Luck and Hard Work

      "Oh, they just got lucky, they didn't earn that."

      "That person put a lot of hard work in, they deserve it!"

Personal two cents, the truth is often somewhere in between. 

Thumbkin rhyme

      Randomly, my brain started singing the children's rhyme "Where is Thumbkin" the other day. There wasn't anything particularly pressing, so I sang it all the way through. If you don't remember it:

This is then repeated with the pointer, middle, ring, and pinkie fingers, each one bowing or nodding to each other on both hands.

     It occurred to me that this was more than just a children's rhyme to identify fingers - it was a story of how to properly check in on your introvert friends. The singer goes looking for their friends, says hello and how are you politely, and then leaves them alone because that's what introverts need! 

     Or maybe it's just a children's rhyme...

Peace

      She took a final look around the house and nodded, satisfied everything was in order. The laundry was done, folded, and tucked away. Every surface had been cleaned, and the trash bags put out on the curb. The fridge and cupboards were stocked with basic items, but nothing perishable was out. It had been a long, hard day of cleaning, and she was tired, but pleased. She stepped out the front door, locked it, and slipped the key under the doormat, then turned and walked to the road. She looked both ways before crossing, chuckling at herself for being so cautious on a quiet, residential street. 

     A five-minute walk brought her to the edge of the neighborhood, where the forest began. A walking trail, well-used, continued off the end of the cul-de-sac. She'd walked this trail many times, keeping fit as she aged, and she reminisced about the neighbors she'd met and gotten close to on the path. It was a popular route for introverts to wander, and she'd had many good, quiet conversations here with people who needed a non-judgmental ear to sort out their thoughts. 

In need of a break

Sabbatical, again

      As much as I complain about life being boring, one of the upside to boring phases is it gives one time and mental space to be creative. Life has become un-boring again, and I don't have the capacity to devote to sketching (which takes a ridiculous amount of time even for my simple sketches). Silliness will resume when life is no longer quite so "interesting." 

Mood

      Today's sketch was supposed to be about how other people view crickets (peaceful, calming) compared to how I view them (tiny, demented insects screaming nonstop (which is disturbing to anyone listening)). After six hours of finding absolutely anything to do other than try to sketch crickets shrieking, I decided to let it go and this came out instead:

Addendum to spring

 

Spring!

Weird times 2 - Thanks for nagging

      As noted in the previous post, we are going through the process of selling the company, and it's led to some weird situations. One such example is the grading permit for a site we recently built an expansion on. The building portion is open and operating, but the grading permit - particularly, the landscaping part of it - has not been finalized yet because, well, it's winter. It's very hard to prove to a county that yes, you did plant flowers in this spot when there's nothing there but bare dirt; they get a little suspicious and make you wait til things are blooming and demonstrably not dead. Unfortunately, our grading permit was set to expire in early April, and you have to submit a renewal request at least two weeks ahead of time. Part of my job as I-Dotter and T-Crosser is to put calendar reminders for my entire department when a permit is going to expire, so we have enough forewarning to decide if it needs renewal. 

     So two months ago before we knew about the potential company sale, I got the calendar reminder that the permit would expire. I don't actually go out to the construction sites, so I emailed my boss asking if we should renew. Silence. This is not terribly unusual, so I set a reminder for a week later. More silence. I set a reminder for three more days, silence; three more days, silence; you get the picture. By now, word of the sale had gotten around and I was very tempted to just kill the reminders and let whatever happens, happen... but that's not what my job is. So for three more weeks, I just copy/ pasted the "Do we need to renew this?" text into a new email and resent it to the boss every three days, figuring eventually, he'll get annoyed enough to give me a real answer. 

Weird times 1 - Open permits

      Our company is entertaining a purchase request - as in, selling the entire company to one of our competitors. Things have gotten a little odd as a result, because about 70% of the things that I and many of my coworkers do involve planning ahead for future projects or running reports on past numbers to anticipate how to change future numbers. With the understanding that we will likely not have to worry about that within the next month or two, it has left several people without much to do. Luckily for me, I suppose, my position as Paperwork and Executive Wrangler (not my official title) means that there is a whole tidal wave of other ducks that need wrangled in order for the sale to go through. One of my hats is I-Dotter and T-Crosser, and we have found literally decades of un-dotted and -crossed things that could heavily complicate the process. 

     One example that cropped up recently was that someone had applied for a sign permit at one of our sites back a few years ago but not closed it out. At first glance, this was not terribly out of the ordinary - our signage contractor has a habit of not finalizing permits, so we sent them a note to take care of it. After a bit, they replied that it was not them: they had called the county, who said it was a "cosmetic" permit, and gave the name of the person who'd applied. After some searching, we discovered it was a client who'd rented space from us at this location for all of one month, and whose internet presence revealed they are... a make-up artist. 

Inadvertent life lessons

      My 10th grade Biology teacher, Mr. Ofsiani (more commonly called Mr. O), was one of those neat teachers that stick out in your memory. His entire classroom was covered in interesting things, from comics clipped from newspapers and hung on the walls to a skeleton hanging from the ceiling to the live iguana in the back of the room. He loved his subject and got excited about doing hands-on experiments instead of just going through the textbook and running tests. He was short, bearded, and completely bald, but he was also vibrantly engaged with life.

     The first quarter of his class was devoted to plant identification. Looking back, I'm not sure how he got this past the school board, but we essentially spent the first two and a half months of school filing into the classroom, taking roll, and then filing out again and going for walks in the woods next to the school. We did, technically, learn plant identification and I believe there was even a test at the end that gave you leaf shapes or bark pictures and had you give the name of the plant, but I learned more than just plants.

Old sketches for past coworkers

       The IT department at work has informed me that we are moving everything to a cloud-based solution. For unexamined reasons, I'm still curmudgeonly about that idea, so I took this opportunity to clean out personal stuff I have put on my work computer. Most of it is receipts, photos with work people, etc., but in the process, I ran across a folder titled "Sketches" that I'd completely forgotten about. It has photos of several ideas I'd sketched out at work on post-it notes for blog posts, but because they're about coworkers, I didn't feel right putting on the internet. Said coworkers have now moved on, and enough time has passed that I feel it's acceptable to put these online. 

     One of said coworkers was... enthusiastic. Thankfully not a morning person, so I didn't have to deal with any HELLO GOOD MORNING ISN'T LIFE GRAND nonsense right away, but once the day got underway, there was lots of energy to go around. Apparently, that wasn't just a work phenomenon - they came in one day and told me that their church had an Easter ceremony that weekend. The pastor was solemnly preaching at the lectern, and got to the point where they roll back the stone and find the tomb empty:

Sylvia Bishop chapter 4

      Chapter 4 is live here. Doing 2 weeks of sketches and then 1 week of writing seems to be going well for my schedule; no apologies for lack of sketch on writing days. Enjoy. 

Crossing nice people (part 2)

 DISCLAIMER: still not a reference to anyone I know now.

Part 1

     Eventually, after having to smack enough chronic line-crossers in the face with shovels, I did figure out that I do not owe it to anyone to be that nice and accommodating. Allowing people to cross your lines, however, is only part of the problem. Another part is figuring out where your lines are and which ones you really care about if they're crossed. 

     When I was younger, I had a plethora of lines and - now to my regret - I was inconsistent in defending them. I could blame it on bad days, wavering self-esteem, changing ideals, what have you, but ultimately it was just that I didn't have very concrete lines or consistent consequences. 

Crossing nice people (part 1)

DISCLAIMER, because I know you guys: No, this is not a reference to anyone currently in my life. 

      When I was younger, I had a chronic issue with giving people 2nd, 3rd, even 154th chances. As a kid, we're taught to be nice, be forgiving, turn the other cheek, but I would let people get away with things that I really shouldn't have. For the most part, people - or at least a certain type of person - will keep pushing if you let them get away with something once, long past when it becomes obvious that pushing is leading to a problem. After all, they got away with it once, twice, a hundred and fifty-four times... why not keep going?

Sylvia Bishop Chapter 3 and work encounters of some kind

Chapter 3: Link

     It's been an odd week here. I had to physically go in to work twice, having only been in once in the past year. My boss, who has been a pandemic denier and not terribly aware of personal space in the past, was quite happy to keep his distance both times, even when I needed to show him how to change the toner on the printer. He has also started saying thank you and that he appreciates my work, which is completely out of character. Makes you ponder the question: if someone who you know to be difficult to work with really was replaced by a pod person, would you report it, or just be happy that their replacement is nicer? 

     Unfortunately, one of those visits to the office included a possible covid exposure. One of my coworkers has mutliple young children at home, so has been coming in to the office every day to get some peace and quiet to work in. They were not there when I went in, but they called me while I was there and asked me to deal with something on their desk. A few hours later, HR sent an email saying that "someone" who was usually in the office every day had tested positive, but don't worry, they stayed home today! Thankfully, I follow mask, no face touching, and handwashing recommendations to the letter, so hopefully nothing will come of it, but I am unappreciative of the general timeline there. 

Working from home:

      Had a conversation with my dad yesterday about the pandemic and staying at home. He claims to be an introvert, but he requires far more social interaction than I do. Our discussion about how the work-from-home situation due the pandemic is going prompted this:

Vakyrie cosplay: Wings part 1

      Long before I seriously got into cosplay, I was fascinated by the idea of making wings. Even ignoring the lure of flight, wings are so intricate that the challenge appealed to me. I knew sewing wouldn't get me the wings I wanted though, and that I'd need some experience under my belt before tackling them once I started doing thermoplastics cosplay stuff. With both Thor and Taboo cosplays completed, though, I felt pretty good about taking on that challenge and finally making myself some wings.

     The last 3-4 months have been a lot of research - on what to use for the wing "bones," how to make them move, how to program the things that make them move, how to make feathers, how wings fold and extend in real life, etc etc etc. After figuring out the materials I'll be using and ordering a ton of supplies, I've broken the wings down into a couple broad steps:

Sketches from 2019

      For stupid cat reasons, I have not slept more than an hour at a time for the last two days. I do not have the patience right now to make a full sketch, so here are two little doodles I did for a drawing class back in 2019. The first one was an assignment to play with texturing; I started at the edges but then got bored as I worked my way in, and turned it into a basket. Which of course then needs something looking in at you. Are they friendly humongous sloths that will free you from the trap you fell into, or horribly cute monsters that have come to feast on their catch? Who knows? 

Email differences

     There is a significant difference in tone on emails between assistance/ executive admins when others are copied vs when it's just the admins. The admin for a company I work with very closely is always very professional and polished when we are "officially" emailing versus when we are working something out between just the two of us. 

Sylvia Bishop sketch 2 & short story

      I should probably title these a bit differently, but it works for now....

Sylvia Bishop sketch

      I've been wanting to get back to sketching, but let's face it... life right now is pretty dang boring with the pandemic and lockdown. I'm working on some projects, but it'll be a while before they make enough progress to warrant pictures. I mentioned on a social media site that I wanted to sketch again, and someone asked if I was taking suggestions. I figured sure, why not, except they then suggested "a badass dragon!" which my sketch skills are wildly not up to.

     It jogged a memory though... Back in 2018, I started writing a story about Sylvia Bishop - a woman who could talk to plants - based rather loosely on me when I was in my 20s. She would probably run across dragons eventually, right? And her life isn't locked down and boring. Would it work to do random sketches of her while I'm busy not writing that large story out?