Multitasking Laundry

Even in the midst of a pandemic, laundry must be done!

I could have done it over the weekend. The rainy, dreary, chilly, gross weekend. Instead, I decided to do more to clean up my office, throwing out boxes of magazines I’d saved that I’d not looked at, not even thought about, in years. I started to organize my comic books. I listened to the Traveling Wilburys (and Wilburys-adjacent material), and watched Roy Orbison: Black & White Night.

Laundry, no. That, I decided, I could do on Monday, while working from home. It would break up the monotony of the day. I didn’t really have a lot to do — just one load, my lights — so I could put it in the wash, work, put in the dryer, work, retrieve and fold, work.

I started my day a little early — about 7:45 — and spent an hour responding to emails. Then I shaved and showered, dressed for the day (blue polo shirt, shorts, Washington Senators baseball cap), and started in on my to-do list for the day, just six items. Though, really, five, since one of the items never materialized.

The main tasks for the day were to do the liquidation lists (the standard list and the Image Comics list) and to write editorial copy for the May catalog.

Before lunch, I worked on the liquidation lists. These I could do remotely without logging into the VPN. The Image Comics list was a trickier than I’d anticipated — the macros I’d written to handle that didn’t work — so I did what I needed to do by hand. (Later I’d discovered that, had I logged into the VPN and done it there, the macros worked just fine. It was an Excel format issue, because Excel is weird.)

After I completed these, my laundry was done, so I went to the complex’s laundry facility to fold my clothes and bring them home. I like folding my laundry in the laundry room; that way, when I get back to my apartment, all I have to do is to put the laundry away. It’s ready to go, to drawers or the closet.

Even though it was mid-morning, the fog was still heavy.

Patchy fog in Yoe

In the mail I had a package — a new USB wireless adapter that would work with both Windows and Linux.

I then spent an hour or so trying to get my computer, in Linux Mint 19.3, to connect to the office VPN, to no avail. I will need to do more research on this.


The afternoon was spent writing editorial copy.

I wrote all but three of the articles I needed to, and the only reason those three were not written is that I don’t know what I’m writing about for those. I have product titles for two of the three, but no information beyond that.

My plan is to log in tonight, see if any of the publisher pages have appeared on the FTP server — doubtful, but you never know — and write these, if possible. Otherwise, they will have to wait to be written tomorrow.

Tomorrow, at the office.

Yes, I am planning on going into Diamond’s offices the next three days to work on the order forms. For one thing, I need access to the printers. For another, I don’t trust my remote connection enough for some of the delicate data things I have to do.

I’ve been assured that, yes, the office is open, that a small crew will be there, and I can work unmolested.

I’m looking forward to it.

I can do with some normalcy. And the open road.


I redid my desk at home a little this afternoon.

My ever-evolving workspace

I added my TARDIS Bluetooth speaker, which I’ve been using while I’m working in the remote desktop — today, I listened to episode four of the BBC World Service’s 13 Minutes to the Moon season 2, about the doomed Apollo 13 mission — and a Civilization III paperweight, which Firaxis sent me when I was an EB Games store manager many moons ago.

This room is not as dark as it appears in photos.


https://twitter.com/DrKylieMurray/status/1242543085768388608

The 700th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Arbroath is next week.

Is there in the archives of any nation a more inspiring national document than this; and are we to believe that the Parliament which, on 6th April 1320, despatched that ringing message to the titular head of Christendom represented a people who twenty-five years before were without any sense of nationality, were devoid of national consciousness, national sentiment, and national cohesion?

Evan MacLeod Barron, The Scottish War of Independence (1914), page 482

The BBC Radio 3 program, linked to above, was interesting and entertaining. If you’re unfamiliar with the Declaration of Arbroath — or even if you think you know it — you’ll learn something. I certainly did.

I have not read Barron’s book. I started it, twenty years ago. I bought it at the B. Dalton at Park City Mall in Lancaster, Pennsylvania on what I remember as a rainy day in early 2000. I had a day off from Electronics Boutique, so I drove over to Lancaster just to get out of the house. Maybe I’ll read it this year, in honor of the Arbroath anniversary.


This blog post was written using the Gutenberg editor in the Vivaldi web browser on Linus Mint.

Published by Allyn

A writer, editor, journalist, sometimes coder, occasional historian, and all-around scholar, Allyn Gibson is the writer for Diamond Comic Distributors' monthly PREVIEWS catalog, used by comic book shops and throughout the comics industry, and the editor for its monthly order forms. In his over ten years in the industry, Allyn has interviewed comics creators and pop culture celebrities, covered conventions, analyzed industry revenue trends, and written copy for comics, toys, and other pop culture merchandise. Allyn is also known for his short fiction (including the Star Trek story "Make-Believe,"the Doctor Who short story "The Spindle of Necessity," and the ReDeus story "The Ginger Kid"). Allyn has been blogging regularly with WordPress since 2004.

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