I have a degree in such things

I keep a pair of tweezers in my desk drawer for occasions when I may need tweezers. Removing splinters, picking up tiny screws, and of course, plucking hair. The tips were a little janky and weren't working last time I used them. I noticed them just now and fixed them. 

I used the tweezers to hold an emory board and slowly, steadily slid the tweezers back and forth over the emory board, gradually increasing my speed (cause I ain't got all day) in an attempt to make the points where the tips meet nice and parallel. It worked perfectly. Where there was once a gap preventing it from firmly griping hair or paper, they now meet cleanly with no daylight showing. Emory boards and tweezers are great tools for your workshop if you ever work on small projects.

And after five years in art school and four years as a jewelry/metalsmith major, this is the extent of the use of the knowledge I acquired all those years ago. Don't be afraid to dream, kids.

Pure Imagination

I wrote this short story a while back when my daughter just didn't want to go to bed after she built a huge sofa cushion fort. It's another library contest entry.

You can read it at https://marcintosh.linefeed.app/pure-imagination-bef2f8

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas Shirts

I've got a few Christmas shirts (or sweatshirts if you like) available at my Cotton Bureau store. They're based on the movie "Elf" and the Disney+ "Prep and Landing" specials. You can find them here. 

Short Story, "Initiating Safety Protocols"

I wrote a short story for a contest at my local library. The only rule was that it had to be less then 800 words. This one clocked in at 566, but I felt like it was still too long for the concept. The story shares the thoughts of someone who believes they’re about to die. There isn't much time for thought, so I made some revisions and got it down to 393 words. Still too long, but better.

Originally this was the beginning of a much larger story I had in mind, but I changed the outcome to fit the assignment. The story didn’t win, but was included in a volume of all submitted entries that you can borrow from the library. I'm counting that as being published. I really liked the exercise in brevity, both the writing and the editing.

You can read it at https://marcintosh.linefeed.app/initiating-safety-protocols-f6131d

What's in a name?

My first online name was Marc430 back when I was on AOL, back when AOL was a thing. It's my name and my birthday, easy to remember for me and my family. As the internet became bigger and more ubiquitous I kept hearing more and more about not sharing personal information. Although nothing bad ever happened to me, I was convinced that having my birthday in my handle (as AOL called it) was a bad idea. So I started thinking of a new handle. 

I wanted the new handle to represent me, not by using vital statistics, but by acknowledging my interests. Like PhillyNerd or something like that (but not that). So what were my interests? I liked movies and TV, comic books, science fiction, art and design, and technology. So I compiled a list of names that expressed some or all of those traits, whittled it down and settled on... Crillee.

Crillee is the name of the font that was used for the credits of Star Trek: The Next Generation. It covered the gamut. Movies and TV? It was a favorite TV show (and movie series). Science fiction? It's Star Trek! Art and design? It's a typeface. Technology? It's a font. One word, no numbers, easy to remember. It ticked a lot of boxes and I was very happy with it. Until the Dude Bros™ found me. 

The Dude Bros™ (who do not share my interests) saw Crillee and immediately thought it was a girl's name. I got hit on a lot. A lot, a lot. (It made me appreciate women having to deal with this kind of crap all the time.) I would summarize the previous paragraph to explain my name, and that worked most of the time, but word of mouth wasn't gonna happen and I started feeling like a Top 10 radio station... the hits kept on coming. I had to pick a new name.

I went over the list of candidates I had compiled, but nothing really struck me as much as Crillee. I almost went back to my old name, scammers be damned, just to keep it simple. Luckily fate intervened. The timing was such that I was looking to leave AOL on dialup and get an ISP on DSL. When I found a good deal I created an account with every intention of going back to Marc430. As I was filling out the survey for new users they asked what platform I was on and as I was typing Macintosh I was looking at my name several questions back and it clicked. 

I've been marcintosh ever since.