Category: Crankypantsing

I have a thing about using up the dregs of stuff. Shampoo, conditioner, tissues, mayonnaise, paper, tooth paste, soy sauce, gas (well, no one wants to use up the very end of their gas, but if my tank gets below half full, I get nervous), and ink are all objects of my particular “cannot use it up” obsession. Don’t ask me why, because I have no explanation for it. It’s not like not finishing it–whatever it may be on any given occasion–off is gaining me anything, because it might as well be completely gone for all the good it does me.

Right now, it’s ink, in particular, that is giving me fits. The black cartridge for my Epson printer is nearly kaput, thanks to Pandora, who keeps stepping on the on switch whenever she walks over the top of it. Which she does about eighty times each day. Every time she turns it on, it goes through a self-cleaning cycle, which wastes ink. One of these days I’ll get around to moving and/or covering it, to keep the cat from walking on it. In the meantime, I have to go buy a new black cartridge.

I’m also almost out of India ink, as well. I’ve been using my dip pen a lot lately, and have managed to burn through most of a 2oz bottle of brown. Lord only knows where my bottle of black is, but it’s of no use to me, as I cannot locate it. Hrmph. So, I ordered a bottle of black, two of brown, and a bottle of cleaner, which I’m also nearly out of.

In ancient art news, wouldn’t you just hate to be the person who trips, falls, and destroys three–three!–Qing vases? That must engender the sort of shame one never, ever, lives down. I mean never. My question is, why on earth were the vases in such a vulnerable position? Protecting its objects from harm is a museum’s first priority, so displaying them in such a way that someone can trip and take out three of them at once seems a bit careless to me.

• The Throat Clearing. Dear God, please make it stop. Pleeeeeeease. Between that and the woman with the gooey-wet smoker’s cough, I may lose my mind. Or vomit. Or both.
• I somehow managed to get soy sauce on the bottom of my jeans this morning. Only, I haven’t been anywhere near soy sauce in days, so where the heck did it come from?
• I’ve been playing around with redecorating the website, and have updated the sections with subdivision pages (painting, sketchbooks/journals, gluebbooks/collage, and the main page). The images for the links on the left will change, and I may rearrange/add some categories, just to see if I can break Teh Internets, but the rest of it is basically how I want it. Hopefully, I’ll get a chance to work on the rest of it this weekend.
• I also finally looked at the new blog template in IE and eeew! I don’t know if it was the settings on my machine, or if it’s just how it was translating universally, but it had a grey background and white text, which was really foul looking. That’s been fixed.
• Thirdly, I need to specify link colors, and specify color change and underlining when hovered over.
• For one horrible minute, I thought it was Monday.
• Someone on Paint_L mentioned Art Spectrum Colourfix Primer, which sounds like it’d be really handy for collage. They claim it can be used as an adhesive, as well as a primer for both acrylic and oil. Bonds aggressively? Sign me up! I can’t wait to give it a try.
• It’s windy. Really windy. I’m not going to complain, though, at least not too much, because it’s also pretty nice outside.
• I lost another earring, so I gave up and took them all out. I never wear anything but studs, so it’s kind of pointless to bother with them, even though they’ll grow over quickly.

And now, some random randomness:

• Our vending machine candy bars have gone up to 75¢.
• I backed into a Hostess delivery truck this morning, when I stopped to get my morning caffeinated beverage. No harm, no foul, as far as both the driver and I were concerned, but damn, how on earth did I not see something that ginormous? My defense is that the truck was white, and it blended in with the huge billboard at the Pepsi plant across the street. All I have to say is, hallelujah for rear-mounted spare tires. They’re bouncy
• Finally, after much swearing and nerve shredding, I have achieved W-2ness. My PIN still wasn’t working, even after having it reset on Tuesday. I tried it again yesterday. Nada. So, I called again this morning, and today’s customer service representative, who was condescending as all hell (yes, I know what a freaking PIN is, and what SSN stands for), did manage to sort out the problem. Whatever on earth the problem was. She wasn’t saying anything except that “You aren’t entering it correctly.” “It” and “correctly” were never defined. But, whatever. If she wants to try to make me feel like some sort of jackass, that’s fine, as long as she says the proper incantation on her end. Which she did, apparently, because I was finally able to access my W-2s. Praise be!
• I finished 8-9 pages of journalling from Soul Mapping yesterday. One observation: I started out with a regular gel pen, and by the time I was finished with the first page, my hand was aching. I’m sure part of it was due to the fact that I don’t do all that much writing by hand, at least not large amounts of it at once. I switched to a dip pen and India ink, because I was in a mood for brown ink and couldn’t find a brown pen. After switching, my hand stopped hurting. The pain must have been mostly due to the pen, or how I was gripping it. Apparently, the dip pen I was using is Just Right. I’ll have to keep that in mind.
• Another writing issue, related to pens, is that I tend to write so fast that my hand can’t really keep up. The result is a cramped, thoroughly illegible hash of chicken scratches. It’s not pretty. I think the dip pen made me slow down enough that I was able to gain better control over the micro-movements of my hand. And, of course, slower means less stress on the hand and more legible handwriting, which are both pluses.
• There is a rock in my shoe and it’s annoying the shit out of me. Not enough to actually do something about it, mind you, but still.