‘Tis the Day of Fri. Once again.
Did your week go well?
I certainly hope so. If not, please fill out a complaint form and send it to management. Operators are standing by. Standing by the water cooler that is. They’re nowhere near the phones and they wouldn’t answer if they were. It’s casual Friday. Management is drunk and the operators are halfway there.
(I can’t remember if I’ve ever worked in a place that had a water cooler. Coffee maker, yes. Water cooler … maybe? It’s too early to wrack my memory.)
These Days …
This week started out pretty well. My days off collaborated with the Memorial Day holiday so I ended up with three days off in a row – Sunday through Tuesday.
I did some late birthday celebrating on Sunday. And worked on art. Contracts have not yet been signed with the new publisher for Billi 99 but I’m letting myself work on short projects again. The publisher sent us copies of a few of the books that they’ve done in the past and they are lovely. Waiting for them to get back to us on some details is difficult but they already had projects on their schedule and adding in Billi requires moving things around.
Monday I went to a rally organized by my mail carriers’ union. City carriers are currently working without a contract. Our contract expired on May 20th. We’ll continue to get paid and have all the rights agreed on in the previous contract until the new one takes effect. The rally was to make a public statement that we wanted an end to mandatory overtime and better working conditions. The rally happened in a park in downtown Seattle. I don’t go downtown much. Parking is expensive. It’s full of people. But I went. Numbers matter. Showing up was the least I could do. I joined in chants when expected. I even had a conversation with one of the carriers from my station that I’d never spoke to before. Turns out he’d had two different smash and grabs happen on his route.
Tuesday I worked on art.
On Wednesday I found out that I’d been mandated to work on Tuesday. Apparently five regular carriers, including myself, had been mandated. Management forgot to tell any of us. They put it on the schedule but, as regulars, we already have an expected schedule, so none of us checked the weekly updating one. Ooops. The mail got delivered.
As it got delivered on Wednesday and Thursday. It will get delivered again today. Probably by me. It’s possible that aliens will take me for a joyride between now and clock in time but that’s unlikely. I’m certainly not counting on it.
The Progress
One of the things I worked on during my holiday was coloring this set of sketches. I finished the process on Tuesday. This week I’m posting my base color choices for each set of sketches. I’m coloring this art in monochrome. Ideally each base color suggests an emotion. Ideally. I’ll be posting different stages each week for the next month.
To Sail the Seas Unknown
A couple of years ago I did a couple of supplemental illustrations for Corsairs of Cthulhu, a Call of Cthulhu RPG set in the Golden Age of Piracy. One was a page border –
The other was a general use fill-in illustration. The page border is pretty specific to the book but this crossed swords image seems like it could live on its own on schtuff.
I haven’t added anything to my Redbubble shop in a while so, with time available, I set to work coloring this design.
Voilà!
Available on schtuff!
And that’s it for this week. I need to have some breakfast. And think about delivering mail.
Take care of yourself. Check in on the folks you care about. Make some art. Go for a walk. Pet a cat. Play with a dog. Take a nap.
The world is full of opportunities.
Thank you for reading. See you in seven!
