Michelle's Journal

I am mildly grumpy it wasn't saltier, but when I eat the rest tonight (whooo, soup) I am just going to add some myself. Or maybe a bit more chicken broth concentrate? I'm competent, I'll figure it out.

My goals for today are to 1.) go home 2.) heat up soup 3.) watch Silent Witness and 4.) go to sleep early. (Fail)

Tomorrow's goals are to 1.) wake up before 11am 2.) go to the post office 3.) buy cat food (JFC, I am paying $60/WEEK on Wink's food alone!) 4.) buy food FOR ME and 5.) do laundry. I have so much laundry. I hate my laundry room so much right now. Because I could DO LAUNDRY TONIGHT if they damn machines took quarters. *GRUMPY* (Got laundry together to take to the laundromat.)

Sunday, my only goal is to go outside for at least 30 minutes. Even if just to walk around my neighbor hood. I've not done that in far too long, and it would be nice to stretch my legs.

Maybe I should start sketching. That way I'll need a pencil and a sketch pad and go about my life. (LBR, lol.)

I lament this only because I decided to Invest in a punch cradle for signatures. I have weird texture issues with my metal ruler (which I've been using to mark signatures for punching) and I don't love having to flatten the bent signature so I can poke it. I've been wanting to get one since pretty much day one, but the only ones I could find were, like, $40 3d printed ones on Etsy. Which, that's a weasel farm I did not want to touch.

Anyway, I made my bi-annual order from azn (I don't love it, but there are things I'm too poor for morals about) and found one for $13. I also bought some shampoo (Neutrogena, why are you being dodgy about T-Gel again? I need you to ctfo), paper, and Swedish dish towels. Apparently they're compostable?

BUT. I've managed to put together ~5 new projects to work on. Some are multiple volumes! Well, kinda. I respect the hell out of people who write 400K+ stories, but that usually means splitting the work into multiples. The one I'm currently working on (FF.net is tougher to harvest stuff from, dammit!) is a 400K (unfinished) beast and it's set at three volumes. Luckily, the formatting's mostly fine, I just need to tab the paragraphs and do minor spelling corrections. Which doesn't sound like a lot, but each chapter has ~300-700 paragraphs that I need to find and hit the 'tab' button for each. Glad I found the way to strip out the formatting so I don't have to hit 'backspace' to eliminate the extra formatting space. I'm relearning so much about Microsoft Word hot keys and formatting rules.

Maybe I should go back to doing fic recommendation posts somewhere. There's so much good (and long) stuff out there that I don't know that anyone knows about! TBF, libraries and archives are always bad at marketing and are much more based around the X person wants to find a thing, we'll hold it until they come looking! model. It is what it is.

I do really need to work on getting better at covering books though. The endpages always come out wonky and I just don't know what to do to work on that? Especially as glueing the end papers to the cover has a bunch of variables happening while you're trying to get it done. Is the glue too much? Not enough? Can I get the bone folder at the right angle so the pressing doesn't rip? Is the spine spacing adequate or should it be bigger? WHY IS THE CURVED SPINE NOT CURVING FFS. And it's hard to practice THIS BIT a lot to get better at it because it's all time sensitive and to practice I'd have to cut a bunch of stuff a part and that feels wasteful and annoying on my end. BLAH. Also, I need to find the damn scoring thing annieeats gave me last year that I "put somewhere for safekeeping" so I "wouldn't lose it". UGH, exacto knives are out for my fingers.

All that said, having a book press has made my life better by a factor of ten when it comes to binding. Especially with the post-bind pressing. Bleeeeeeesssssssss.

I met havocthecat for a lovely lunch on Saturday and was introduced to a delicious dish that involved cabbage and Chinese sesame paste. I need to make it immediately. It is reminiscent but different (and delightfully so!) from my peanut lime slaw. I was also delighted by everything else we tried.

That said, I want to be better about eating food I prepare and bring to work rather than my new normal a.) not eating at all or b.) buying food from places around my job. Neither are healthy or sustainable. BUT. I'm also In No Mood to make a lot of things that involve fire or cooking meat. Now, I have happily gone vegetarian in the past and am happy to do it again, but I'm also really tired of grocery shopping atm. SO. I decided to make up mini cheese/meat snack packs for lunch this week and buy a bunch of dried fruit, nuts, grapes and apples to cart along with. I did spend entirely too much $$ on cheese, but here we are.

UPDATE: Snack lunch was delicious and I am v. happy.

Hopefully this will tide me over until I'm able to swing by an Asian grocery for Chinese sesame paste. I already have the black sesame seeds and the right vinegar at home along with some cabbage slaw. Non traditional, but unless I get the overwhelming desire to make dumplings, I'm not buying a whole ass napa cabbage. Honestly, I should invite some friends over to make dumplings this fall. That would be pretty cool.