This Friday, I sauntered on down to the nearest branch of my bank with the intent of doing the wire transfer for the second half of the payment for Rita 3 and the omnibus. When I got there, I was told that I couldn’t do it, as East Coast business hours were over and for some unknown reason they won’t do it then. And they won’t even take all the info and do it when East Coast businesses open again; BECU’s employees are apparently locked out of the part of their system that they need to access to do this.

They told me they can’t do it on the weekend, either. And couldn’t do it on Monday because that’s President’s Day, one of those lovely holidays nobody celebrates except banks.

So today – Tuesday – I went out and tried again. And got there just after 1PM. Which meant, once more, that they couldn’t do it. Because they are locked out of that part of their system. I got told that this is apparently because the exchange rates in the currency markets become invalid at the end of East Coast business hours or something like that. Which is pretty maddening when I’m paying an amount set in US$ anyway.

I am left feeling angry and futile, especially because this delay means I’m probably not going to have any books for Emerald City. My books are currently in a warehouse in Chicago, racking up storage fees, until I give my printer a receipt for the wire transfer, and they let it go on to the Amazon warehouse in Illinois they’re destined for. I’m using Amazon to fulfill the Kickstarter orders, and sell future copies; I was going to have them send me a small pile to take to the con.

If ECCC wasn’t so goddamned early this year I’d be fine. But it’s a week earlier than normal. And it’s pricier than ever; I expect the cost of a booth to rise as the con grows, but ever since ReedPop bought it, it’s been going up twice as fast. I’m gonna be spending $500 to sit at a table with my friends and… sell book 1 and 2 at a loss, I guess, to try and at least get some new fans. And probably give out fliers for Rita and Parallax. Which are going to require some scrambling and $$$ to make happen in time.

If the bank would take my fucking wire transfer request and hold it until East Coast business hours re-open, I’d be fine. Close to the wire but fine. But they will not. And I really need to find out who the hell to complain about this to, because I really like a lot of other things about BECU, but this has been a problem every time I’ve had to wire money internationally for printing my books.

I am so fucking sick of self-publishing. There is so much bullshit to deal with when I’d rather just be getting on with the time-consuming but pleasant business of drawing comics.

It's like Sleeping Beauty except the princess is a dragon

And if you can wake her up, legend has it, she'll give you half her hoard

But she looks so cute lying there, and a kiss just never works

Nor do putting your lips elsewhere. But she starts to murmur and moan if you do. The bravest might dare… go at her with their lance, shall we say. Nobody's been known to wake her yet.

Maybe you'll be the lucky one.

So somehow I have become a woman who has three Wacom styli kicking around her apartment.

Well actually a woman who has three Wacom styli and two Twiddlers kicking around her apartment.

One stylus lives on the coffee table in the studio, next to the comfy chair.

One stylus lives in the living room, next to the even more comfortable Comfy Sack.

And one lives in my bag, so it’s always there when I’m going out.

One Twiddler hangs out in the bag, and gets borrowed when I want to draw in the studio; the other lives in the living room. So all I need to do is move the tablet from room to room, and maybe its power brick. Man that power brick is huge and I really should try and find a smaller one that will feed the hungry Wacom beast but be something I can put in my bag for a weekend trip.

(And actually I have four Wacom styli; the one on the studio desk is special, because it only works with the older tablet on the desk – the other three are all different generations of pens, but they all work with both the Mobile Studio and the travel Intuos that’s increasingly gathering dust and should probably be passed on to someone who needs an upgrade from whichever Baby’s First Wacom Tablet they’re stuck with. All of them except the one that came with the Mobile Studio have the spring nib; there’d be one in all of them, but the MS’s pen isn’t physically compatible with it. I’m gonna be really sad if they’re phasing those out.)

I’m not quite sure how this happened. I really feel kind of like a useless Eloi. On the other hand the price of having a stylus and Twiddler close to hand in any place I’m likely to have the Mobile Studio and want to work is probably nothing compared to what some of my real media friends have spent on markers alone in the past.

This is what my adulthood looks like and it really bears absolutely no resemblance to what I thought it was gonna be when I was a kid. A fucking tablet computer that I carry from room to room to draw on. And a President straight out of every piece of late eighties comedic doom SF.

(And actually I know exactly how it happened: the stylus I used with the travel Intuos works with the Mobile Studio, so that started hanging out on the coffee table, next to where the Magic Sketchbook sits to recharge. And grabbing the Magic Sketchbook (and maybe its power brick) and the Twiddler and the Twiddler cheat sheet and the stylus and the little stylus stand so I have somewhere to put it when it’s not in my hand turned out to be just annoying enough to either juggle in one hand (probably with a glass of water or somesuch in the other hand as well) or make multiple trips for such tiny, fiddly things that my well-off ass felt pretty justified in saying “imma get a third stylus so I have two less things to fiddle with when I wanna curl up in the living room and draw”; the second Twiddler happened because I thought I lost the first one and I was already pretty close to the point where I started to hit a lot of the keys without thinking. Last night I found myself trying to Twiddle words in the air while I was falling asleep…)

Surveying my clean clothes, trying to come up with a sexy outfit for sharing cake with the ex-with-benefits today.

And one for what will start out as a flirty work date with the girlfriend and XWB tomorrow. Do I have enough lingerie to make for a unique and delightful Peggy-unwrapping experience on both days?

Being poly makes life amusingly complicated sometimes. It’s a nice change from all the years spent “enjoying” Singles Awareness Day, though.