Sumac from the landing window
A nice start to the week...
A while back Simon (
'Hal Spacejock') sent me over a couple of Hal Spacejock fridge magnets of a type that were new to me - the usual size, but soft and flexible, and the whole thing was a magnet rather than being a hard plastic image with a magnet stuck on the back. I thought they were dead nifty, not to mention being extremely good magnets (and given the amount of stuff I stick on my fridge believe me I really
need good magnets!) Well, in our last amazon delivery (a Van der Graf Generator CD for Ken and Muse's
Origin of Symmetry CD for me, both for Yule, and a 2007 ephemeris) was a flier for
Vistaprint, who were doing a special limited offer on a variety of 'your own design' products, amongst them fridge magnets. While I was faffing around getting the folks' photograph albums sorted, Ken in the background suggested I get some Haadri magnets made: I'd said it was a nice idea but given the hassle I was having with the empiredirect software at the time promptly forgot about it. Then at 9.45 pm, with the special offer due to run out at midnight, he asked me if I'd got the design ready yet...
[sigh] I had to create it from scratch as the original image must be backed up on a disk somewhere and I didn't have the time to find it. But it actually only took me 50 minutes to recreate it, which wasn't too bad, and I was able to upload it to the site and complete the order by 11.30. And then had second thoughts when I found out that the payment went to the main office in Bermuda and the whole transaction was regulated by Bermudan law - which we know nothing about and which could be difficult to deal with if anything went wrong... But Ken said we'd risk it, opting for the cheapest postage - 21 days.
Well, they arrived just fine this morning (invoiced from the Netherlands and sent from Belgium. [bemused]
Vistaprint are something of a global company, it appears) just ten days from ordering, and despite the fact that the text has turned out purple instead of the blue I wanted, they're beautiful! (I'll have to remember that next time: it appeared on the site as purple but I thought that was just part of the process. Apparently not, it appears that the colour you see as the final image is the colour you end up with. It works OK here, making the text a shadowy part of the background, an effect I rather like.)
Overall I'm rather impressed, and will use them again.
We also had an email from our agent, now back from the Frankfurt Bookfair, and there's a good possibility that the re-release of one of our previous books in a different format may go ahead - more on that if/when it happens - and there are two possible/potential publishers for a new book proposal we sent her a month or so ago, though we'll have to wait and see about that. So all in all quite positive!
Kai arrived back quite happy too - it seems next term they won't have rugby, it'll be either football, basketball or volleyball, he thinks. Looks like they're giving the sprogs the opportunity to try a variety of different sports, which is a good thing as far as I'm concerned. He's also put his name down for two new after-school groups next term - origami and [grin] Manga!
Ken's just about prepared for the
Dartmouth Ghosts & Mysteries launch in Dartmouth around Samhain. To my amusement I was invited to attend too, but the whole event is due to span several days and it's during Kai's term-time - not to mention someone has to look after the animals. Eh well. Maybe next time.
And I've
finally finished
2AC 1.5.03. (Taken long enough. Then again, I've been a bit busy with other things.) The rest should flow a little more smoothly, I hope, though now I have to hunt down some medical details. That'll be fun.
Back to the loom.
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Joules *Dances with Haddock* Taylor
pontificated this at 8:22 pm
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