How much are you really earning?

Use this time valuator tool from MSN Money to break down the costs of your job vs. your salary.... For that, you were paid a net $10.85 per hour after expenses, such as gasoline, child care, clothing for work and the like.... By the time I factor in work, time at the studio, and my commute, as well as all the work I do outside the day job at Saltmine U.

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so true

So last night I said, 'Hey, my deadline has just moved up a week and I have the comps done, so how about that posing?... 'I think my wife needs me to take out the trash,' they said.... 'My girlfriend won't let me get naked at your place anymore,' they said.

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The move

I feel as if i have spent hours in the sparring ring. With my furniture.

Friday, I packed and moved the kitchen, the most time-consuming part of the house; I still don't quite understand why. That took the better part of the day and most of the night: 5 am - midnight, a 19-hour day. Yesterday, I got up at 3 am; for the next seven hours, I continued packing, so that when my oldest friend and her husband came down, there wouldn't be much time wasted putting my stuff into boxes. I rented a U-Haul, but annoyingly only had it from 8-3. Since most people showed up at 11 or later, this made the schedule what I'd call harrowing. In the end, we managed to get the truck filled, and go back down for another truckload, as well as having some smaller things brought up. I was on my feet and working from 3 am - 11 pm last night, with a couple of small breaks for food and driving. That's 20 hours, with a 19-hour day just before it-- and so I was less than patient. I'm not someone who sits back and asks anyone else to work harder than I do. I bust my ass, and I expect you to, as well. It was a minor miracle that I didn't lose my temper.

Today, I'll continue to move the rest of my things and get them sorted. A trip to IKEA is also in order; moving to a bigger space does require a few more things. Not that I'm all about rampant consumerism and filling up every possible inch of space in a house; but buying two new trash cans for the two other bathrooms in the house isn't exactly going over the top.

Back to it.

son of packing

Last Sunday, my oldest friend came down to retrieve 10 boxes she'd been storing in my attic, and all of them looked as if they'd been set down the day before rather than 10 years ago. No thick layer of dust, no grime, no water damage.... Although the house is now at the point where I despair of it ever being completely packed and cleaned, I am beginning to get excited about the new place.** The one room I can't quite decide how to lay things out in is the studio, and that's mainly because I need so much more stuff for the studio, it's not funny. a desk for the laptop and monitor to live on a flat filing cabinet (one can hope) some kind of stacked storage for art supplies, so they are all in one place, instead of in many little boxes shelving units for things that don't fit in little boxes some ingenious way I have not yet thought of to store old paintings a low table to set my oil palette on a nice, big, sturdy easel, as the tabletop easel currently takes up my drafting table, and this is not good.

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ah, packing.

I got back safely from Nerd Prom. It went well, though it was a long day. I picked up a decent amount of work, and got to meet Dave McKean. Right there, really, I could've called it a day and been happy, but no. There was even more.

  • Colleen Doran was beyond awesome when she did her panel on resources for creators; I wish it had run longer. If you want to be an illustrator, listen to her advice. I also wish I had the money to buy a lot of her art, and I'm not saying that just because she wrote that I was "gorgeous and glamorous."
  • I ran into my friend Carlo Arellano and made him and his wife promise to come visit me when I move. He'd gotten himself listed on his badge as 'Chainsaw,' which he was very amused by. It was strange to see him surrounded by fanboys in the portfolio review section, because I remember both of us slavishly copying other fantasy artists' work when we were supposed to be doing our calculus. If he doesn't come visit, I'll have to walk over to his parents' place and talk to his mom. Now that's a threat.
  • Amandarin came and found me in the portfolio review, and we walked back to the exhibit hall. Someday I will actually see what it is she does, but she has one of those jobs where if you do it properly, you're invisible -- so that makes it difficult. So far, all I have seen if her lying on the makeshift studio stage, waiting for... something… to happen. There is more to it than that, I'm sure.
  • Got to thank Randall Monroe of xkcd fame for writing the "Pix Pls" strip.
  • Also got to sneak off into a dark corner to talk about an artist geek project, which is going to be massively awesome.
  • Dave McKean drew in my sketchbook.
  • Went to the newgrounds.com party, afterward. I was so glad to get off my feet and have beer and food that I planted myself in a corner and waited until my friends were ready to go home. I was about as social as pocket lint. No, less -- pocket lint actually gets close to people, while I did my level best to not speak, as I'd used up all my socializing during the day. And that's generally the point at which I begin saying what I really think, instead of what's polite, and that rarely goes well for anyone involved. So a dark corner with beer it was.
  • Then I made it to my friends' house, and promptly fell down, barely remembering to get undressed before I crawled into bed.

I do think I've somehow managed to gain the superpower of Summon Person, as I have never seen so many people I wanted to see at that convention when I have my cel phone on me. I would think, 'Hmm, I wish I could see X,' and then a couple of minutes later, X would come walking down the aisle or be just around the corner.

The next day was going tolerably well until that evening, when I hit a wall at 8, and could not draw anything on demand, much less any of the things I was supposed to in rapid succession. I left early, fully intending to rest -- but I had had so much caffeine to keep myself awake, that I could not fall asleep until 3 the next morning. Don't try this at home, kids.

Sunday was all about other friends coming by to get their stuff from my attic, then checking out the state of my new place. Ye gods. I'm very glad that most of the appliances were so broken they needed to be replaced -- and just leave it at that. I'll have to strip wallpaper off the walls in the master bedroom, though. Not looking forward to climbing up on a ladder at that height, as I have a relatively decent grasp of physics.

The last couple of days have all been work, and packing. Notice how I am putting off the packing even now.

Back to it, I suppose…

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