New keyboard test. This thing is super slimline with very low-profile keys. Much like both the laptop keyboards I’ve been working on for the last, er, year or two. So yeah, this is going to work much better than the deep keys of the backup keyboard I was trying out the other day. Muscle memory is a thing, and I just don’t have the time right now to train my hands out of old habits. I might upgrade keyboards later - the idea of one I can repair and replace keys on sounds great. We recently had to replace the First Reader’s keyboard as he’d worn off the markings and he really doesn’t touch-type at all. And I can’t tell you how many keyboards over the years I have flat-out busted by using until a key stopped working. Which is part of the reason I wanted to get this keyboard and stop relying on the laptop keyboards. I’d rather have a standalone keyboard break than one integral to the laptop. Especially as repairing my work laptop is contraindicated.
So! Much happier with this. Now, to get the brain wrapped around committing story, and get to it. Which is part of the problem as well... and prompts haven’t been working. I’ve missed or sloughed off the last couple of weeks at More Odds Than Ends, to the extent that when the randomizer assigned me my own prompt this week I shrugged and left it. Better to not disappoint someone else, eh?
Also, this keyboard offers me the ability to seamlessly switch between three devices at the click of a button. So I can toggle from laptop to laptop to iPad if I so choose. This enables me to have one keyboard located in the best ergonomic position, rather than having to shuffle workstations which has always been a pain in the neck. I debated, briefly, setting up completely different ‘desks’ for the dayjob and the writing and the art, but this I don’t have the room for, nor really the inclination. I do take the art and move away from the desk, usually. The iPad makes that very simple, unlike a drawing monitor. Although! This desk is large enough to accommodate one of those. But that’s a 2023 investment, if at all.
Such a dainty keyboard, but it is a fairly sturdy build, being partly metal construction.
I’m aware I’m scrabbling at straws rather than buckling down and writing. Trying to kickstart the brain by sitting down and tapping at the keyboard is... sometimes helpful. Problem is that it tends to produce a story snippet that isn’t connected to what I am obligated to write. That’s not useful really.
Or, I could finish putting up the trim. I threw my hands in the air (not quite literally) and bought the accouterments to hang curtains last week or so. I’m embracing cottagecore because evidently I was doing that before it was a thing with a name. I have pretty lace sheers, paired on the big front window with green sheers, and I used bamboo poles for curtain rods. The First Reader wandered through while I was up on a stepstool with the drill, mounting brackets.
Missing trim, unpainted panel patch... what the heck. I've got bookshelves, plants in for the cold, and curtains.
“Bamboo poles?” He poked one I had laid out on the table.
“Yes! Cheap and pretty!” I looked over my shoulder. “Did you want to be part of the curtain decision process?”
“No, I’d have just told you to do what you wanted.” He beat a hasty retreat at that point. It wasn’t until later that I made him come back to see what I’d done with everything hung and arranged.
“You like green.”
“I do.”
“You know what my favorite color is?”
“Blue?”
“Nope, purple. When you get tired of the yellow walls and repaint them, we should do purple.”
I put my hands on my hips and stared into the dining room. “I suppose if I did a white with just a hint of purple...”
“Nope, really purple. Full on purple.” He couldn’t keep a straight face any longer and started to laugh.
“I know. I’ll get silk pansies, purple ones, and make pretty curtain tie-backs, then you’ll have your purple!”
Pansy tiebacks! Can you see them? LOL!
Cat tax: Inspector Gidget likes the foam mat, and the First Reader's cool-weather serape.