Scraps (n. ,fem., singular)

You know how as you age what you thought was old doesn’t seem as old anymore? Well, reality can really clash that around for you.

Our production supervisor at work called in sick yesterday, thinking he had the flu or something. Later that day he called his wife to come pick him up and take him to the doctor: he was having a heart attack. Today we found out that it was actually his 2nd heart attack, the first one having occurred 4 months ago when he thought he was just having really bad indigestion. Um, yeah. He’s 45.

Holy Crap! I’m 32, okay, and 45 seems like it’s just around the corner. While I know that heart attacks can happen at any age and it didn’t help that he was a smoker and he seldom went to the doctor, still! It’s not a comforting thought.

Thankfully he seems to be doing well after having 2 stints put in 1 artery and strict orders regarding diet, stopping smoking and cholesterol and blood thinning drugs but dude…

especially when you feel like you’re running on empty in the hours you’ve got. Such has been the last several weeks.

After finding out the results of the liver biopsy tagged me for a rare genetic protein anomaly that leaves my liver and lungs vulnerable to damage (aren’t I lucky?) I go to Dr Z for the 6-month check in to find out my cholesterol and insulin are high and now my thyroid is, too. Joy. The alpha 1 antitrypsin deficiency is still in question as to severity (waiting on appointments with the pulmo and a new gastro) but mainly will mean I get flu/pneumo vaccines each winter and more aggressive treatment for respiratory infections. The cholesterol might have more to do with the raising thyroid levels (right now I’m at subclinical hypothyrodism level) than my diet (which is already high-fiber/low-carb) though, as always, the goal is to loose weight and improve labs overall.

In other news! Work is good, not always as productive as I’d like, but some days are tougher than others. Just finished up another month of articles this weekend and have 6 of the required 7 titles planned for October. It’s been a year since the new contract and I was worried then that I’d run out of ideas. Thankfully that doesn’t seem to be much of a problem at this point, so as long as I can keep all irons in the fire that should still be going good. The comic went SWIMMINGLY this past month with the story that I’ve chose to call “A Fine Romance” that chronicled the first 3 months Spectrum and I dated. I’m sure there will have to be another installment in a few months, but for now I’m switching gears and hoping to use the time the next month’s updates will allow to work on the Year 1 book.

And still the ideas come. I have so much that I want to do, one of these days I hope to get a fraction of it started

Tags: health, work, hobbies, AIAT

“anyone comprised with an immune system”

As it was a warning for the young and the elderly to avoid Serrano, etc. peppers as they could still contain some salmonella (tomatoes having been given the all-clear, not that it does me any good) I’m fairly sure that should have been “anyone with a comprOMised immune system” but that’s just a theory

Decent day at work, no real tummy troubles (yes!) and an SCA meeting tonight. Got a load of towels and sheets laundered, tested out a new printable for Random Acts… (functionally sound, just needs color and accessories) and tidied up a bit. Also came up with a new layout idea for the RA website. Now just to figure out how to get the ComicPress theme to do what I want it to I don’t expect it to be impossible, just challenging. Challenging I can do

Some days you win, some days you lose. Today was sorta in the middle.

Work was okay ’til lunch. When said lunch decided it didn’t want to play nice. Granted, I didn’t feel too well after supper last night (which was the same thing: Garden Salad with Salmon, simple, healthy, tasty) but I thought it was a fluke. Er, no. So, okay, feeling very ill for a couple hours while I trudge through some receivables reports. Enter confused client. Confused client is sorta disputing an alterations charge because the salesman (big surprise) neglected to inform, yadda yadda yadda, Boss walks in as I’m getting off of that call, explain to him what he overheard, have to dress-down salesman who tries to tell me he told the client all about it (which I doubt since there’s nothing in writing and it’s a credit card order and he knows we have to have price changes in writing).

And my body said no. My face and chest splotched bright red and stayed that way, burning, full-on flushing, for the rest of the day. Which, you know, might not sound like much but it’s actually really draining. Thing is, this isn’t the first time this reaction had happened, recently, I’ve been having more symptoms in the last month or so compared to the last 6 months prior combined (or longer). It kinda bums me out that this stuff is back again, that I might not be able to breeze through that next round of dr’s appointments and labwork in September. It’s not what it was 3 years ago, before I knew what it was and what I could do to help the situation, but it’s ramping up a bit. Trying not to spaz about it, and all, but it’s annoying.

On the up side, though, I totoally managed to get all the inking for this week’s comics taken care of tonight, scanned, uploaded and blogged. Whew! That’s what took today from majorly sucking to being moderately okay. Had a very safe supper, ditched the rest of the salad leftovers, and am looking forward to a much better day tomorrow. I think it might be a good time to work on the next article and play with the Print Gocco kit, finally: two birds, one stone.

What? I’m all out of the funny.

Comics are done for the week, leaving me plenty of time to write after dinner tomorrow night. Things are still on track, so far, both at work and home. [Passed] Time for bed.

Not totally, of course, there was the scanning and the PhotoShop cleaning of the print pages which did get done. And all those grays I was erasing stray marks to be able to pick them up better? They totally dropped out anyway. Apparently 20% cool gray is ass for scanning. Oh well, just tweaked the levels and left them out. I was kinda worried how they’d print anyway so it’s probably just as well. If it’d been only a little uneven I just would have gone back over it with the airbrush to fix it. Oh, well, live and learn.

Other than that, nothing had really happened tonight. I had totally planned to start on this week’s strips tonight, at least getting pencils down but, well, no. Didn’t happen. And I’m not going to beat myself up over it, either. I can definitely get Wednesday’s up tomorrow night so there’s no crisis and after pushing myself so much these past couple of weeks I think a night off is not uncalled for.

Now about July… July is going to be a “chill” month for me. Of course I still have the comic and my eHow articles to do but here are some things I’m not going to be doing:
*taking on new projects
*scripting Act 2 of Wedding Tarot (it’ll wait til August)
*committing to new projects for future months
*throwing a party (it was a possibility, but no, I need the break)
etc.

I also plan to curb the superfluous spending for the month of July, kinda like a lifestyle detox. Of course, that just meant that I ordered the print gocco machine tonight rather than waiting on later this month, but I’ve been planning to order it for 2+ months now and it will actually be used for an article, at that. But enough excuses. Aside from things like gas and groceries and necessary art supplies it’s gonna be nix on the other frivolities. We’ll see how that goes

Now I’ve got Carol Burnett from Annie running through my head. I spent the evening editing a couple of articles and finishing some clay doll parts for one of them. Between all the typing and mousing and drawing and now the clay stuff my right hand is really smarting. Time to dig out that elastic brace and some ibuprofen!

I can hardly wait to check out my pageviews for Random Acts from today. I threw $5 at a Project Wonderful ad (lasted for about 7 hours on a high-traffic site) just to test and I know I got 15 clicks (12 uniques) from the ad but I wonder if more people went to the site directly instead of clicking through. It’ll be interesting to see how many archive crawls I can detect and, more importantly, how many come back later in the week. Basically I earned the paypal money from the eHow WCP and if it’s in my PayPal account its ‘play money’ in my mind, so if it doesn’t pan out, it’s no great loss. If it does, well, then I’ll try a few different sites/days/hour combinations as long as there is funds in the paypal. Thinking about buying a newsletter ad for next week, too, again just to experiment. Baby steps.

So, Wrath of Con is weekend after next and it’s being held in Panama City. Even though I’m really not much of an ocean person and am in no hurry to don that bathing suit I bought last week (doesn’t hurt to be prepared) still, I like the idea of keeping my options open. And since we’ll be right there on the beach, might as well not glow if I DO wear that suit.

In other news. I wore some fun new earrings today that I made totally out of the blue yesterday. They started as an example for an eHow article and then the wire just started talking to me, urging me to stitch into here and there and suddenly i had a really interesting shape. I’ll be including the pattern as part of the article but they were really fun and quick to make. I plan on experimenting with different wire and bead combos and seeing what else I can do with it, when I get the time.

And speaking of time, mine was spent quite wisely today. Not only did I kick butt at work, just getting stuff done right and left, but I managed to get a ton of work done on the comic tonight so that I should have this week’s comics done by tomorrow night. Which is how it should be. I really didn’t like having to work every night before it was set to upload just to keep up. That’s why I really want that buffer built up! Of course, with the other projects I’ve got, an actual buffer might take a little while, but at least I’m on the right track.

It’s merely the Universe’s way of apologizing, in advance, for everything else that’s going to happen.

Actually, my day wasn’t all that bad, I just managed to get two stains on my shirt (one I still don’t know how it happened, I just looked down and there was this splotch of something) so it went from ‘my hair looks so good it’s too bad I’m only going to work’ to ‘thank goodness I’m going straight home.’ I mean, we’re talking the accidental hair perfection that usually only happens the day you’re scheduled to have it cut! You know what I’m talking about…

Anyway. Finished up my 3rd eHow article tonight and have tomorrow’s comic ready to go. Friday’s still needs a lot of work, but it’s all still doable. I’ve been taking the strips to work to ink during lunch and the first day was a little tense (I kept thinking someone was going to come in and start looking over my shoulder or asking questions and I really wasn’t ready to be _that_ public to my workmates–most of whom are not comic people) but today was a bit better. I generally get the lettering and main lines in, which just leaves detailing for after supper. Still need to work on that buffer, though.

Or would that be May? I always get those two confused

Anyway, I debated with myself for about an hour about whether I was going to go to the grocery store today or tomorrow. I didn’t actually NEED the groceries until tomorrow evening but I knew I wouldn’t want to deal with the store PLUS cooking tomorrow night so I resigned myself the tackling the list today. And as a reward for not killing half the people in that store for being absolute imbeciles, I had dessert before dinner.

But really it’s been a productive evening. I finalized another article, started on the pictures for the third of the month (due Thursday, so I’m actually on track to not panic) and pencilled Wednesday’s comic in full and paneled and lettered Thursday and Friday. I even did penance for that dessert on the stationery bike. Not a bad evening. If I keep it up for the next two nights I’ll be able to start getting ahead by this weekend (wouldn’t that be freaking awesome!).

Looking at the to-do list I started the week with is a bit depressing, to be honest. I was able to cross off almost half of what I _did_ get done last night and this morning. Sigh…

Tasks accomplished 8.6 of 17 (some lines have multiple parts, hence the .6)
*Comics 4 out of 4
*Articles 1.6 out of 3
*House 0 out of 4
*Websites 2 out of 5
*Book 1 out of 1

Exercise (not included in to-do list count) 3 out of 7 days

Granted, I still have time today to complete a few more bits of the article list but technically I made that list on Sunday of last weekend, so the week is already up. Time to transcribe what’s left to this week’s list along with the new goals and hope that I manage to juggle things better this time around.

Away from the numbers it looks a little different. I spent quality time with my boyfriend and Mom, accomplished my first w-t-f update schedule with Random Acts…, made a boatload of banners to prepare for advertising said strip, scripted an entire month of RA strips, fought with the comicpress themes for several days, and managed to renew talks on a new opportunity for the webcomic. So what if i did pretty much nothing on the household chores? All in all, I think it counts as a success.

So! The birthday was wonderfully low-key and surprisingly perfect. Spec and I had lunch at the park with the obligatory feeding of the ducks, followed by various shopping and then dinner with the family and Palmie. Afterwards, Palmie came over and played Disney Scene It (a birthday gift from Spec) and we watched a movie. As such, not much got done on the comic site revamp, but that’s okay, the comic went up as scheduled.

Thursday it was back to work, sluggishly, and then squeezing in Friday’s comic before and after the SCA meeting. Once again, it got done, but I really need to start working and working ahead now that I’ve got to 3x per week. But at least I have until Tuesday night to upload the first one of the week.

This evening I started revamping the site’s logo but was gratefully interrupted by Spec’s arrival to watch tv and hang out. Tomorrow is Free Comic Book Day in the morning, followed by an SCA event in the afternoon for me. In deference to the comic and the need to start on my articles for the month, not to mention finishing the banner recreation, I’ll only be going out for the afternoon and court. Sunday I’m supposed to meet up with Books who is in town for her baby shower (which I will miss) before she heads back down to Tampa. Busy weekend!

Theory is that there was some sort of stomach flu going around as I was laid low by it yesterday and at least one other person who was on the trip came down with something when they got home. Suspicious, no? And sucky, yes! Ugh, Tuesday ended up being a non-anything day except lay around spaced out and weak because nothing would stay down. Not that I had an appetite in the least.

Seemed to be better today. Appetite is still on the non-existent side but I made it through some soup tonight and made it through work today. Finished tomorrow’s comic and working frantically on articles that are due by end of day Friday. Whee! Luckily I did get the 2 drafts done before going out of town, they will be finished early tomorrow evening so I just have one to do start to finish in a night or two. It’ll get done and, hopefully, things are calming down a bit now that Vegas is out of the way and the holidays, etc.

I spent almost all of my working hours on a US Dept of Commerce Census. What a pain! But I got it finished and will get it mailed tomorrow and be done with them for another year. Or, well, until the next version they decide to concoct.

At home I did at least make it through an article and a half draft. This is good, this is progress, this will keep me from actually having to work while in Vegas. Woot! Of course, I do still need to get 2 comics done tomorrow night in order for my plan to work. We shall see. Oh, and at some point I really do need to pack! And, you know, clean out my purse for contraband (extra lotions, Jimmy Hoffa, nail files, that sort of thing).

But only just. So I slept through the majority of the weekend which means I’m a bit behind the eight ball but this is nothing new: I merely have a better excuse this time. Intent on not falling behind I picked up dinner on the way home so I could get right to work when I hit the door. I had to bribe my way through finalizing three articles (with chapters from “Grave Apparel”) and force-march my way through tomorrow’s Random Acts… (which is much better art-wise than last week, when the cold just killed whatever talent I generally pretend to have) while listening to the end of Charmed Season 5 play on Minnie. I feel like I haven’t really stopped since I got home. And work wasn’t much better. I need another day off!

Anyway, with Spectrum coming for a visit this weekend I really need to get caught up on everything AND maybe get a little ahead so that I can fully enjoy his visit without having to squeeze work in. Meanwhile nothing really wants to give me a break, so I deal. Also gotta fit taxes in ASAP, at least to make sure I don’t owe anything with the extra 3rd quarter income I ended up with. Yay writing, boo self-employment taxes. Yay being responsible and taking care of them!

Some nights you just have to recognize when you’ve been beat. Tonight was one of those nights.

The plan had been to head somewhere after work for dinner and some clickety-clack on the laptop, draft out an article or two, before the SCA meeting. But after having the Worker’s Comp audit pushed back almost two hours and the ever-present exhaustion and the return of the stabbity headache what I really wanted to do was go home and go to bed until, oh, Monday. Instead, I compromised: I went home, had soup for dinner, and took a one-hour nap. Then the nap became extended another hour. Oh, well, I figure I needed it, right?

Anyway, the other part of the compromise with myself was that I would get up and write after the nap. Well. One of the compelling arguments for not writing away from home tonight was my idea that doing the visuals before I wrote the article would streamline the process more and prevent the pictures from holding up the works. Ergo, I’d stage some photos tonight and be on the right track. Sigh…

I turn on the dining room light and it goes out. Drat. Plus I still needed to clear the New Year’s decorations away from the prime photographing spot (the dining room table) so I took care of all of that and then climbed up to get the globe off the ceiling fan. Man, I hate that, I’m always afraid I’m going to drop it. Anyway, I get it safely off and go in search of spare bulbs. Now, being the good little do-bee I decide that I need to use one of the CFLs that I picked up at IKEA last April. Ta-Daa! It works (after having to search for them) so then I go to replace the cover. Yup. The CFL? Is too long. Not compact enough, apparently, so I have to go get one of the not-as-earth-friendly incandescents. Bother.

But now the stage is set, as it were, to shoot some pixels on practicing calligraphy. Except I recall from Monday night that the camera batteries are caput (I had to take the holiday pictures with TheQ). I go to the box for a refill and there are two. The camera? She takes four. Oh, yes, she’s a greedy little bitch like that, total prima donna. And right about there is where I pressed the ‘fuckit’ button and decided that particular task could wait until tomorrow.

So, instead of writing or photoging and the like, I’m going to swap nights and chart out another chapter of Wedding Tarot. Take that, plan, I call bullshit on your ass.

That was a discussion for the talking heads this morning: whether cold weather in January is actually news. Of course, it is nice to be altered when a hard freeze warning is in effect (which it is for the next 2 nights) but as far as headlines go, a freeze in January (even in Florida) really doesn’t qualify.

And speaking of cold: I can’t decide if I caught one over the holiday or not. I know, I know, I’ve been teetering on the edge of catching something for the past several months, I just wish it would make up its mind already. Granted, even if this stabbity headache persists I have to go to work tomorrow because of the annual WC audit (which I am actually ready for, thank heavens!) and just in general the EOY duties that need to be done.

But in productive news I created two new blogs (no links until I have them a bit more put together). One as a production diary for Wedding Tarot (guilt is a great motivator) and one as a place to stash the Illustration Friday submissions and updates on my writing, etc. Over the next however long I’m going to work on setting up an online portfolio for writing pieces and art with the plan to be able to increase not only my productivity but also my marketability in those areas. Time (and effort) will tell how well this works, but I’m at least going to give it a shot!

So, I really need to download a more amusing game for the Q than solitaire even if it did come in handy standing in line at Best Buy. But now the tv is swapped out and so far, so good. Since J had an early day, I left work at 3:30 to meet him here so we could box up the defective set and go exchange it but BB was such a mad-house that it was still 5pm when we left there. Sigh…

Then I went and had my nails done and got them trimmed to a much more workable level (I won’t say what palmie calls this length) and decided to have my eyebrows done while there. Um, yeah, see, I’ve waxed at home and all but it was nothing like this. I suppose it’s worth the temporary discomfort to have them done right for once and I should be able to keep them up myself now but WOW did that sting!

Took a long nap after eating the wrap and smoothie I picked up for supper and now I’m finishing up Tuesday’s comic and going to start in on some editing of the graphic novel script. Yay for progress and double-yay for weekends. Aside from tidying up the apartment (still somewhat wrecked from the party/holiday craziness) and a load of laundry, I’m chillin’ this weekend as much as possible.

Only a handful of days left in the year and I’m happy to say that I’ve met my obligations for the rest of it so far. Articles and invoice submitted, comics done for the year (the next one will post New Year’s Day so I count it as next year, not this one) and Christmas finished with. I’m even fairly current at work. This is pretty cool.

In the TV saga we’ve decided to just go ahead and exchange the set at Best Buy. J’s going to come over tomorrow evening or Saturday and haul it around for me and I’ll just hope for a non-dud this time. It would have taken several days to 2 weeks at the repair place (esp considering the impending weekend and holiday) so since the purchase is less than a week old (maybe a week and a half at most) it just makes more sense to exchange it and have it over with.

Nothing else of note except I really hope I’m not coming down with the flu just in time for NYE. I’m ridiculously tired and achy and grouchy and potentially feverish. But maybe if I take it easy this weekend I can avoid it once more this year. Always the optimist (well, mostly, and tempered by reality keeping me from being cockeyed).

As of mid-morning today. Whew! That feels good. What’s weird is that I am only making one gift this year. This has a lot to do with the fact that I am still not finished with some from last year. Seriously. So this year I chopped the gift list to pretty much family and near-family and skipped everything else. On the one hand I’m kinda eh about the abbreviated plans but on the other I like it. The simplicity appeals to me, and we know that’s an aberration of ginormous proportions.

Also, tomorrow is the 52nd strip of Random Acts… TaDaa! I did what I set out to do and its still fun so I’ll be continuing. I would have celebrated more but I’ve managed to screw up my writing plans for the first half of the month so the deadline is pinning me down seriously. It’s okay, I’m on, like, Plan C at this point, but I think it’ll be the best of all of them and I should have no problem completing them before leaving town Friday morning for my weekend away.

My goal is to be totally caught up so that I can have 3 days without thinking about any of my work things–any of them! Not going to think about them replacing the office carpet while I’m gone. Not going to think about my articles. Not going to think about the comic. It’s a weekend of not thinking. Well, okay, not much thinking. I will only dally by taking pictures, if plausible, of the Arts District in NOLA for future reference for Wedding Tarot. And since I haven’t had time to ‘work’ on that in ages, it doesn’t count against the not thinking about works. I love my logic!