Gallery – 2019 Daily Sketches 61-90

Here are another thirty of the sketches that I posted on a daily schedule last year, now in a convenient gallery so you don’t have to scroll through posts day by day.

Story Seed #47
Music of Mystery

A couple has purchased a big house. It had previously been a rental with multiple tenants. Not all the tenants took their stuff with them when they moved out so the couple is having to clear out the abandoned belongings as they move in. They find a box with a couple dozen cassette tapes. The cases are labeled with a list of the songs on each tape. The couple doesn’t recognize any of the songs. Out of curiosity they decide to play the tapes to find out what the music sounds like.

From there the story can go many directions –

1. The tapes are filled with amazing songs and the couple are compelled to track down the original albums that the music came from.
2. The songs listed aren’t actually songs. They’re weird interviews that reveal secrets that the couple wishes that did not now know.
3. The songs alter the couples thoughts and moods, slowly driving thiem insane and/or sparking epiphanies that lead them to enlightenment.
4. The music on the tapes is strange and obscure. The couple is inspired to track down the original albums and, in the process, they discover hidden worlds and forgotten histories.
5. Every time one of the tapes is played, something changes in the house. Sometimes for the better. Sometimes for worse. Sometimes simply for strange.
6. ????

Recommendation

My brother, Glenn, used to blog regularly. Him starting a blog is what inspired me to start blogging. He’s got two blogs: Lovesettlement and Dare I Read? In recent years he’s left them quiet. Until the coronapocalypse and the California Lockdown. What’s been bad for “normal life” has sparked him to do more posting. He uses Lovesettlement to post about his poetry. Dare I Read? is where he posts a wider range of thoughts.

He’s been called back to work so the blogs have been quiet again but there’s enough interesting stuff up that visting is worthwhile.

Local News

A good way to start thinking of all the ways I might be screwing up at my job is to have the boss say as she walks by my case,  “Come see me in the office before you leave today”. That happened to me on Wednesday. And I spent a bunch of time trying to think of what I might have done wrong. Too many u-turns? Too much office time? My delivery time isn’t matching the metrics that corporate thinks it should?

Nah.

Turns out she wanted to give a me a certificate of appreciation for the extra work I do beyond delivering my own route. With mail volumes down I often have undertime available and I volunteer to carry parts of other routes in that undertime. It was a pleasant surprise to get acknowledged for that.

On Thursday the boss gave out small gift certificates to those carriers who had scanned 100% of their packages in the last month and slightly smaller certificates to those who had managed 99% scans. I’m a 99%er.

On Saturday we were given new procedures for how and when we’re supposed to sort our mail and parcels. I’m not going to try to explain the details. Mostly it’s an attempt by management to get the carriers to do our “office time” work during a designated “office time” and everything else during “street time”. I have to compliment our stations managers for actually taking carrier complaints into account and restructuring the way the clerks sort parcels to try to accomodate the new mandates. Past managers have have heard the same complaints and just shrugged.

On Sunday I finished the last illustration for the Lovecraft Country Holiday Collection. Now the clock is ticking until the Growing Up / Overnight Kickstarter launches on August 1st. I will have more to say about that as the date approaches.

Today is my day off. I made a batch of bacon bits – 1 pound pork bacon plus 2 pounds turkey bacon, chopped and baked for a couple hours at 375 degrees. I’ll use those as a garnish for the next couple weeks. I also made a huge lasagna. Five layers of noodles and homemade sauce and five types of cheese. That’s lunch for the next ten days.

And that’s another week gone. I hope yours had more high points than low ones. And I hope that the coming week looks bright. There’s a lot of nonsense happening in the world right now but there’s also a lot of beauty and brilliance. We’re all in this together and when we remember that, we thrive.