This summer has been considerably more eventful than I had any expectations for. A rollercoaster with highs and lows… and twists and turns I definitely didn’t see coming.
🌻🌻🌻
I’ve been out of the loop for a while, though it might not look quite as long as it feels since I managed to schedule several of the art posts before all the chaos started, and I managed to upload the ones that couldn’t be scheduled during spare bits of time.
But here’s the TLDR (too long; didn’t read) of our summer (and part of fall):
- Isaac started interviewing for a remote job
- I got more work hours at the library
- We inadvertently become event coordinators for our local comic convention, GeekUP Chibi 2024
- Isaac gets the job!
- Our 19-and-a-half-years-old old man cat passes away due to complications with cancer
- We participated in GeekUP Chibi (Both coordinating and vending)
- We participated in Fall Phantasm (Vending during a super, super windy day)
- We finally start settling down again (right in time for Isaac to start teaching classes)
The longer version of this is that, sometime after our early summer travel (which I already expected to disrupt my newsletters and such), things started picking up with even more speed.
Isaac was continuing his job hunting while working on Daz projects with me, and I managed to snag extra hours at the library, which was definitely nice for helping to improve finances.
But around the same time that we finally got the awesome news that Isaac had gotten the job (basically a dream job with it being remote, being academic, and getting us on the right track financially), our old man cat, Skynyrd, was taking a turn for the worse. For the past year we had been hoping to get the finances set for him to get surgery to remove the tooth giving him problems as well as the tumors under his jaw, but by the time we got the funds, the tumor was too big for removal and he had stopped eating solid foods.
Luckily, he would eat Delectables bisques and gravies, and I learned how to administer subcutaneous fluids to keep him hydrated and make him feel better. But a week before GeekUP, Skynyrd passed away. We both really miss him. (I’ve been going cat cuddling at the local humane society once a week in the meantime, and we used some of the money that was originally going to go toward Skynyrd’s surgery toward sponsoring a senior kitty’s adoption).
The housemates’ cats have been extra cuddly, though. One of them has even been letting me hold her! And she’s very much on “I want attention only when I want attention” terms.
Eventually we plan to bring a third cat back into the household, but that will be a little while since we’ll need to go back down to Missouri to pick her up. (Isaac claimed a particularly mischievous orange kitty that lives on his family’s farm).
Meanwhile, GeekUP went very well, and soon we’ll be revisiting what we did so we can have steps prepped and ready for next year. Though this particular event didn’t have the celebrities, Isaac had lots of ideas for events and panels from what we’ve seen at other conventions (especially NakaKon), and when he presented those to Shana, who co-founded GeekUP, she gave us a lot of support in getting those up and running. (And that’s how we inadvertently became event coordinators). So now we want to get everything squared away from the previous event with notes all ready to make next year easier to set up.
While all that was happening, Isaac has also been preparing for his new job, which included getting a very nice new computer setup (one he built with the help of one of our housemates) meant to be both less exasperating and less of a strain on mental resources (better monitors for less eye strain, a powerful computer that can handle many, many tabs at once and not lag at inopportune times…). It’s also an amazing computer for Daz3D, meaning I can render and prepare new art pieces a lot faster– though I only get to play on it after Isaac is done with work.
Additionally, I’ve been finalizing my side of things for the just released Mystic Springs anthology from the Writers of Warrensburg (I have a paranormal short story in it), and I’m happy to report that it’s now available! 😁
Currently it’s available in paperback on Amazon and will be exclusive to KU (Kindle Unlimited) for a year before rights revert back to us and we can share our stories elsewhere.
Anyhow, after GeekUP we still had to prep for Fall Phantasm. Luckily we didn’t need to restock our inventory, but we did still want to make a nicer looking tent setup, and our goal was to create a mini Cirenan museum as an interactive element based on our books, along with prep more mystery grab bags, since those did really well at GeekUP.
What we didn’t account for was how windy it was going to be. While most of that is a story for another day, let’s just say that tent walls + wind= a tent sailing over your car and into the trees.
Good news! Though it took a couple hours longer than planned to set up, the tent survived relatively unscathed. Unfortunately, the museum idea we prepped had to be tabled for another day. (Paper displays + wind = we didn’t even try after the wind took the tent for a ride). On the bright side, we’re now all set when it comes to display decorations and to having another booth event prepared. (Maybe we’ll make a few tweaks to it if we plan to take it outside again, though).
And now that that’s over, we’re starting to settle back in. I’ve been cleaning the rooms after getting inventory put away. Isaac’s been working on the final preparations for his classes. We’ve finally returned to our garden (in which we collected a rather large volunteer pumpkin that we hadn’t exactly planned on, but hey, no complaints here aside from not being able to use the walkway because it turned into a pumpkin patch). And I’m finally starting to return to stuff like these reports and figuring out how to restart our newsletters.
And story editing. That’s happening again, too, since it was intermittent during the rollercoaster ride of summer.
Now if we could have a lazy river ride for a couple weeks, that would be great.
🍂🍂🍂
Stephanie Flint - Author and Artist 