Alien Barbecue

I’ve been working in the e-publishing industry for almost six years now, and I’ve worked for over a handful of publishers and with more authors than I can count. I’ve talked on the phone with maybe a total of six of these people in all these years, but I’ve only met one person face to face: Tina Burns, publisher at Liquid Silver Books. And that was just recently, really. I’ll be meeting with her again tonight while she’s in town for work.

It’s ironic that I’ve never met or chatted with most of these people, and it’s because of monthly and quarterly checks from them that I’m able to pay my rent and my bills at all. It is so vastly different from how things worked when I was at an ordinary day job. I used to have to shower and get dressed every morning, pack a lunch and drive to work. Then there’d be the settling in, the small talk, the little bit of work, and the looking over shoulders at each others’ desks as we shared work projects or personal photos. Everyone worked similar hours, so breaks were taken at relatively the same times. And meetings. Meetings took forever and sometimes meant snacking and using up more man hours than you could afford to spend.

My work situation these days has me working at whatever hours I like—even though they’re still about the same number of hours. I work in my pajamas, sometimes with my hair still in its slept-in mess, and if I get tired of sitting up at my desk, I grab my laptop and work in bed. Socializing and meetings are about as long as an e-mail, or a half hour tops on instant messaging, and everything in a meeting is recorded for you automatically in a chat log or a forum posting, all completely searchable when you need to refer to it again. No secretary needed. No need to put on a game face (or nice hair and makeup). No need to drive anywhere.

It’s kind of neat, especially for a lazy introvert like me.

Still, it’s nice to be able to put a face with a name you’ve worked with for so long. I know that other people in the business have networked more and have seen more faces, at conventions and conferences and various other events. But for me, it’s a novelty. I’m like the hermit Sandra Bullock plays in The Net, where even my neighbors don’t know me. Except, I imagine, I have a higher percentage of people I’ve actually met in my list of Facebook friends than would Angela Bennett.

And that’s just fine with me.

I mentioned before that I was working on some projects in pink and yellow, and here they are.

They’re about 3′ x 4′ each, and I used worsted weight Lion Brand Yarn, specifically their Pound of Love yarn, so they’re really thick and kind of heavy, perfect for keeping your lap warm on cold evenings.

The pattern is my own design, and it’s a little more varied, as you can see, but without straying too far from the narrow color scheme. The pink is bold and has much more contrast, and the yellow is much more subtle. That was my intent, actually, though HE kept insisting I was making a mistake with the yellow because the colors looked the same to him when I crocheted these mostly in the evenings. The contrast in the yellows is only obvious in the sunlight.

I crocheted the pink afghan for my cousin Binky as a late wedding present, the yellow afghan for my Aunt Eva who, out of the blue, gave me a leather jacket that didn’t quite fit her.

Right now, I’m working on a small baby blanket in blue, gray, and white. It’s my first commissioned crochet project, and I’m using yarn I’ve never worked with before; it’s not as easy on my hands as other yarn I’ve worked with, which makes me dread trying lace crocheting for doilies, one of my future “to-do” projects.

I can tell you right now: my future won’t involve making these things commercially on a regular basis, LOL. HE’s comment was, “You’re charging how much for 100 hours of work? You’ve got to be kidding.” More profitable would be to design patterns and sell those, not the actual hand made stuff themselves, and I’ll probably consider doing that one day.

But for now, this gives my hands something to do when I watch TV.

I bought a laptop.

After falling so far behind while out of town, I knew I’d need one eventually. Plus, my office desk and chair are falling apart—the keyboard shelf keeps falling at one side and dumping my keyboard in my lap, while the left arm rest has fallen completely off my chair—and rather than replace the aging office furniture, it seems more practical to get a computer I can take with me to bed or to the kitchen table, or to wherever else I might find it more comfortable to work. I’m on a wireless network right now anyway, so why not, right? I’ll replace my old office furniture with an easy chair when I can afford it.

So there is that to look forward to.

But before I can migrate to the new computer, I need to solve some problems I’m having with my off-site backup solution and then create the same work environment that I have on my current work computer, or better, and it’s taking me slightly longer than I thought it would.

In the meantime, back to work!