Sunday, July 19, 2009

Necessity Will Do Strange Stuff to You ...

I'm the kind of person who always gets the weird health problems. I don't just get sick - I have to get the most exotic kinds of sickness (no swine flu yet, thank goodness ... but I'd probably get, like, ostrich flu or something a little cooler than just regular ol' swine).

Well, I spend a lot of time at my keyboard, and as the weather has gotten warmer, I've developed another interesting problem. My skin sticks to my keyboard and whenever I lift my hand, I'm peeling myself off the plastic. This isn't a problem once in a while, but when I'm the computer for two-hour stretches and I'm raising my hand every minute or so, that's a whole lot of skin peeling, and my wrists and palms have been getting tender. My forearms, too, from resting on the desk.

I spent some time online looking for products and gizmos to help me, to no avail. The closest thing I found was a gel wrist rest that had "stick to me!" written all over it. (Well, not really, but you know ...)

Never underestimate a woman with a glue gun.

I raided my daughter's fabric box, asked her if I could have some of her wide black satin ribbon, and went to work. I glued a strip of ribbon along the edge of the desk where my forearms touch, and another strip along the bottom of my keyboard where my palms and wrists touch. Voila!



I think it looks classy, almost like my desk and keyboard are wearing tuxedos.

Best of all, I haven't stuck once since I did it!

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

What a brilliant idea! And your desk looks so classy too!!

Tamara Hart Heiner said...

that is simply hilarious. Sorry you have a sticking problem!

Anonymous said...

Smart girl!

Josi said...

You're a genius, Tristi. and maybe the sticking is simply because of your magnetic personality :-)

Kimberly Vanderhorst said...

Careful - you might start writing goth inspired fiction with that sort of inspiration about! Clever of you though!

Pendragon Inman said...

LOL Nice!! now if you can come up with something that will keep the letters ON my keyboard-keys, instead of rubbing all off, that'd be great! the other people who use my computer would appreciate it.

Nichole Giles said...

Great idea. I know we all want to spend more time in front of our computers--working--but none of us want to be "stuck" there for good!

Nichole

Karlene said...

I knew you were a genius the first time I met you. Now, if you could figure out a way to market it. . .

Anonymous said...

Very innovative! I'd suggest the addition of ruffles or a bit of lace to add a touch of class, but since you didn't appreciate stickiness I don't imagine you'd appreciate scratchiness either. :)

Carol Garvin

Anonymous said...

Tristi:

I am interested...

To be fair we really should examine the entire quote rather than the last phrase. Here's what I wrote in its entirety:

The Whitney award is pretty much an insider industry professional award given by authors to authors. Its true that any reader or auto mechanic can nominate a novel, and its also true that the five finalist are selected by industry insider professionals that represent publishers, booksellers and authors. But the winner is selected by industry insider authors. Not publishers. Not booksellers. Not readers. The Whitney awards is pretty much an
"Author's Choice Award".

With the exception Shanda Cottam, founding member of LDS Women's Book Review and Sheila Stanley whose biography says she is a budding writer and also with LDS Women's Book Review, there are no Whitney Award Judges who represent any group other than published authors (28 out of 30 judges). Here's a link to the Whitney Award Judging Committees.

Besides Shanda and Sheila do any represent a publishing house or a retailer or a reader? None. These judges make the final selection. They choose the winner. The Whitney Awards is an Author's Choice Awards. That's a wonderful thing. Its professional writers honoring and recognizing professional writers. There's nothing wrong with that.

It also gives LDP Publisher a nitch where she can build a different kind of award. In fact, a third "Reader's Choice" award would also be cool. And a fourth "Retailer's Choice Award" (which used to be offered by the LDS Bookseller's Association) would also be fun.

We could have a discussion here about how having three or four different awards would point out the different bias authors, publishers, retaliers, and readers hold, but that's not what this discussion is about.

Should LDS Publisher offer an award? That's the question I tried to answer. I think there is a nitch here she could exploit. A nitch that isn't filled by the Whitney Awards. But if your claim is, indeed true and the Whitney Awards actually represent the combined selection of readers, publishers, retaliers and authors (a claim which I disupte) then there probably isn't any room for LDS Publisher to go ahead with an award except for the sheer advertising potential it presents for her website, rather than a service to the LDS fiction writing, publishing, selling and reading community. Which is a whole different discussion.

Tristi Pinkston said...

Anon,

I can see to where I misread the statement about the final five being judged. Thanks for pointing that out to me. It's not my intention to misquote or misconstrue, so I do apologize for that.

Unknown said...

Aww, what a frustrating and painful sounding problem!

I'm sorry you're suffering with that Tristi. But I think you solved your problem very beautifully!

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