If this were an ordinary Wednesday night, I’d be on my way home from colorguard practice right now. But since Sandy’s suddenly some down with the flu (as in she showed up, tossed her cookies and decided it best if she went home), and the others are practicing for this weekend’s show in Newburyport (which I’m not going to) I came home early. I figured that I haven’t updated in awhile now would be a good time to do so.

First of all I want to start off with a great big (and very belated) thank you to Bast! The GetBackers notepads are perfect! And I honestly wasn’t expecting the Gundam Wing pads, so thank you muchly for those, too. Both are getting much use. A few sheets have even ended up as thank you notes to my customers.

Speaking of customers, after much drooling over the cards at Vista Print and being unable to decide which would best suit my store, I decided to make my own. The first batch were on the older mirco-perf card stock. It’s the easiest for my printer, but it’s not coated to make the inks waterproof and you can feel the perforations. So then I used the pre-cut stock, which my printer kept leaving lines on because the backing of the stock isn’t sturdy enough to keep the cards flat against the printer heads. After I had a hissy fit (I had just bought a color ink cartridge and had wasted a considerable amount of it printing out these botched attempts… at the best print setting), I learned, via HP’s idea page, that I could print my own using HP’s brochure and flyer paper. They look beautiful! Nice and glossy. The only drawback is the paper isn’t as think as card stock, so when I’m done with it I might look into photo paper. I do like the fact that I can print on both sides of this paper and have them glossy (and waterproof) and I’m thinking of making a sort of trading card out of my business cards; each featuring a different member of the Bishi Harem on the back.

When I wasn’t busy working on my business cards, I was hard at work creating listings for my stuff. At last count I had 18 listings and I’m going to be busy tomorrow creating more. I still have the Keepers, the tarot decks, and the used video games to get into my store. Luckily for the next week store listings are free. Not that 3 cents a listing is expensive, but it helps. Especially when ebay screws up and keeps putting the wrong gallery picture with one of my items. It’s fixed now, though.

I haven’t gotten any writing of “2 of Rods” done, which I wish I had because now the Harem is trying to convince me to rewrite “Links” and it’s looking rather tempting. I really want to get the first chapter of “2 of Rods” out before I attempt it, though.

I helped out at the food pantry for the Postal Carrier Food Drive. I was in charge of making sure the donated food was good before they sorted and put it away. You would be amazed at how much junk was donated. A good chunk of it was expired. What are these people thinking? I mean I would be embarrassed to have kept some of this stuff in my cupboard so long let alone give it to the needy. I found stuff that expired back in 1995! I even found some things that pre-dated the current FDA Food Pyramid! Yuck!

Tomorrow I hope to enjoy my first harvest. A bunch of radishes to be exact. When I checked on them yesterday I expected them to need another week. By this morning most of them had gained a 1/4-inch in width. I think they’re ready. I also hope to get the tomatoes transplanted outside. Even if it does dip below 50 degrees now, it won’t be for long and the plants are big enough to handle it. Besides, I want to get them out before Glenn kills again! I’ve lost a ton of lettuce, three cantaloupe seedlings, one cucumber seedling, a bunch of spinach, and two cherry tomato plants. He’s evil I tell ya!

I swear that jerk of a customer I had a few months ago is signing me up for all this junk mail as my business email addy has had a sudden increase in spam within the last month. Anyhow, someone on the local ML recommended this site called SpamCop (http://www.spamcop.net). It’s nice that Mozilla can determine most spam and move it to the junk folder. But it’s most fulfiling to be able to report these sons-of-a-bitches, and SpamCop makes it quite easy for one to do so. Yay!

Well I’m off to bed. I’ve got too much to do in the morning. Will the last one be sure to turn out the light before you leave? Thanks!