January Was A Silly Month
I haven’t written since December, and I guess that’s because January was a silly month. I say “silly” because I don’t want to say it was a “bad” month… even though a few less-than-desirable things happened (which I tend to focus on) there were some brighter sides to it too (see.. you see what I did there…?)
Here are a few standout things that happened.
I moved into a new house on January 1st with four friends – reality TV has nothing on us.
I got my wisdom teeth removed, which I was absolutely terrified about. I had to stay awake for the process, but they gave me Nitrous Oxide (laughing gas) which made it not so bad. It sort of felt like being happy drunk. It’s weird to be able to hear the dentist breaking your teeth and just think “Huh… he’s totally breaking my tooth right now. Whatever.” The recovery was the worst – hella chubby cheeks, being too exhausted from meds to do anything, and not being able to eat… not being able to eat made me so mad. Anyway, that’s all over now, and I never have to worry about the tooth pain I was having before.
I locked myself out of my bedroom, I have no idea how. Since I locked my keys, purse, and phone IN my bedroom, I was a little desperate to get it open. After a couple hours of my roommate and I looking at YouTube videos about lock picking and trying to pick it open with a bobby pin, I finally had a friend come rip the trim off the door and pry it open with a pocket knife and a screwdriver or something MacGyver-esque.
I started selling my illustrations on Etsy (get $5 off any purchase of $20 or more to celebrate, woo!) and I got some prints into two brick-and-mortar retail locations – The Salvage Room in Oklahoma City, OK and Mirkwood in Arlington, WA. If you’re in either of those areas, you should stop by and check them out! And if you’re interested in carrying my work in your boutique, I certainly do offer wholesale/bulk prices, so please email me at kelsibsides at gmail.com – I might even be able to work with you on doing some fresh work that you feel would sell well in your shop, as I did with The Salvage Room and the series of insect prints they’re carrying.
I went to a bunch of my friends’ bands shows, which was fun. But at one of said shows, someone stole my iPhone… not cool. I couldn’t NOT have a phone, because of work and stuff, so I had to go out the next day and get a new one. I ended up getting the iPhone 5c and I really love it. It’s a definite upgrade from the 4 that I had before. I’ve been sad because I’ve been incredibly broke since then (hello Top Ramen, my old friend) and also, more importantly because I was dumb and didn’t back it up to the cloud, so I lost all of my photos. Luckily I post a lot of photos to Instagram, so at least (the compressed versions of) some of them are out there, but there were a lot of photos and videos that I took on my road trip from Oklahoma to Washington, which I never posted anywhere which I’ll never get back. So I guess the lessons here are: don’t get so intoxicated that you don’t keep a good eye on your shit, back your phone up to the cloud, and keep money in savings in case something unexpected happens. Grown up stuff, you know?
I somehow messed up my copy of PhotoshopCS5, which I had imported from my last computer and don’t have any of the documentation for. A lot of people recommended downloading GIMP, which I did, but I don’t have the patience to learn a new program’s nuances. I definitely can’t afford CS6, so I’m deciding between buying Photoshop Elements or subscribing to Adobe Creative Cloud. I know Elements will be cheaper in the long run, but it won’t have all of the tools that I like to use (layer masks, for example). I have an Amazon gift card that I could use toward either, and occasionally get gift cards by using Swagbucks but I’m just not sure which way to go with it.
Anyway, sorry for the long-winded post, but I think that prettymuch wraps up the past month. Here’s to a less silly February, eh?
