Author: Snoskred

The New Setup Part 2

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Following on from the previous post – Above you see the Kitty Nirvana which has some of their toys and their kitty litter enclosure.

I can use this mobile screen above to block this area off, if I don’t want folks to see it. At the moment it is blocking off the drying area and my private lounge area –

The drying area is a suntrap for the kitties and they have cat towers to recline in and enjoy the sun here. Usually one or the other is in the round basking area – in the next photo you see Happy has made her way there.

My area is screened off from the bright sun area – too much light gives me a headache. I have my recliner, the other half has his Ikea chair, the treadmill is back behind me near the curtains out of the way.

My candle shelf has been moved here from the entryway. I got rid of all the DVD covers of movies, they have all been stored in special bulk dvd storage folios. I kept the DVDs that are series, at least for now. The DVD shelves moved into the studio where they hold arty things now. Looking at this photo I see I still have some cord hiding work to do here.

My much reduced books have a small bookshelf here in the corner – these are the ones I don’t have in digital format. Everything else which I do have in digital format has either been sold or donated.

And now a couple of studio pics. We did a lot of work in this room. There are four tables all of which are fabric covered and I will be getting plastic covering for those arty things we will want to do which are messy. For now the arty stuff we are doing is not messy. There are 14 chairs all of which were re-upholstered in a gorgeous teal and blue fabric.

One of the studio walls is devoted to kits I have in stock or photos of kits on the way, with a couple of posters in between.

This has been a huge effort and I couldn’t have done it without the awesome Other Half, of course. Now we’re all set up and things are going pretty well. I have some dedicated regular students already and the kits sell very fast, oftentimes even before they arrive here. If only Australia Post would get their act together I would have more stuff I could sell. :)

Home, work

The New Setup Part 1

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– Our new entryway –

When we were creating our home business where people would be coming into the house regularly, we thought carefully about how we could separate our private areas from the “public” areas. We’ve always made use of “door curtains” to keep the heat in the parts of the house we were heating so we thought we could use curtains to do this job quite effectively. It has worked out well thus far with one painful exception – more on that later!

Above you can see the curtain that leads to my lounge area. I don’t go through that one at all, I consider it like a brick wall that cannot be opened. This is partly due to the lamp and coat rack which sits in front of the curtain, and partly because I prefer to go the long way around.

Now it is like you have walked in the front door – here is what you would see if you did. Some art on the walls which I am loving the position of right now but I do have another artwork in mind for this area once I create it. You see the kitchen benchtop and the mat that marks the studio entrance – more on that below.

In this case you see right through to The Other Half’s office area – but if you were coming here to visit the studio you would not see that at all, it is screened off by the curtain you can see –

This curtain screens two ways – when nobody is popping in, we use it to screen off the guest bathroom and toilet – we no longer use them, they are purely for visitors now. When people are visiting, this curtain swings across to block off the hallway – otherwise known as Other Half World. His gaming room and home office are down this hallway as well as the laundry and our bedroom/ensuite etc.

Behind that curtain the toilet and guest bathroom are patiently waiting for their next visitor. I’ve got some lovely reed diffusers in these rooms that smell like coconut and mango, it is heavenly in there.

Also in this area, we have used curtains to “hide” a couple of shelving units. This one above hides all my tupperware containers. We’ve also made signs to let people know these doors are private areas – the spare bedroom and linen closet which actually holds no linen but contains things like the breadmaker and other appliances.

And this shelf curtain which hides our medicine baskets, oven trays and casserole dishes. This sofa can be used by visitors if they want to take a break from the studio and sit down on the lounge to drink their coffee/tea/hot chocolate. We keep rugs on it so the cats can’t fur it up, we can take those off in a second if we need to.

At the studio entrance I have used this mat to remind people to watch their step. The studio was once a garage and there is a small step down into it which we have mitigated with this rubber ramp mat from Bunnings.

We have used another curtain to block off the kitchen from the areas behind it. This is where the painful exception happens – the dishwasher door is right next to the curtain and twice I have unloaded the dishwasher and left the door open intending to return and fill it..

I’ve then gone off to do something else and forget the door is open, when I go back through the curtain I hit the door with a leg or ankle. Two bruises thus far, I am hopeful that will be enough to learn not to do that again. :)

On Wednesday I will show you a little more of what we’ve been up to here. ;)

Home, work

Every Waking Moment

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My current work in progress. I did not know it would be radioactive! :)

I had absolutely no idea how much my new venture would take over my life. This is crazy time, folks, but I am loving every minute of it. I’ve already got a small group of dedicated regulars and we are having so much fun.

Part of the venture is selling things I am importing from overseas. I can’t keep up with the demand – or I should say, the postal services can’t keep up with the demand.

As I type this I have 18 packages in transit AKA not at my house yet, and I have three packages containing 20 items already reserved for customers seemingly stuck in Melbourne which I have fast begun to comprehend is a black hole for packages – they can spend up to a week there going nowhere. I mean really, is it that hard to put things on the truck to Sydney?

I’ve already sent two poster rolls to customers – one in Canberra, one in Sydney, these get there overnight. I’m paying a pretty penny for that to happen so it darn well should. I make it pretty with this duct tape that Sephyroth sent me some years ago.

Sydney transit is much better – things usually arrive within 24-48 hours of landing in the country. But not this week, apparently Melbourne is contagious and I’ve had a package sitting there since Monday which hasn’t turned up here.

Our package tracking is abysmal in this country. When I’ve had packages stuck before they sometimes don’t update that they are being delivered until they get scanned on my doorstep.

There is no shortage of glamour and sparkle in this household presently, even though I did NOT buy these sprinkles. ;) Things are getting very sparkly up in here.

work

Feeding Stations

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We created these for two reasons – one far more important than the other. First the less important one –

1. Cosmetic reasons. It isn’t beautiful to have the place cats eat on display all the time. We want to hide their food place away from view when they aren’t using it. Especially as this area will be visible to people using the water closet if they are attending my workshops.

2. The more important reason – Happy is overweight. We’ve been trying to work on this and were quite successful last year but unknown to us over winter she began sneaking food from Grumpy. She put on almost the exact amount of weight that Grumpy lost.

Grumpy is a very slow eater thanks to her health problems with Horners Syndrome – she tends to make a bit of a mess when she eats. Happy inhales her food within seconds, then she goes looking for more. If we aren’t there to supervise, she will annoy Grumpy who will then walk away from her food, enabling the Food Vacuum to snorfle up anything left.

So all mealtimes are now supervised. If Grumpy walks away, we can close her food lid and she can eat it later on. Once Happy walks away, I get her favourite mouse on a stick and provide some exercise while Grumpy finishes eating.

Grumpy also gets secret kibble snacks in The Other Half’s office when Happy is not around to notice. Though the sound of Grumpy eating often attracts her.

The design is pretty simple, though the triangle shape was born from having less material on hand than expected. There is a strut on the side that locks the lid into the upright position.

This improvement plus the wonderful kitty litter enclosure I mentioned recently are so awesome. Happy tends to walk away without burying – well she thinks she buried it but she actually missed it entirely and sometimes it could be quite stinky so I would go and bury it for her. Since The Other Half added the fan to the kitty litter enclosure I have not experienced one stinky at all, and we have a lot less kitty litter escaping the enclosure.

kitties

How Do I Tell You

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7 weeks ago, I resigned from that job I really loved. It is a long story how that came to be, best summed up as follows – The owner turned out to be a depressed psycho with whom I rarely had any interactions but when I did see her, she would verbally abuse me for doing the things she had actually asked me to do and then tell me the things I did were not important and not necessary.

Making the decision was very difficult. I wrote my letter of resignation and headed in to work one more Saturday shift. I was still a bit on the fence about it, was I doing the right thing, to quit this job I really loved.

She confirmed for me that I made the right decision when she arrived that morning – she said Hi, I said Hi, then she started yelling at me, accusing me of giving her the silent treatment. I know I said my Hi out loud, it wasn’t silent. I knew then that I would never be able to win with her no matter what I did. When I left that day, I put my letter on the counter.

The people I worked with on a daily basis were great and I loved the job so it should not surprise you when I tell you I spent some time curled in a ball on the floor. I had a full on Aspie meltdown. Even just typing about it now brings tears to my eyes, which is one reason I put off telling you for so long.

Things happen for a reason, I am a firm believer in that. This unhappy adventure is yet another in a string of unhappy adventures where I did everything I could for my employer only to be treated badly. It has convinced me that I need to be the person in charge. So after a while of picking myself back up off the floor, I began to think about next steps.

This coincided with a change in The Other Half’s study plans. The university really stuffed him around and there was so much stress trying to schedule everything, in the end I said it might be worth looking into his original option which was to do the degree online. He’ll have to go to Melbourne twice a year for the in person sessions but that turns out cheaper than travelling back and forth to the “local” university.

So he needs a home office to do this, and we decided to separate his games room and study area, which left us the large space that originally was a garage but was turned into a rumpus by the former owners. What can we do with this space, I thought. Why not turn it into a home business of some kind?

We did a lot of cleaning, decluttering, sorting, tidying. The house is feeling like a great place to be right now. :)

Three weeks ago we began building my own home art studio. One week ago we finished it. I’m not an artist by any stretch of the imagination but there are things I can offer, things I can teach people to do. I’ll be running home workshops – in fact I’ve already held a few this past weekend. I’m also going to do some markets.

So. That happened. The good news for me is that while I thought I was headed into that dark depression place again, I managed to avoid it this time. The bounce back from the Aspie meltdown was a lot quicker. Now I have a plan and a goal I am working towards – this time it is all for me, not someone else’s vision, not someone else’s business.

Onward and upward, no looking back. :)

work

Kitties Get A New Thing

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Life for the kitties goes on much the same as it ever does – morning tuna – run around like a crazy thing for a few minutes after the tuna then find a nice spot to sleep the daytime hours away – rationed kibble during the day if one can be bothered waking up for it – see if you can sneak onto a lap at lunchtime for an extra warm nap – human sleep time AKA annoy the humans by first chasing each other around the house, meowing loudly at random intervals during the night, try to find a spot on the bed which keeps the humans awake.

Snoskred, as accustomed to living with a kitty as she is, always manages to fold herself around the sleeping kitty even when leaving the bed for a bathroom stop and returning to the bed folds herself into place perfectly, according to Happy Cat who never has to move. The Other Half is not so good at this trick and a kitty choosing to sleep on his side tends to get jostled a lot.

The past couple of weeks have been a time of much cleaning, decluttering, and general upheaval here in this household. We’ve gone all “Marie Kondo” even though I haven’t read the book, it was time to declutter. The house now positively sparkles and everything has a home to return to once it is used.

But one thing remained annoying to both of us – the kitty litter corner. First of all nobody likes to look at kitty litter. Secondly it tends to kick up some extra dust whenever it gets used. Thirdly the kitties were sometimes so intent on their burying of items that they managed to send kitty litter flying across the floor.

Fourthly we wanted to design a special kitty litter box and eventually move that out into the Nirvana permanently but were not sure what the perfect design would be, so The Other Half made a few possible designs and we thought more about how it would work. Then we procrastinated, until we decided to JUST DO IT. And here is what he made. We’re calling it The Kitty Litter Pod.

The door opens up for scooping but remains closed the rest of the time. Fans for the top are being printed on the 3d printer and will have charcoal filters added. But for now even in this format the Pod works a treat.

The kitties seem perfectly fine with The Kitty Litter Pod. Move their feeding stations though, that causes them to freak out and lose their minds. We did that too, and we have a design for building them a feeding station next!

kitties

Podcast Guru

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In case you didn’t know, podcasting is The New Black. Snoskred is always very late to the trends, I know Sephyroth was trying to get me to listen to podcasts years ago and I really wasn’t into it. For me when I am doing chores around the house I tend to “listen” to the TV, and I had quite a backlog of TV episodes I wanted to hear. I didn’t need to see them so much because I had already seen them.

My gateway podcast was The West Wing Weekly. I loved that TV show and I listened to one episode of the podcast and loved it, so spent quite a lot of time catching up on that series. I would download the episodes and put them onto a USB stick which went into my DVD player/set to box, and I could listen to the podcast.

Then someone recommended an app called Stitcher to me. I gave it a try but it was glitchy and refused to play episodes in the order I wanted to listen to them. As I was listening to one podcast, Stitcher would end one episode and then play me one random episode from another season of the podcast. That was a big no for me, so I was on the hunt for a new podcast app.

One of the online spaces I hang out in had a thread about podcasts and a group member recommended Podcast Guru. It has everything I could want with a very easy to use interface and the creator of the app is always just a message away. I’ve messaged twice to ask how to do things and got a response back within 24 hours which is impressive to me.

What I love most about Podcast Guru is that I can choose which podcast I want to listen to, set it going, and it will keep playing episodes until I come back to the phone and stop it. This is especially handy for me at the moment as I am on a decluttering the house kick and quite often am several rooms away from the phone.

So now I have told you about the app I am loving – what podcasts am I enjoying?

You’re Wrong About – Michael and Sarah do a great job exploring subjects we think we know about. The episode “A Dingo’s Got My Baby” is a must listen for us Aussies and the Columbine one is excellent but they are all great.

Clear + Vivid – Alan Alda has a podcast about communication and it is excellent. My favourite episode was with Judge Judy but there was also a great episode with the MASH cast and a deeply fascinating one with Michael J Fox which was recorded not long after Alan told the world he has been diagnosed with Parkinsons. He has quite a range of guests and you never quite know who will appear next. Highly recommend this one!

The West Wing Weekly – this horse race is on the home stretch, they are in season 7 now and on the way to the season finale. I’m really going to miss this podcast when they are done. Also related –

10,000 “No”s – Matthew Del Negro who was a cast member on the final two seasons of The West Wing has a podcast which is very interesting with varied guests across a range of subjects – as it says on the About page – “he gets up close and personal with top-shelf folks from all walks of life about the 10,000 “No”s they’ve had to endure and the struggles they’ve had to overcome on their journey to where they are today”. I particularly enjoyed the episodes with Richard Schiff and Eli Attie but I have not heard a bad episode and I adore Matthew Del Negro.

The Worst Idea Of All Time – Tim Batt and Guy Montgomery watch the same movie and review it every week for a year. I listened to the seasons where I had seen the movie (the Sex and the City ones) but I don’t think you have to have seen the movie to enjoy this podcast as these two have a very unique humour which is so funny. This leads us to –

We Couldn’t Help But Wonder – Mike and Elise revisit every episode of Sex and the City. These two are great and actually live in New York which adds a very interesting element in my opinion. If you were a fan of the show you will enjoy this – if you were not a fan of the show you will appreciate this podcast too.

Not to be confused with I Couldn’t Help But Wonder which I listened to for only a couple of minutes before deciding to hit stop.

NYPD Blue Balls – this one is for NYPD Blue addicts like me. The Asher Brothers talk about each episode of NYPD Blue. I love Kirk and Kyle and DEEPLY ADORE Papa Asher. Not for those without a sense of humour, FYI.

The Chernobyl Podcast – Created as a companion podcast to the TV series Chernobyl, this was a fascinating deep dive into behind the scenes of the TV show and the story of Chernobyl itself, including info on things they decided to leave out and why they changed certain things. Look for this podcast on your podcast app. This podcast led me to –

Scriptnotes – Craig Mazin from the Chernobyl series joins with John August to discuss all things screenwriting related.

What do you enjoy listening to?

Podcast

This Makes No Sense

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Kitty Litter is A Thing in our house. With two cats and a much larger than the usual litter tray – formerly an under bed storage container which seems to solve fighting over the litter tray issues we have experienced – we go through a decent amount of this stuff. So we would like to buy it as cheaply as possible.

In the past we have tried various different options. One that tends to work quite well for us is to buy in bulk when we get a special spend more to save offer from Petbarn. At least, that is what we thought, until we did the maths. We would have to buy 8 bags to get over $250.

8x 33.19 = 271.92 – 70 = 201.92 /8 = $25.24 per bag. And that also depends on them having 8 bags in stock, which is more of a problem than you would expect. Sometimes the kitty litter would be on special which made it more worthwhile.

This is what we’ve done for a few years now and the best part is having 8 bags on standby in the mancave, you can forget about it until you need to go and get a new bag.

Every so often we like to sit down and work out if we are doing things the most efficient way – and the cheapest way – possible. Having run out of kitty litter, and having received the spend more save more email, we did some maths on our end and looked at the “autoship” options.

Having worked in a warehouse for some time and knowing how much shipping costs are, I don’t think the pet companies have done any maths on this. I suspect it would be better $$$ wise to encourage people to go to their stores and purchase the bags at a reduced rate. But instead, they offer autoship. Which is basically they send the stuff to you every so often.

Sure, it is nice for companies to know that they have orders to fulfill regularly, but on the other hand folks can cancel at any time without a penalty, so there is no incentive to stick with the autoship option.

Sure, there are probably people who appreciate getting the kitty litter shipped to their door meaning they don’t have to lug it home from the store. But it costs money to ship things and a bag of kitty litter is *heavy*. 15kg to be precise.

One has to be at home to receive it, otherwise one has to go and pick it up from the post office, removing the handy factor.

We did the maths and it worked out to be slightly more expensive to do autoship – $26.09 per bag – *but* if we bought it from Petstock we earn points with them which kind of balances it out. And we don’t have to pay out $250 at a time. Shipping is free for the customer – but quite costly for the business. We thought we would give it a go.

When they shipped it, we discovered it gets shipped from MELBOURNE. We have a Petstock about 20kms away from us. Melbourne is over 800kms away from us, plus they likely send it via Sydney which adds on at least another 400kms.

But then let us add on $$ for cardboard and tape.. really this is not a good idea for any business $$ wise. It certainly isn’t good for the environment. The cats love it because they get more boxes. We ordered two bags and each had a box to itself. You couldn’t really put them together in a box, it would be far too heavy at 30kg.

Next time I am in the area I will ask our local Petstock if they are willing to match the autoship price so they get our $$ locally. That is the other aspect – when you buy online the money often does not go to your local store, it goes to head office.

Overall, autoship makes zero sense to me. Transport costs in Australia are enormous. When you think of the fuel, the wear and tear on the vehicles, paying the drivers, etc.. it is Up Money. I would think it would be far better to encourage customers to click and collect in store.

They could still make it a regular thing so the stores would know how much stock to have on hand for these orders. Allow the customer to pay a better price for the goods than the autoship price. That way the folks doing the buying are also doing the lugging, and rather than 1200kms of lugging our items to our home, it is just a short trip home in the car. But if you want to click and collect in store, you pay the highest price of $28.99!

At this point, I am not going to rule out the option of purchasing in bulk direct from China if I can find a supplier and the price is right. We have purchased plenty of stuff from AliExpress over the years. I’m thinking of ordering that kitty litter scoop – the plastic ones break way more often than I like.

country life, kitties

Another Day Trip

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Last week we took a train trip up to Sydney. While The Other half has been going to uni on the train, he never gets to make the full trip so this time we went right into Central together.

When I make a daytrip like this, I like to set goals otherwise I can easily get lost in looking at everything – whether it be shops, food, or landmarks. This time we had exactly four goals –

1. Visit Uniqlo for heat tech layers for me. Achievement unlocked. I got two things – this one you see below was especially great to buy on a super cold day.

I’ve been wearing regular and extra warm heat tech turtle necks for over a year now and they are brilliant in highly airconditioned environments where you are not the one in charge of the temperature. They are awesome in winter when you have to be outside, especially as layers under a Ghanda hoodie.

My goodness, they do an incredible trade in this place. Visit at lunch time at your personal peril. So many people, so little space, so many clothes, so much awesomeness. I do have a Uniqlo regret though – I wish I’d bought this fluffy thing above. It was fluffy on the inside as well and the price was pretty awesome.

2. Eat lunch with a friend who works in the city. Achievement unlocked. No photos because we went to a private dining room in a special building where they work. ;)

3. Drop into Sephora to explore their sale. Achievement unlocked.

4. Find new work shirts for The Other Half – when you’ve been wearing a uniform for over 10 years and suddenly you have to wear your own clothes there is a good chance you don’t have a big range of clothes to choose from. Especially so in the case of The Other Half who has lost about 10kg over those 10 years. Achievement denied. EPIC FAIL WHALE.

The Other Half was very specific with what he wanted – must be short sleeve – must be one of four or five colours he is happy to wear – must be 100% cotton (or 98% with 2% something else) – must not have checks, stripes, or a boring pattern – can have very random patterns.


This shirt from Zara would have been perfect if it were the right fabric. Especially the style of collar was appreciated. But the material was very thin and not quite right.

While some of the shirts were very funny – eg the prawn shirt seen below – most of them did not fit his criteria. Or when they did, they were in a wrong material, like this Kenji koi shirt which we found in black but it is rayon.

We went to all the possible places. Topman, Zara Man, H&M, Myer, David Jones, various random menswear places we found in our travels. We did find things to try on in a couple of these stores but the result was never a win. The cut was wrong, or the shape was off, or the fabric turned out to be thinner than The Other Half is ok with.

Admittedly, you likely will find a larger range of short sleeve shirts in the summer but FYI stores, some guys can’t tolerate long sleeves even in winter, some offices run quite warm and short sleeves are needed..

Anyway on the way home I suggested we hop off the train in Wollongong and see if we had more luck there. We checked TKMaxx – not one short sleeve collared shirt to be found. Then we checked Target and finally had a win – a couple of shirts and a pair of pants were purchased.

We had a lovely day out together, it was NICE TIME. :) Now that The Other Half has dropped back to working 2 days a week, it means we have a little more time together to do some things we’ve wanted to do for a while.

Sydney