Well, then.

I have been very, very boring of late. Perhaps I have fallen off the face of the earth? But, no, terra firma is still firm, even if I do not stand firmly upon it.

You who care will be gratified to know that I am doing well physically. Yes, my joints are still crap, but that isn't likely to change unless the blue fairy gets off her ass and starts granting some wishes. My mental gears have been grinding something fierce, but I think I may be pushing past that now. We shall see. I've been in a state of high distractability the past several months, so I have quite the pile of things I either need to do or want to do but can't remember to finish or can't sustain the drive to finish or whatever it is that one need in order to see things through. On the plus side, I have a lot of projects started!

For one, I have finally begun cleaning out the room that is supposed to be the sewing room and has been cluttered with unpacked crap since I moved to this house. I actually have the sewing desk cleared off and the sewing machine set up. I actually mended something, and have to mend two more things tomorrow.

For another, I am trying to learn Japanese. This is mostly an outgrowth of my latest amusement, which is to go to a Japanese website and run it through Google translate. The resulting hilarity has finally provoked my curiousity enough that I have to know...why in the world would what is obviously "born in" (as in, "born October 5,1982) get translated "made of malt"? I have to know! So I have to learn.

I'm still sketching, though I need to be more regular about it. I am pretty pleased with my progress, even if the constancy of my practice leaves much to be desired. Oh, well. If I was going to let lack of follow through stop me from doing things, I'd never do anything. It would be the same success rate, but with no fun.

Oh, yes! Something I did at last accomplish! Listen up, y'all. I have been having this idea in my head that I could make my lap board actually work well as a laptop board if I just finagled with it. After staring at the limited selection of hardware in our local Mart of Evil, I finally saw what I need. Exactly what I needed! See, going back and forth between two aisles of useless crap and staring sadly at the stock does work! OK, this is what I bought: a roll of two-way sticky foam tape and a package of one foot long square dowels of varied sizes. I went home and put two strips of two-way tape one on top of the other toward the front of my lap desk. Then I got out the largest of the dowels, that just about is the width of the tape, and put tape down its length. Then I stuck it further back on the desk, using my laptop as a guide so it would be about an inch from the back of the laptop. This has been great! My padded lapdesk now can have my laptop on it without the laptop overheating, and I have a nice cushioned lapdesk to keep the no longer so hot laptop off my lap. And I like the angle much better, too! This is better and cheaper than anything I have seen for sale purporting to be a laptop desk. So, if you have a lap desk you like that you couldn't really use with your laptop, now you know what to do!