Geography

It's day 19 of Thingadailies! That means we have less than ten left. Woohoo!

As usual with the foster duties, there was a plan and then the plan changed. (That isn't a criticism of any shelter employee — there are a zillion things happening every day and plans need to be flexible.)

Nova's spay incision didn't need surgery, so she was ready to come home earlier than originally stated. So I dropped off Lulu along with enough meds to get her to Saturday afternoon, which was when I was supposed to pick her up. But that turned into Sunday afternoon, which was okay because they had enough of her drugs at the shelter. But then, someone decided that Lulu actually didn't need x-rays after all (which was kind of what I was hinting at yesterday when I sent video of her playing), so I drove back and picked her up again.

To recap: Gnocchi is here, Lulu is here, and Nova and Lucy are together again. (Also, Gnocchi has a bald spot on her forehead and it looks more like she scraped her head on something and not ringworm, but I will lose my mind if I'm wrong. I'm not sure how she would have picked up ringworm in the past six weeks though, so I'm thinking good thoughts and moving on with my life.)

Today I realized something about screen geography on YouTube shorts: The bottom 15% of the screen is covered by the video title/description and the controls, so if you put a title down there, it's impossible to read. Did I go back and fix it and re-upload? No, I did not. That's a lesson for future Theresa.

Anyhow, yes, it's another AITA Floodmouth Edition.

Now it's time to finish up my newsletter!

Just Keep Swimming

Welcome to day 18 of Thingadailies!

Yes, it's time for another episode of AITA, because this is quick and easy (the questions have already been written) and I haven't had the time to mess around with covers again.

Apparently I shall just keep banging my head against this until I improve.

But first, foster updates!

Gnocchi is still in my office and you can hear her purring as I was reading the AITA question.

Lulu is doing really well. She goes back to the shelter tomorrow for a couple days for x-rays that they scheduled last week. (The shelter can't take x-rays, so Lulu will be going home with a vet tech on Thursday evening, going with the tech to her other job where the x-rays will be taken, and then come back to the shelter on Saturday at which point I will pick her up again. Lots of traveling.)

Only one of the new foster kittens (Lucy) came home with me today. The other kitten (Nova) was spayed yesterday and her incision didn't look great today, so they are going to fix that tomorrow and I'll pick her up in the afternoon. In the meantime, poor Lucy has spent most of the afternoon crying because she's never been alone before.

And now onto the video!

(Once again, the foster kitten is the star of the show.)

Tada!

Welcome to day 17 of Thingadailies.

I'm tempted to say that these videos will continue until I'm comfortable speaking on camera, but clearly that is not on the horizon and I don't really want to extend Thingadailies into next year. Maybe I should write out a script or something. I don't know.

Anyhow, my breakthrough of the day was adding an image of my book in the editing stage. So now I don't have to hold it up and actually get it on screen. Progress!

Lulu is obviously the star of the show.

Now that Lulu is in the spare room, I took the time today to disinfect the bathroom where she'd been staying previously because... two more teenage cats are supposed to show up tomorrow! They just need to fix their GI issues and then they'll be off for adoption.

(I didn't take the 1-day-old kittens in terrible shape — I don't have an incubator, so other fosters are better equipped to give those guys the best shot at survival.)

Comfortable

Welcome back to day 16 of Thingadailies!

Today I did another AITA episode. Production went faster this time because things always go faster the second time. Someday I will be comfortable talking on camera, but today was not that day.

The good news is that Lulu looks really good. She moved into the larger room today, so she has more room to move around and play.

Tomorrow may be another short like today, or I might get back to book covers. We shall see!

Shorts

Welcome to day 15 of Thingadailies!

My goal today was to figure out how to create a YouTube short — without having to install an app on my phone. Luckily, it wasn't hard. You just need two things: the video has to be vertical (not landscape), and it has to be under three minutes.

The Mighty Gnocchi helped me out and we managed to produce a short. As always, there was a learning curve, and I had to do a couple things twice, but the whole thing is less than three minutes, so it still didn't take terribly long.

Do I want to become a YouTube star? Absolutely not. (Unless it will sell a bunch of books — then maybe, but there are easier ways to market.) I am trying to get a little more comfortable on camera. (Amazing lack of eye contact, T!)

Anyhow, enjoy.

Lulu is doing well, and I'm actually going to go clean the spare room (which has ear cleaner all over the walls from when Mister was there) so she can move into a bigger space.

Click!

Welcome to day 14 of Thingadailies!

Remember back on day 2 when I created a video that was definitely not going to convince anyone to adopt my foster cat Gnocchi? Back then I said I'd create a real Gnocchi video someday.

Today is that day. Gnocchi currently has three tricks (touch, kennel, and sit). During my first attempt at filming, I screwed up and filmed all the spaces in between when I wanted to film. Yeah, one of us in this video is competent, and it ain't me.

Therefore, much of this footage is the second time I was asking Gnocchi to do these things within 15 minutes. Luckily, she really likes treats.

She has potential adopters coming to see her next weekend. Fingers crossed that works out!

Ephemera

Welcome to day 13 of Thingadailies.

Call Him Mister Adopted!

Yes, Mister has been adopted from the shelter. It took one day longer than I thought it would, but that can only be because nobody walked through the adoption center yesterday. How could someone not love this goofball?

In other news, potential adopters may be coming by to meet Gnocchi! I'm trying not to get my hopes up too high since we haven't yet scheduled a time, but it's still exciting.

Ephemera

The thing for the day is an audio recording of my short story, Ephemera.

I haven't touched my recording equipment since I finished the Shift Happens audiobook. So it took a bit to get back into the swing of things when recording this short story. (Yes, I read almost half the story before I noticed it was recording from the wrong input. It defaults to my laptop's built-in microphone, which is never the one I want to use. I really wish Audacity had a way of disabling input and output choices.)

Anyhow, now I remember how many irritating noises I make when speaking. How does anyone ever talk to me? Also, I couldn't get Audacity to talk to my Bose headphones when I was editing. I remember having that problem before, but I think I could sometimes get them working again. Not today, though.

It wasn't until I finished throwing an image onto it in iMovie that I remembered Jamie saying she creates a short clip in Canva and has it repeat. Oh well. It's late and I still need to add words to the current cozy, so this will have to do.

Onward!