Scraps (n. ,fem., singular)

So I go out looking for the rest of my supplies for the mod today. I got a late start since I didn’t get up ’til eleven (but since I went to bed at three it was a normal nights sleep, so to speak) but found the right paints at Home Depot. It’s a different brand, but it’s still made for plastic so I think it’ll work. Paint acquired I go in search for the more specific odds and ends which I figured I’d find at the local Scrapbook store.

Now, I’ve frequented this store for the last, oh, seven years or so. The owner knows me by sight, even today when I haven’t been in there in quite some time. She thought I must have moved away since I had been so scarce but I told her, the truth, that I just hadn’t been scrapping lately. In fact, I went mostly digital. Then I commented that I had thought to come out to one of their crops with my laptop and harddrive and hang out. To which she basically said “don’t bother.” Now, I understand that digital scrapbooking doesn’t help her business all that much, but I have been known to spend several hundred dollars a quarter there in the past, I still buy my albums and pages there (some of the more pricier components to a scrapbook, price per item compared), direct people who come into work looking for special papers (we’re a print shop, not an overstock paper store) there, tell my friends to go there because I support local businesses, and go there when I need specialty items that I know they carry, even if one of the big box stores carries it too. Now I get a kiss-off because I’m no longer part of her target audience? Well, excuse me…

In fact, the whole experience kinda put me off in general. I had been planning on then going across to the Miracle to see a movie at 2:05 but by the time I was finished at SBM and then went into JoAnn’s (consolation yarn shopping since they didn’t have the rub-ons I wanted) it was 10 minutes to the film and I was no longer in a commaraderie-mood to share a theatre who however many other people were going to see Becoming Jane.

I’m not mad. If I’d been mad I would have told Karen to take the $3.50 pack of crystal stickers I was buying and shove them up her ass. I didn’t. But I don’t think I feel the same loyalty I did as early as this morning. I was just surprised. And I don’t like to be surprised, not like that, the unpleasant type. Anyway, I came home, ate lunch, and retaped the mouse. I decided to go with just making dams for the openings on the mouse-top and going ahead as planned. Of course, as soon as I applied the first coat out on the patio the thunder started to bump. Oh well, it may take a bit longer to dry between coats, but I’ll get it done.

That’s exactly what that blasted keyboard is not doing.

After popping off and reassembling the key-tops onto painters tape to keep everyone together and in order and paintable, I started to attempt to pry the case apart. First of all, this plastic bruises and scrapes like a freaking peach! What the hell is up with that? Second of all, they glued the thing together. Oh, yes, I went to attach the skinny little front piece and see what was holding it together. What? Oh, yes, some sort of double-sided sticky foam stuff and I just said to hell with it. I mean, even if I got it apart how was I supposed to get it back together?

But I’m not stopping. No. I just taped off the sections underneath the keys, taped off the 5 little mushy buttons of the number pad , and taped over any other bit that couldn’t be painted. It’s ready to pain tomorrow. Maybe.

The mouse I just didn’t even try. Okay, I did, but it was pretty clear that it wasn’t meant to come apart. I’m not completely certain how many steps it’s going to take me to get it painted because of needing to accommodate the open channels that allow the right and left to click independently, but even if I have to paint it with model paint I’ll make it work somehow. I still need to find the red Krylon Fusion. I found white no problem, and it’s going to be the base-color anyway, so I can start in tomorrow. But I need to find the red so I can get it all painted within the 24 hours the can recommends.

I’m still thinking over the tape-job on the top of the mouse. Maybe the solution will come to me in my sleep. These things usually do. Or in the shower tomorrow morning.