five good things

I have another week off! (although what has actually happened is: I haven't taken my leave, I need to take it, I was burnt out in August and had to just stop, and my trip to Helsinki wasn't for another month, so...anyway, I was only taking off the days I'll be away, Wednesday to the following Monday, but now this Monday is a bank holiday so there wasn't much point in going to work on Tuesday so...I booked it off. :D )

I'm going to Helsinki next Wednesday and not coming home till Monday. Ah, one of my favourite places in the world. <33333

And I'm seeing my all-time favourite band, my all-time hero, and a whole bunch of other bands and people I've loved for decades!

Everything is fascinatingly historical this week. Yes, I know, I know there are Issues and Tumblr loves to go on about them, I'm well fucking aware, but as a historian I am observing and soaking it all in with great interest. I'm also vastly entertained that everyone with a flagpole who's flying their flags at "half mast" (the people who bother flying a flag in this country are also the ones most likely to get all aerated at a union flag being flown wrongly - flying the flag is generally seen as a very nationalist/right-wing thing to do, particularly with the English flag) clearly have no idea at all what half mast actually looks like. Most of them are halfway down the flagpole, although I've seen one that's half the height of the flag down from the top...

I've gone back to learning Finnish (last-minute panic XD ), using Duolingo this time, and I've retained a good bit of what I learned 15 years ago (how is it that long), and I'm figuring out the grammar stuff that they don't teach you because I've just been studying German at a fairly elevated level so that's what I'm used to. I'm struggling to remember the new words, and the 'words' feature on the website doesn't include the English translations, so I can't remind myself of the meanings of the words I'm struggling with in that way, which is an absolute pain in the arse, but I'm getting there. The way Duolingo teaches, it's not much use for tourism, but it's a fun challenge anyway.

I finished TRSB and had a marvellous time (the fic and art are here, do check them out, it's a bit quiet over there!) and have been writing furiously on a request fic and an unexpected sequel thereto which should see the light of day soon :D

I've had an idea as to how to get out of Job Number Two, which is a weight off the mind. It may not work, but I'm going to get out in the next year or so anyway because I'm out of my depth, stressed, frustrated and not particularly enjoying it. My boss at Job Number One suggested doing an options analysis of the various possibilities to illustrate that my idea, although they may not like it, is going to be the best long-term solution, and I wrote that up today, although I'm not going to broach the subject for a while (my backup plan needs time to establish herself in her new IT contracting business XD ).

I've started the preliminary work for my new OU course Exploring English Grammar and it's fascinating :D Looking forward to the rest of it.

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AHHH that’s so cool that you’re book binding After August!! I’m so excited to see the final product for it! I wanted to ask, do you have an idea on what the cover for your book will be? I’m a little bit curious about it, but don’t share if you don’t want too!

I don’t know exactly what to say since I’m just really excited! This is a great idea. I’m praying that it’ll turn out well <3 Anyways, have a good night Hidden!!

Sluggy <33333 How you doin?!

Thank you so much! I would hope to use the art/screenshots I used in After August! So this could be the cover-

But a lot depends on what size/quality I can get. The movies are, um, horizontal, so I might be able to do a wrap-around cover image with Taichi's face on the front and his pants/legs on the back, or something like that. The main idea is to get an emotional, close-up image of Taichi.

There are lots of difficulties- how do I size this properly to print? Can I find what I need at a nice resolution? And I know places like Kinkos, Staples, etc aren't supposed to print copyrighted material- but also that no one is going to hover over your shoulder while you print stuff at the kiosks. Like, clearly fanart gets printed somehow?

I'm also running into problems because a lot of the "design your own cover" tools/sites are for the front cover only (I assume they're meant for ebooks), and don't offer a full wrap around template. I'm thinking this part of the process is going to give me the most grief. (Although it looks like you actually CAN manually add dimensions to Canva! So basically- gotta watch a metric ton of Youtube videos to figure it out, lol!).

I also want to print and add in the screen shots/art I included at the beginning of each chapter on AO3. I left space for them in the printed manuscript. The good news is that it shouldn't be too expensive to test sizing for these on cheap paper before nailing the dimensions and taking that to Kinkos or similar.

The best news, I guess, is that I will always be working in the same size (8.5 x 11 in paper folded in half). Once I work out how to do this, I can save my dimensions for future use.

If all else fails, I can wrap the cover bristol board in blue fabric and put an orange star on it and call it a day. This is for fun, you know?

Thank you so much for your kind words, you're the best!