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Snapshot #136 | 10 Things for 22 September 2019

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Currently…

1. realizing… that I’ve been procrastinating on some important projects.
2. ordering… so. many. books. (I had loyalty points to redeem, and I spent them well.)
3. having… the worst week. Seriously. Between the 9th and the 13th, everything that could go wrong did.
4. wishing… I knew how Lucy would react to another cat. (I met an adoptable pair of kittens that I’m absolutely smitten with, but I can’t really consider it with that uncertainty.)
5. regrouping… and refocusing. (Which is somehow not connected to #1.)
6. turning… off likes on posts and comments. I’ve been thinking about it for a while, and it’s time. (I’m extending the comment window a bit to make up for it, but aside from that the comment policy isn’t changing. And, yes, likes still appear in the WordPress reader—I’d turn them off there too, if I could—but this way it doesn’t benefit the spammers who abuse the feature.)
7. trying… to catch up with my Instagram backlog.
8. solving… the email problem that was giving me stress dreams. (Part of why I had such an awful week… but at least it’s fixed now.)
9. getting… excited for autumn. I’m counting the days ’til I can break out the fingerless gloves and black tights. It’s almost cold enough, but not quite.
10. starting… to suspect I’m finally on the right track with Violet Lane.

I’m back! 

I hope. The power came back on for about an hour this morning, and just as I was starting to let my guard down—putting my phone on the charger, turning on the computer to write this post—it went out again. I still don’t entirely trust that it’s really back this time.

It’s been a dull couple of days, but that’s not exactly a bad thing. We lost a lot of branches in my immediate area, and I have to throw out nearly everything that was in the fridge, but if that’s the worst of it, I can deal. No one was hurt. Nothing was damaged.

I finished all four books I’d been reading, plus a comic collection I was saving. I took a few photos (but not as many as I expected). I baked the cookie dough I had in the freezer before the power went out (priorities!) and watched one of my across-the-lane neighbours parkour up to his second-floor apartment in the middle of the storm and go in through the balcony door, for some reason. I ventured down into the storage space in the basement to find the camp stove, even though the emergency lights had gone out at that point (but something was still beeping ominously?), and there was no better (worse) place for the zombies to attack. 

(Related: I’m 90% sure that parkour guy—or his roommate or partner or whatever—is the one I regularly hear belting out “Zombie” by the Cranberries, but I haven’t been able to confirm it.)

It’s still going to take me a couple of days to get completely back to normal, to catch up with Instagram and Twitter and this blog. And everything else. Bear with me.

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Ok, so: Hurricane Dorian is heading this way. The rain’s already started.

I’m fine. Everything’s secured, all batteries are charged, I’ve got food and books and a manual coffee grinder. I’ve printed off a copy of the Violet Lane outline, just in case. (What more do I need, really? And, yes, I have water.) I’m watching a couple of nearby trees warily, but really, the worst I’m expecting (personally) is to lose power. It might be for a couple of hours, it could be a few days, but this early in the season, with all the leaves still on the trees—power lines are coming down at some point. (When Hurricane Juan hit in 2003, I was without electricity for almost a week. But that was a lower-priority neighbourhood when it came to restoration, and my apartment building at the time was only about a block away from the high-water mark.)  

Rather than run down my batteries scrolling through Instagram and Twitter looking for updates, I’m going to keep my phone and iPad turned off as much as I can. I’ll update this post if something important comes up, and tomorrow’s regularly-scheduled post has been… scheduled… (I tried five different ways of phrasing that and hated them all), but I won’t be responding to email or comments, or getting any notifications until I’m sure everything’s stable again.

I’ll be back soon! 

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Time may change me…

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Hey, remember those ‘under construction’ gifs that used to be all over GeoCities? I kind of miss those days.

It’s time for a few changes around here. Nothing too dramatic right away—I’m starting with some cosmetic changes and we’ll see where I go from there—but it’s probably going to take a couple of days (… or weeks) before everything works (and looks) the way I want it to. I’ve been trying to choose between two only-slightly-different themes for at least a week, and I can’t imagine I’m going to get less fussy about it as I go.

So, if you’re looking around and anything seems to be broken… I’ll get to it soon. Promise. If this post is still pinned to the top of the blog, I’m not finished yet. (And of course, none of this is going to matter if you’re reading this via RSS or the WordPress reader. You can wait until I’m done to check out the finished product. I’ll let you know when it’s ready.)

Rosehips in the snow. Photo by Reghan Skerry.

A brief scheduling note.

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Things are going to be slow around here for the next two weeks. Regularly scheduled programming (snapshots, inspired) will continue as usual, and I’m not disappearing entirely, but I won’t be around very much, and there probably won’t be any posts outside the regular ones.

I’ll be back on January 7. In the meantime, Happy Holidays if you celebrate! I hope you have a fantastic few weeks!

A quick update to prove I haven’t abandoned you.

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Things have been… scattered around here for the last couple of weeks, I know. Sorry about that. I’ve been battling a cold, and on a bit of a mini-vacation, but that’s not an excuse, just an explanation.

I’m going to try to get back on track in the next few days. The regular posts that I missed (September’s sketchbook, the last two reboot updates) aren’t going to happen; I’ll just roll them into the next ones. I’m hoping to have my first NaNo prep update for you this weekend (no later than Monday, promise), and the next issue of the newsletter will go out on the 7th, as planned.

Introducing “Postcards”

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I’ve been hinting at a couple of projects I’m working on behind the scenes, and it’s finally time to announce the first one:

I’m launching a newsletter!

If you already subscribe to the blog via email, this is different. It will include links to my best blog posts, but other than that it will be entirely new: exclusive updates on the projects I’m working on (including sneak-peeks), early announcements, and occasional surprises.

(If you do subscribe to the blog, nothing about that will change. You’ll continue to receive all posts as usual, and you will not be automatically signed up for the newsletter.)

The newsletter will go out twice a month: there will be a photography-related issue on the 7th, and a fiction-focussed issue on the 21st. (If I have a particularly big announcement to make, that might merit its own email, but those will have to be very special circumstances.) That’s it. I will never spam you, I promise.

If you’re only interested in my fiction—or my photography—that’s cool. I understand completely. You can choose to receive only the writing-related or photo-related updates, and change those preferences at any time.

If you’d like to subscribe (and I hope you will!), here’s the sign-up form. (I’ll be adding links to the site over the next week or so.)

The first issue of ‘Postcards from Reghan Skerry’ goes out next week!

100 Days of Black & White: Day 58 | Reghan Skerry

Portfolio Update: Florals in B&W

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There’s a new project in the Portfolio!

The biggest surprise of my current photo project has been how much I love taking pictures of plants and flowers in black and white. Flowers are one of my favourite subjects anyway (especially this time of year!), but I thought it might get boring without colour. It hasn’t.

I expect I’ll be adding to this particular gallery as the summer goes on, but for now I couldn’t resist putting my favourite photos in one place. Enjoy!

2017 Project365 #355 (version 2) | Reghan Skerry

Happy Holidays!

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Whatever you celebrate (even if that’s just a few days off), I hope it’s a good one.

I’m going to be taking a bit of a break from the blog and most social media until 2 January. I’ll still be on Instagram, and my last(!) two Project 365 posts will arrive on schedule, but that’s all. (I’ll be checking email occasionally, but I’m not likely to respond until after the new year, unless I decide it’s an absolute emergency.)

It’s time to take a step back, enjoy the holidays, and then spend some time figuring out what comes next.

See you in 2018!

Things are gonna be weird for a little while. Sorry about that.

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I’m moving the site to a new host (more on that in a few days, probably), which means a new design (which is good!) and potential weirdness (which is… not).

I already know that some of the photos haven’t made the trip, and I’m working on fixing that. I know that some of the links are broken, and… well. When I find them, I’ll fix them.

In the meantime, it’s going to be a few days before everything is running smoothly around here. If you stumble onto anything that seems terribly broken, please let me know in the comments! I might know about it, but if I don’t, I want to.

Thanks!