Catching Up

This post is going to have a certain amount of personal natter rolled up into it, because that's how the cookie crumbles. 

TeslaCon

I did hear back from TeslaCon in a reasonable amount of time, and they do have our vendor application.

Floodplain Managers' Conference Program Book

The floodplain managers' conference was Wednesday and Thursday. I got compliments on the book, and the co-worker who is on the board didn't hear any complaints. 

Rearranging the Bedrooms

Not surprisingly, Ron and I have been eyeballing larger printing presses. A couple weeks ago Ron found the proof press on this page, which is probably going to be our next press (and I'm eyeballing some of the bookbinding tools). Its large and heavy, but is something we can get up to the spare bedroom, and not have to worry about the floor, unlike some of the big-brother floor versions of our tabletop presses. But that means finding room in the spare bedroom, which Ron had some ideas about.

A week ago Ron and I abandoned Robin and went out to dinner by ourselves.  After dinner we stopped at Ikea to look at things-to-put-a-proof-press-on options. We found a couple, which one we'll end up will depend on the actual footprint of the press (we have a PDF of the users' manual, which is very helpful in some regards, but not when it comes to that particular piece of information). 

After Ikea, we went to The Container Store, for more small flat-files for storing blocks. The 10-drawer units were on sale, for about 3/4 the price of two 5-drawer units, so a white one followed us home, since The Container Store doesn't carry the 10-drawer units in orange (the other color choices were black and dark gray). Here it is in place. Yes, drawers have been swapped around, as its easier to shift drawers to keep types of things together than to shift a bunch of blocks from one drawer to the other:

Ron's cunning plan to make room for the proof press was to move a set of shelving out of  the spare bedroom. I volunteered that the desk that I got in grade school could be evicted from our bedroom, and the shelves put in its place, and also that the closet on my side of the room could also be used to store optics equipment, rather than taking it to the storage locker. So bright and early Saturday morning Ron started poking at my side of the bedroom. And I mean early. 

The end result was throwing out most of the contents of a 4.5 cubic foot moving box, re-packing the closet with things we'd actually want to keep, and packing the closet more sensibly, re-packing and consolidating my yarn stash, emptying out my old desk, re-packing the attic stair closet, and bringing the shelves into our room from the spare bedroom:

The new-to-this-room shelves are the ones in front of the windows. They're bigger than the desk, but re-organizing the stash and the attic-stair closet (the door in the corner to on the right) included moving a stack of bins of yarn stash into the closet. The other closet is behind the tall shelves on the left edge of the picture. And the room looks better in reality than the picture, which loses all the space between the bed and the shelves.

Robin was planning to go to Games Plus and actually, y'know, play wargames with gaming miniatures, but when he was detailed with taking the desk out to the curb, he decided to appropriate it instead. In the process he cleaned his room, getting rid of an old dresser that was originally mine, and a small cabinet that started out as the base to a changing table. The dresser was passed on to a friend, the cabinet went out to the curb.

Here's the desk, in its new habitat under his loft. Yes, that's another piece of Metro-clone shelving. We've got a bunch of it in the house. Sorry about the weird flare, I think its from the Otter case on my phone, which includes a clear cover over the flash:

And look!  OPEN FLOOR SPACE! In Robin's room!  Will Cecils never wonder? Wonders never cease? Whatever! He has a FLOOR!

 

Mom or Chere, if you're reading this, yes, that is one of the very old orange couch cushions from the house in Stevensville...

That thing on the left side of the photo is the ladder to the loft. The picture of the desk was taken through the ladder.

Death and Taxes

Saturday afternoon while Ron was at the Capricon wrap-up meeting, I threw myself at taxes. I got the sales taxes done, but trying to get sanity in my summary page of sales records defeated me, and I didn't even try to attack purchases. 

Ron managed to bring order out of that chaos Sunday morning, and has volunteered to work on doing the taxes this weekend while I work on the dining room and making pouches. 

Graphic Design-Ish Stuff

I should have worked on the dining room and leatherworking on Sunday, but was entirely not-motivated. So after Ron resolved my spreadsheet disasters, we went upstairs, and I set type from the big red cabinet, while Ron updated the spreadsheet listing all the blocks we have, and printed proofs. We got four fonts proofed, one of which we already had a name for, and I've identified one of the unknowns. 

Yesterday Linotype (.com) sent me an offer I failed to resist. I got a new font, or the basics of it. $99 instead of $806 for 14 styles (7 weights, regular and italic of each). There's also extended and condensed members of the family, that weren't part of the deal. I can pick those up as onesies or in packages, too. At least this was a 24-hour sale. There have been a couple sales of the first X people get the font for really-good-price, one of which I would have bought, but I was too late. 

Max

I knew there was something else!

Circling back to last Friday night, after stops at Office Whatsit (for tax software) and Ace hardware, we went to Menard's. We were looking for one thing, but I decided to look at something else, which Xap had pointed out to me the previous weekend.

Then I called Robin, to bring the truck, because it was following us home:

This is The Grinch's assistant (and Elrond, looking very odd due to foreshortening). As The Grinch's assistant, its name is, of course, Max. 

The Grinch is full, and there's overflow in the Things, hence Max. Max is only 30" wide (without handle), The Grinch is something like 42" wide. I think Max is also shorter than The Grinch. Ron assures me that Max will fit into the trailer, although he's not certain how Max will be strapped in, and the handtruck will probably ride on top of the Things.

Robin asked how long Max was going to be hanging around the living room, I said at least until the yard isn't squishy, possibly until ACen . . . which is only 2 months away. Eeep! I figure I'll pack as much new merchandise as I can into Max, and Xap can re-pack Max with belts at ACen.

And now, I think, that really is everything.