Patti O'Shea's Blog, page 24

Desk Chair Blues

In 2019, my office chair (at home) was unbearably uncomfortable. It had been for a while, but I'd reached my limit. I decided I'd invest in a new chair. The one I had then was an extremely expensive office chair that I'd bought at a used office furniture company and I thought I could do better than that.

I decided I'd pick up a gaming chair this time. After all, gamers played for hours and hours at a time. Surely they would have the most comfortable chairs of all. I began my research and bought a chair.

It came with a footrest, which I thought would be cool. I could kick back and write with the keyboard on my lap. I never used it.

The chair was okay. I never love loved it. But it was more comfortable than my old desk chair.

Then I developed that sinking feeling. I'm trying to be funny. What I mean is the chair cylinder wouldn't stay at the right height. I linked to the blog post with that saga The fake leather arms are cracking and I hate that feel against my arms. And generally this chair is becoming more and more uncomfortable.

I found a video on YouTube by some guy who says he sells chairs. He compared gaming chairs to ergonomic desk chairs and explained why the ergonomic desk chair is better in almost every circumstance. I wish I'd seen his video before I bought the chair I'm sitting in right now, but that's water under the bridge at this point.

My new ergonomic desk chair at work is awesome. I priced that out and no. I looked at a some other models. Still no. I tried to find another used office furniture place around before I had an epiphany.

What if I try to replace the cushioning in my former used office furniture desk chair?

That was the problem with it. The chair had been hugely comfortable in the beginning--until the padding got too thin. Surely the padding can be replaced.

I found videos. I ordered foam. I am going to try desk chair cushion replacement. After I upload Wicked Persuasion. There will be blog posts.

Samples

Last year, before I had my bathroom remodeled, I requested all kinds of tile samples. I went to the home improvement stores and bought full-size tiles as I tried to make a decision on what I wanted.

It was tough! Finally, the contractor had me meet him and we walked through it together.

I knew I wanted the tile that looks like wood. I knew I wanted it light and not rustic. I found the tile for the shower first, but I needed a decorative tile and a floor tile. The contractor pulled the floor tile (his second pick. The first was rustic and I don't do rustic) and I was like that's it!

I had an idea for the shower floor tile, but I wasn't sure it was right. It was. That left the decorative border tile. The contractor pulled a variety of choices, put them with the three we'd already picked, and it was easy to eliminate the ones that wouldn't work.

That brought us to the final version. Final with shower door.

Now, a year later, I have tile samples...it seems like everywhere, although it really isn't.

This big hexagon tile I can make into a trivet. I just need to buy a glue gun and some supplies. And maybe watch a few YouTube videos, but what do I do with the other tiles?

I have a full size floor tile that ended up being far too light for the bathroom. I also have the little samples in the picture at the top of the post. I don't need coasters, which is the only thing I can think to do with the small square ones, but the accent tile samples? The shower floor tile samples? What do I do with them?

I don't do mosaics and really don't want to start, but tossing them away seems wasteful. Does Home Depot and Lowes take the samples back? I don't even need to get a refund, I just want the tiles out of my house.

Tumbling Down

I've mentioned in the past how much I like receiving medals and that I continually sign up for virtual challenges that send medals. And I talked about buying a medal holder, but not knowing where to put it up. In the meantime, I was hanging the medals on piece that hooked into my desk shelving.

In the picture below, you can see it on the left side of my books. Their job is to keep books from falling off, not to hold weight.

But I kept getting medal after medal and they needed to go somewhere so I continued to hang them up next to my desk. It let me see them and kept them out of the way. Win-win.

There was no indication that the weight was getting to be too much for this poor metal arm. It wasn't bending, it wasn't creaking, and because I was hanging up one medal at a time, I had no idea how much weight was on the arm.

And then it happened.

While I was working from home and sitting at my desk, there was a crash. The arm fell to the floor, taking all the medals with it.

It was loud. Medals fell between the desk and the printer stand next to my desk. It's a narrow space, and while the printer stand has wheels, my office is currently too cluttered to move it. And the cords. I'd have to worry about there not being enough cord length to move the stand.

Some came apart. Luckily, they were easy to fix since three of the four casualties were magnets coming loose. One was a ribbon coming off. The only one not fixed is the one with the magnet medallion that I can't find. It's either under my desk or under the printer cart, but I'll have to clean up my office before I can locate it and that won't be until Wicked Persuasion is completely finished and uploaded.

Of course, this will bother me, so I'll keep looking.

I wasn't sure what to do with the medals, but I went with one of the bins I bought to organize my office. I put it on the bathroom scale. It said 12 pounds. It feels heavier than that.

 ETA: Found the missing medallion. All medals are now fixed.

eBook Organization: Gah!

I've struggled with eBook organization for years, but I've kind of drifted along with the search function.

Then I was looking at writing books, saw one that looked interesting, but when I clicked on it, Amazon told me I already owned it. Hmm. I do? I looked, and yes, I do have it.

On Tuesday I blogged about my habit tracker plan. With my surprise book discovery, I decided maybe I should make a list of the writing-related books that I own. I went through my Kindle app, but I'm not feeling confident that I found all of them.

The next day, I remembered I own paper copies of some writing books I'd like to read. I added them to my list of books. Then I remembered my Kobo app. A few versions ago (okay more than a few versions ago), I loved the Kobo app so much, that I bought a lot of books there. Then they updated the app and I didn't love it as much and stopped using it. I forgot about all the books I have over there.

I added these to the list.

Which reminded me I have the Apple Books app, too. And Book Funnel. And I have no idea what I have on Nook because BN doesn't let me login and I don't know why, but I have books there, too.

I have a database for my paper books (although I haven't kept it up very well), but I have no system for my eBooks. None at all. I'm not even sure how you create a system. I tried to download a .CSV file from Kindle, but Amazon doesn't offer this feature.

I'm also stymied by the fact that I do not want to spend 10,000 hours organizing my eBooks. Maybe I need to do an online search to see if anyone in the world wide web wrote about their system.

Habit Tracking

I've seen some super cool habit trackers for years now, but most of them were made to be used in weekly planners. I am a daily planner girl. I did try putting a monthly habit tracker on my monthly overview pages, but I didn't look at them often and out of sight, out of mind.

But I felt like I really needed to use a habit tracker for my writing. And I found a website that offers 43 printable habit tracker templates for free! No email address required.

SaturdayGift free habit trackers

Although I wrote on four lines, every line is related to writing. Write, Brainstorm, and Research are self-explanatory, but the Read line might not be as clear. On this habit tracker, Read means read books about writing--either craft, marketing, how to write a fight scene, etc. My goal is to have a box colored in every day of the month in one (or more) of the four categories.

If I'm too tired to Write or Brainstorm, there's no reason why I can't read about a new plotting method. Then I can color in the daily box on the Read line.

In June and July it will be super easy to reach my goal because I'm working on revisions to Wicked Persuasion which will be released at the start of August. It's after the book comes out that I'll really need the habit tracker. I'm hoping that in two months, this will be such a routine that I won't even need to think about it.

BTW, the site with the free habit trackers has 100 day habit trackers, 90 day, 30 day, 21 day, yearly, and about as many variations as you can imagine. Completely for free! I clicked off of some other habit tracker websites that allegedly offered free habit trackers, but wanted my email address. Just no. I was excited that the site with the most options was also the site that really offered free trackers.

Planner Test Drive

I'm doing another planner test drive this year with a mid-year planner from The Paper & Plan Co.

My go-to planner is talking about switching to an UNDATED planner. While they've annoyed me with some of their changes in the past, undated is out. I'm not wasting all that time setting up the dates. The daily pages? Not a huge deal because I can do them one at a time. It's setting up the monthly overview that has me going nope, no way.

I did test drive a different planner company in 2021 and thought their planner worked well for me. I bought them in 2022 and went back to my original planner after two months. It makes me wonder if test driving this planner will give me an accurate picture of how it will work for me, but I decided to try anyway.

Undated is a deal breaker for me.

My test drive academic year planner just arrived, and since it's not July, I haven't used it yet, but there are a couple of things I really like and they are a page for Saturday and a page for Sunday. FULL pages. For each weekend day. The busiest days of my week. I think I might have found heaven.

Apologies for my less than adequate photography. I did actually buy a tripod with a light so I could take better pictures with my phone, but it's late at night when I'm writing this and I want to go to bed.

Anyway, you can see the day goes from 4am to 9pm and the Notes can easily be used as a To Do list. There's space to record meals and snacks (my current planner has this), water (my current planner also has this), and workouts. My current planner only has a checkbox for workouts, but I use an empty box area to record what the workout was.

What this planner doesn't have that I'm kind of missing: No checkboxes for the To Do list, although those little circles can maybe be checked off? No place to check off vitamins or mediation (something my current planner has). There's no space to record sleep, which is also in my current planner.

This test planner is also wider than my current planner, which I'm also not crazy about. Also, the paper quality isn't as good as what the planner I currently use, but it should be okay. I'll find out when I start writing in it.

I know I'm focused on the things I'm missing, but having full days for Saturday and Sunday? Priceless! Right now, I'm jamming everything in my weekend pages by writing really small. I've fantasized for years about finding a daily planner with full pages for Saturday and Sunday.

You know you'll get another post after I've used the planner for a while. I hope I like it lots because if my usual planner goes undated, I'll need to find something. More to come.

Review: The A-Team (2010)

***WARNING: There might be spoilers!***

The A-Team movie is from 2010, so I'm going to assume that anyone who's really concerned about spoilers has seen it already. That said, I'll do my best not to reveal anything too critical, but I can't promise.

I had no idea this movie existed. If I had seen it advertised, I blocked it from my mind. Probably because as a kid I really enjoyed the television show and these remakes and reboots aren't always awesome.

Anyway, it was brought forward in time. Four Iraq War veterans are framed for a crime they didn't commit and they work to clear their names.

The movie was very much about clearing their names--kind of a prequel to the TV show where they were wanted men who took assignments to help people.

The plot was a little convoluted, although I was watching it in the waiting room of a car service place, so it was hard to hear everything and the movie had already started when I sat down, so I missed the first few minutes. I also had no intention of paying attention to the film, and played around on my phone for a while before my interest was captured.

As you might have guessed from the previous paragraph, I enjoyed this movie. It's the kind of over-the-top action/adventure that I love so much.

I thought the actors did a good job recreating the characters, but doing it in a way that made the roles theirs. I liked that it stayed true in appearance and attitude to the series (at least as I remember it), but that I didn't think of the original actors once I started watching.

I wish they'd made more than one movie because I'd have enjoyed seeing these four in the roles for more than a couple of hours. This makes me want to re-watch the original A-Team television series, but I'm a little scared it won't live up to my memory of it.

I'm giving the movie two thumbs up. Is it perfect? No. Is it enjoyable? Yes. Yes, it is.

The Zen Den

Last week, the gym I go to (which was rebranded as the Wellness Hub) set up a room they called the Zen Den.

I reserved for Tuesday over my lunch time. I had half an hour in a dark room, sitting in a comfortable chair with meditation-type music playing and there was a light projecting jellyfish on the wall.

It was fabulous! Damn, I wish I could do that every day. For half an hour I didn't worry (too much). I relaxed. I breathed. When my thoughts wandered, I brought them back to the moment. Did I mention it was incredibly awesome?

I have a few different meditation apps on my phone, but I don't often take the time to actually meditate. Today, for half an hour, it was underlined that I really do need to do that at home, too. I can't duplicate the darkened room or the jellyfish on the wall, but not only do I have meditation apps, I also have awesome music that I collected when I did regular meditation.

I hope the gym (wellness hub) does another Zen Den. Loved it soooo much!

Office Supply Geek Out

Last week, I blogged about needing to sketch out things, and in that post, there's a Post-it Note that I drew my extremely rough sketch. Since I wrote that post, I discovered a new Post-it.

Full stick Post-it Notes!

I did know they existed, but I'd never actually used one and then I found a nearly empty pad of them at work and used one there to make note of a meeting and some items I wanted to take care of.

OMG! These things are fabulous! I immediately knew I had to buy my own. I picked more interesting colors than what we had at the office. Of course!

I have a writing notebook where I make notes and brainstorm and anything else that might be related to the book or series I'm writing. I'm also flipping through that notebook a fair amount and sticking and re-sticking Post-it notes. Sometimes over and over. Naturally, some of the sticky comes off and then the notes start falling out when I rifle through them.

Full stick Post-its, though, should solve the problem. There's a light hash mark on the right of the note so you know where to lift it off, but the rest of it is adhered to the page.

The note above is one I rewrote off an early Post-it. I believe it's from chapter 3? Maybe chapter 4. Anyway, the note was hanging on by a thread because I'd moved it around so many times. (I wanted to keep track of who Deck met at the bar.) Now, it's not going anywhere no matter how often I flip through my notes.

Two thumbs up for the full stick.

Sketch It Out

I have no artistic ability...much to my disappointment. I also hear words, but am not visual. Which means when I'm writing, I look for a lot of pictures online to use for inspiration. I'm not sure at the beginning what a character looks like, but when I find their image, I know it.

However, sometimes there is no image. That's when I pick up a pen and try to make a sketch. I know it's going to be bad, but I don't need an exact rendering. I need an estimation.

The Post-it note in the image is my attempt to sketch out the market in Trujillo, Puerto Jardin. (The Paladin League series)

Shape is wrong. Orientation was wrong and I drew over the top to realign it. I didn't put the streets in that run alongside the market, but I knew they were there.

When I had the ugly, horrible, rough sketch in the condition you see in the picture, I put it in the Paladin League Notebook (I'm on number 2) and started writing.

As terrible as I am at anything drawing/sketching related, this was what I needed to write. I'll take it.