul all of our people and our stuff, but it can’t be Appa and none of the other sky bison have names.

Howard has been writing prose regularly and making significant progress through his writing commitments. I’m happy about this. I’m working on writing as well.

My intended push toward healthier eating did not materialize in June. I’m going to have to expend some effort and do meal planning. Because it is time for us to be cooking more, eating healthier, and eating out less. Better for our budget and us.

Tonight I cooked a meal using thyme grown in my back garden. I’m quite happy about that.

Link’s doctor has said that no more follow up appointments are necessary. We just need to continue the home treatments we’ve been applying and everything should clear up.

I finally convinced Patch to let me trim the hair around his ears and neck. He looks less scraggly now.

And it has gotten late enough that I can’t remember the other things I intended to post updates about. Time to sleep.

My Summer

By / July 19, 2013

“So how is your summer going?” my neighbor asked as we sat on my front porch. She’s not a neighbor I visit with often, just about once a month when she comes over as my visiting teacher. It is one of the programs of my church where women of the congregation are assigned to visit each other. It is a good program, helping people make connections and build friendships where they otherwise might not. Like me and this neighbor. We’ve known each other for years, but not had much cause to sit down and just chat. This does leave me with a bit of a dilemma though, because to really clarify how my summer has been would require quite a lot of back story. I could spend hours explaining how our business goes, the various ailments and recoveries of my children, the transitions we have paused for the month of July, and dozens of other things big and small which all contribute to how I feel about my summer on this particular sunny afternoon.

I give all of that a wide miss and simply answer, “Good.” It is truth. Things are good, particularly on that porch with the air warm around me, but the sun veiled by the shade of a tree. I can look across the mowed lawn with it’s clumps of clipped grass that really ought to be raked, but it was so much effort to get my son to mow that I chose not to spend effort arguing about raking as well. There are also weeds aplenty in sight, but I look up instead to the pink blossoms of the mimosa tree. I can smell them as the breeze wafts toward me. Wasps fly languidly in the tall grass and my cat is stretched out on the warm pavement in the shade. On that hot porch I can immerse myself in the feel of a summer afternoon when nothing is particularly pressing. My to do list has been steadily shrinking. This surprises me because for so long things accumulated far faster than I could get them done. Now they are starting to be done.

The coins are shipped. The Body Politic has arrived en-masse. Link’s doctor says he does not need any more follow up appointments. Kiki has been to her orientation meeting. There are still business things to do, but it is a reasonable number, one that allows for me to sit on my front porch and visit with a neighbor. Of course she wants more detail than “Good.” So I try to focus down a little bit more on one small piece of life. Somehow life is easier to share in pieces. Since Kiki is on the porch with us, we end up talking about her orientation and her impending departure for college. It is a comprehensible challenge, easy to define and explain. Much simpler than talking about my writing, or my worries about the coming school year these things are complex and I feel many contradictory things in relation to them. It is nice to focus on an aspect of life rather than trying to hold all of it in my head at once, as I so often do.

Perhaps this is why I feel so calm during summer afternoons when I step outside. In those moments I let myself be fully present in that moment rather than on a computer with half a dozen windows open, trying to remember which thing should come next. I don’t have such a respite in the winter months and I miss it. My neighbor stayed only for a short visit before getting on her bike and pedaling home. I sat for a few minutes after she left, just feeling the fading heat of the day and knowing that this summer is good.