Doc Savage and Guys and Dolls

Not one.  Not a single deck of cards.  I knew it!
When I created the Guys and Dolls deck of cards for the Snowline Players production of the play I knew the key to selling them was to have them available for purchase right from the start and right in the lobby.  But because of events surrounding decision making (read: not my fault) the decision as to whether to place an order for the decks didn't come until much to late.  Typically, I'll be lucky if an order gets shipped within two weeks of being placed.  Considering all that is involved in the manufacturing of these things, that doesn't surprise me.  If anything, I'm happy that they can complete the order in the time frame specified anyway.
But I knew that if I told people during the play that if they wanted a deck they could order it online and then wait two weeks for it to arrive, that proposition would be a nonstarter.   I mean, the whole point of a souvenier deck of cards is that it's bought the way you normally buy impulse items.  You buy them right then and there without any planning.
So while lots of people did come to the play and expressed interest in ordering a deck for themselves, no one actually did it.  And that's ok.  But it is still a missed opportunity that makes me feel bad.  We could have raised additional funds for the little production company.  Guess I'll have to hope I can get them onboard more quickly next time.
Doc Savage on the other hand is something that I don't have to go through anyone's approval process.  This is something that I'm doing for my own enjoyment and that's the sort of project that I love the most.  If you haven't had a chance to read any Doc Savage before, I encourage you to do so.  They are great, if brief, stories of high adventure and daring.  However, the author really needed to have a good editor go over the work before publishing.  Yes, the author was under constant demands from a grueling publication schedule but the stories would have been greatly improved with a little more polish.  I'm going to apply the polish to a few random stories over the next few days, and I'll post the results here.

Blog App

It turns out that there is a ready made Blogger app which I can use to update the site right from my phone.  It sounds a bit gimmicky when I say it like that, but there you are.  Ill give it a shot while I procrastinate on painting today.

House Cleaning

Borderlands Vending Machine Logo

Borderlands Logo Background Android Wallpaper

This is going to be a generalized housekeeping post.  I've really been letting this blog slide for the past few months, which puts me in the company of about 80 percent of humanity.  Writing a blog is fun and rewarding, but on of the catches is that you get to set your own goals and deadlines for posts.  This keeps the writing from feeling any pressure about keeping up with posts, but also results in lots of times where the writer imagines what they're going to upload, without going to the actual effort of uploading.
So I've got a ton of great ideas for things to put here, but when it came time to do the hard work of typing the stuff down, I always put it off until later.  That is how we came here.
But let's work past the blame and start working on getting better.  So here are a pair of images that are formatted to be used as smartphone backgrounds.  They are taken from Borderlands and altered/modified/etc to look awesome.  And awesome they are!  The first one is perfect for the screen-lock image which greets the user when they first wake up the phone from sleep mode.  The second is a nice, clear background for the app tiles.

While these images sit here and do the function they are given to do, I'll give you a little fill in for the past few days.  I've been working on a songbook for St. Hilary's Church.  We have the typical hymnal which is a huge and heavy tome which every good Episcopalian knows by heart, but the church always likes to sing a few more modern (relatively speaking) contemporary songs.  For this purpose the church has a couple dozen hand made booklets with the words (sans sheet music) so that the congegration can follow along.  It's not the most elegant solution but it works just fine so no one has wanted to modify it in the past 25 years. 
But time waits for no man and no church. And I'm volunteering my computer layout skills to make a new booklet that is going to run about 50 pages and includes a batch of new(er) songs for the church.  It's been a great project but I'll admit it's taken longer than I'd expected.  When the project was proposed I thought I'd be able to crank it out in a day or two but this has been a weeks worth of work.  The thing which makes it a positive experience is that the results also look better than I'd imagined, so it's a pleasant surprise for everyone involved including me.

Guys and Dolls Poker Deck, Published!

Snowline Players Guys and Dolls poker deck!

This deck of cards was created for the Snowline Players 2014 production of Guys and Dolls!  My original idea was to publish about 30 decks of cards so that I could give them out as gifts for the show.  But something cropped up that I just couldn't get around.  Cost.  Printing these cards doesn't cost a fortune, but 30 decks add up quickly.  So I scaled back the idea and just made 3 decks.  One for our director (of course.  I want to be in future Snowline plays after all), one for my babe and one to use as gift tags for my other idea...
The Big Jule Dice Bag.

 

Big Jule's "Lucky" Dice

Now I'm not going to be modest here.  The dice bag idea worked out fantastically and I thought the idea was pretty awesome.  Blank dice!  I mean, that's hard to top!  But still, it would have been so cool to have been able to give full card decks to the crew.  Especially when they worked so hard.  With that in mind, I've gone ahead and flagged the deck for sale at the Game Crafter.  This means that if you would like to purchase a deck of cards for yourself, you can visit this page and get as many as you want.  I will donate all profits to the Snowline Players because I want to be sure they make more plays in the future as well!
One tip.  I recommend that if there is any chance at all that you will want more than one deck that you buy them all at once.  For example, if you think that you might want to give out three decks for family members, than buy them all at once.  I've noticed that shipping takes a bite, but only for the first deck.  If you buy multiple decks then you save a lot on shipping charges.
When did shipping costs suddenly go through the roof?  OK, I'll save that complaining for another post.