I have a floor! and other musings

[rolanni]

Everything is built that needs building and everything has found a place, saving the boombox, the paper boxes containing the soon-to-be-auctioned Items of Interest, and the box (visible behind the bear about to pounce) full of last year's tax stuff, that should've gone downstairs months ago, except it was holding up Mouse and Dragon.

Behold! The New! Improved! office:

The view from the door, with chest,
Mozart's rocker, and obligatory teddy bears.


My beautiful new desk.  From now on, I intend to tell
everyone that I write at the dining room table.
 

All this has of course taken me much, much longer than I had dreamed it could, and as soon as I'm finished here I need to run into town for some groceries.  So, the bookkeeping (that's the tightly bound file to the left of the screen, above), will just have to wait until, um, tomorrow.  Yeah.

I am behind on a couple of things mentioned here, among them a recipient for the paper ARC of Fledgling, (watch this space!)

Also, I'll be posting details on the first auction, coming soon to an Ebay near you, as soon as Steve and I can decide how long to let it run, whether to establish a minimum, and if a buy-it-now price of $5,000 will be seen as a joke or an insult.  If anyone has an opinion on any of that, by all means sound off.

And now!  To town.
 

Comments

Congrats!!!

[(Anonymous)]

Floors are great, aren't they?

Lauretta@ConstellationBooks

Re: Congrats!!!

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

Floors are vastly underrated.

[msagara.livejournal.com]

The funny thing? I frequently do write in the dining room because it has the most table space and if I'm spreading out books, etc., it's a less...precarious environment.

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

I frequently do write in the dining room because it has the most table space and if I'm spreading out books, etc., it's a less...precarious environment.

We. . . have no dining room. In fact, I'm trying to remember the last place I lived that had a dining room...um? My parent's house? Anyway, it's lovely having a dining room table/desk. All the room! And the stability!

dining room, dining room...

[kinzel.livejournal.com]

The last place we had that had a ding room ... when we were in Skowtown we had a living-room-dining-room-office room-all-in-one-room... so that didn't count. The rented house in Waterville had...an open living room kitchen dining area. Wait -- we theoretically had a dining room in 1986-1988 when we were managing the Public Storage facility in Randallstown. And we even ate there, because there was no room to eat in the kitchen, at all.

Re: dining room, dining room...

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

had a dining room in 1986-1988 when we were managing the Public Storage facility in Randallstown

That wasn't a dining room, that was a wide space in the hall.

[redpimpernel.livejournal.com]

First, I love looking at all of the background stuff in people's photos. We are meant to look at the chest of drawers (very nice job!) but I am drawn to the magazine & book covers, the bird ID poster, and I'm most intrigued by the item in the pink frame, it almost looks like stitching of some kind. Or we should look at the new desk (nice), but I see the cartoon art (artist? I want to guess Phil Foglio but probably not), the dragon hanging from the ceiling (it needs a tree), kitty art and of course this blog on the computer screen.

As for the auction stuff. Suggestions:
1. Place initial minimum bids low, really low, to start. That will encourage any and all to bid, and all items Will eventually raise to their market value.
2. By it now prices should be a realistic number that you would be satisfied with. Putting an unrealistic joking number of $50,000 defeats the purpose of the buy it now. If you really want items to go through the bidding process don't use the BIN feature.
3. To get the true vale of the stuff, It is very important to get the word out that you are selling these cool & unique items. Prices won't go anywhere if the fans don't know to go looking for the auctions.

[pedanther]

The cartoon art is, I'm confident, from Shaenon Garrity's Narbonic. The gerbil is pretty distinctive.

Other details I like: the certificate, just left of the kitty art, certifying that Sharon Lee is a Real Writer; and the... interesting... keyboard.

Wall stuff

[kinzel.livejournal.com]

The pink frame thing is in fact some fabric art -- we have several pieces in the house -- and the one you spied is a typical Maine Winter Scene, done in rescued burst of cloth and stuff by a friend and fan (and former chief cat feeder) from Oakland, Maine. There are snipped fabric pieces, a snowmobile trail made out of a long string of fake pearls, some stars of cloth and some of snipped colored foil, a fun piece.

yes there is a bird chart, and under it is a postcard from Donato, inspired by the books he was illustrating for us/Meisha Merlin. In the same view is a rescued bit of ephemera from our trip as Guests of Honor to Colorado Springs -- it is a Welcome from First Friday Fandom thing we got at CoSine.

The artist is correctly identified by pedanther as from Shaenon Garrity's Narbonic; Sharon fell in love with one of the strips and bought the original of it. We also have all the Narbonic books and each one came in nice white envelopes hand-embellished by Shaenon, and we saved all of them and then had local writer/artist/fan/friend/frame shop manager Amy Cyrway put them all in one spot for Sharon...

Re: Wall stuff

[kinzel.livejournal.com]

Bingo on the art. It is her work, indeed, artfully composed by our local artist-framemaker.

We both have similar certificates.

I am thankful I do not have one of Sharon's Kinesis keyboards
( http://www.kinesis-ergo.com/advantage.htm ) without which she effectively cannot write more than about 20 or 30 minutes a day before her hands lock-up.

[keristor.livejournal.com]

Big flat thing to walk on not covered with papers, books, and stuph! Big flat thing in front of the chair not covered with papers, books, and stuph! It ain't natchrul, I tells ya! But I'm sure you and the cats can soon bring it back to a normal state *g*...

The auction: as a buyer I both like and dislike "buy it now". I like it if I need the thing immediately and think the price is reasonable, but it is also very annoying if someone snaffles it before others have a chance at it (looking at an item with 7 days to go and not bidding until you get home and check your finances, only to find "auction ended", is really annoying). With something which is not time limited (we don't need them "right now", no one will suffer because they have to wait a few extra weeks) I would rather not see BiN.

The other thing which really annoys people is the hidden 'reserve' price (which you haven't suggested but which is one of the common eBay options). Bidding on something and then being told "this price is below the reserve" wastes time and a lot of people will give up rather than try to guess the reserve price. If you want to set a minimum bid then do that (and note that the cost of postage will also effectively set a minimum, eBay is a lot better now at stating the total cost not just the current bid but it's worth stating it in the description, as well as where you are willing/able to ship).

I would suggest putting the minimum bid at a level which at least compensates you for your time and effort in sending it (don't add it to the postage, though, eBay can get complaints about that). Starting at $0.99 does attract bids, but can also result in that costing you more in time and fuel than you get from it (also don't forget to figure in eBay's charges) or would have cost to take it to the dump.