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This Week in Sniderville: 11

April 27, 2013Stefanie Snider

This week:

Spring finally arrived! This is the sunset at 7:53 PM last Sunday. Almost eight, and still light out!
Ahh, gorgeous. I love this time of year.

My trial order of buttons came in! They look so good!

I went for all-you-can-eat sushi today with my coworkers. SO! MUCH! FOOD! I tried salmon roe and tempura bananas and fried pudding. Yup, that’s a thing. And it’s delicious!

Apparently I like to use exclamation points! when I am excited! Somebody stop me!

I watched a ton of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. The man was a genius. (!)

Also, as someone whose house is ruled by cats, I couldn’t help but share this:

How was your week?

This Week in Sniderville: 10

April 20, 2013April 20, 2013Stefanie Snider

This week:

I bought a new purse: black faux-leather with giant fuck-off studs covering the bottom. If I ever swing it old-lady-style at a would-be mugger, there’s gonna be some damage. This pleases me.

I realized that few things make me as irrationally enraged as door-to-door salesmen who try to trick me into opening my door with a “shave and a haircut” knock. Same guy three days in a row. ONCE WHILE I WAS NAPPING. I was the cartoon bull with steam coming out of my nostrils. No one, and I mean no one, messes with my naps. It gets ugly.

I picked up a five-year journal at Chapters, because I realized there are so many firsts in my writing career that I want to record. Like my first 5-star review! I have so many plans for my career, and I think it will be neat to compare what’s happening this year to what happens the next, and the next…

I made SniderWriter buttons:

Click here if you want one.

Pretty chill, quietly satisfying.

How was your week?

Damn You, Netflix.

April 15, 2013April 17, 2013Stefanie Snider

I haven’t really watched tv in years.

Not in a snobby, pretentious, too-good-for-such-frivolity kind of way, where you tell everyone ever that you don’t watch it in order to sound more interesting and clever. More in the sense that DayJob, which is also sometimes AfternoonJob and even NightJob, hampers any sort of consistent schedule. I’m simply not always home at the same time, so I don’t catch shows with any kind of regularity.

And yes, I know about PVR. And I’m too cheap to buy one.

So, enter Netflix. I’ve wanted it forever, since it neatly solves this little dilemma. We finally cracked about a month ago and set it up.

Oh sweet merciful crap. All those box sets I wanted? Right there. Cheesy, campy horror movies at my beck and call? Ditto. I don’t waste time cursing terrible buffers or trying desperately to stream a show from a website with cramped bandwidth. I press play and it’s there.

Terrible for productivity.

The thing with working on an art career is that you have to cram as much work in as you can, around the confines of day jobs and family and scant nutritional intake. You need to wake up early, or stay up late, chasing your Muses down and pinning them until they squeak out ideas. You need to love your desk, since you’ll be there for hours. That’s the idea, anyway.

But now that my desk is in our living room, the siren song of the bigscreen is almost too much to bear. I have all the Charmed you could ever watch, it says. Come watch Pumpkinhead for the hundredth time. Then the couch gets in on the act, reminding me that I have a wonderfully comfortable pillow and blanket awaiting me, and maybe I could just relax for half an hour.

Which becomes an hour.

Which becomes two.

Lame as it is, it looks like I need to start scheduling blocks of tv watching for myself. Scheduling time and sticking to it. I’m not getting anywhere being tethered to this remote.

But the couch really is comfy. And they have the whole series of Alfred Hitchcock Presents…

I think I’m in trouble here.

This Week in Sniderville: 8

April 6, 2013April 6, 2013Stefanie Snider

I came here to update about what I did this week, then realized: I didn’t do anything.

I mean, I went to DayJob, I came home drained from DayJob, I camped out on the couch in front of Netflix and I just sat, like a zombie, and not a cool gore-covered-horror-zombie, but a half-asleep vegetative zombie in coffee-stained corporate clothes.

It’s times like this that I remember: this is not who I was cut out to be. I’m not the corporate type — I don’t find fulfillment under fluorescent lights. I don’t find joy in obtuse lingo, or pleasure in progress reports. I’m not big on meetings or memos on company letterhead.

I don’t want the carrot.

I’m not unique: I’m sure most of us probably don’t really dig working for The Man. I’m not trying to paint myself as special. I just find it frustrating, to be so completely in love with writing, and then for something that I… don’t love (is that PC enough?) to use up so much of my energy. It’s exactly like that Onion article: the thing I want to do most in life is being hindered by the thing I like doing least.

I have a plan in place for working at home, as a full-time writer. It’s something that could happen in the next few years. I just have to push through this slump, to not let office politics wear me out before I can make the rest of my life happen.

I wish I had something more interesting or lighthearted to write about this week, instead of a whiny tantrum. But honestly? Sniderville posts are for recapping the week, and this week was pretty much a write-off.

Sorry, dudes.

Here’s to a better week, next week.

This Week in Sniderville: 7

March 30, 2013Stefanie Snider

My family rules.

My husband’s Great Aunt Sharon posted the following to her Facebook:

…with the caption: Little Stephen King reads his 1st story in class — we have a budding Stephen King in our family — Stefanie Snider. I can’t tell you how that made me smile.

Sunday we visited my brother- and sister-in-law, the ones with my adorable nephews. The littlest nephew will be three in June, and has a baby monitor in his room. Turns out that the new monitor my in-laws bought doubles as a two-way speaker. My nephew was chilling in his room when his Mommy picked up the parent-end of the monitor and made the Grudge noise into it: “Aaaahhhh-h-h-ahhhhhh…” Cue the kid flying down the stairs, wide-eyed, and a lesson in silly jokes. Nephew pulled me upstairs to his room, pointed at the monitor, says “Makes a scawy noise, Ahhhhhhhh,” giving me a perfect rendition of the demon-noise from the movie, then giggling. This is how I know I belong in this family.

This Week in Sniderville: 5

March 16, 2013Stefanie Snider

This week I got caught up in the wonder that is Netflix. I had some help getting comfy on the couch:

That’s Jadie in the front and Zoey in the back.

I set up my beautiful new desk.

I watched Rubber, which was nothing short of brilliant.

From IMDB: “When Robert, a tire, discovers his destructive telepathic powers, he soon sets his sights on a desert town; in particular, a mysterious woman becomes his obsession.” I mean, really. You’ve gotta give it a chance: It’s so much better and much more clever than you’d think. Plus, the gore effects are AWESOME.

I’m still reading The Fountainhead, and just made it past That One Scene That Everyone Talks About. Say what you want about Rand’s heavy-handed philosophy: I’m enjoying reading about architecture, which is not what I expected.

I learned about the magic of makeup: Porn Stars With and Without Makeup (everyone’s dressed, it’s not porn-y)

And my husband reminded me of this video, which is filthy, but makes me giggle uncontrollably. You have been warned.

How was your week?

Tyrannosaurus Desk

March 13, 2013Stefanie Snider

I have a new love interest.

He’s tough, and sexy, and weighs about 300 pounds.

This, folks, is Tyrannosaurus Desk:

I started looking for a proper desk recently, when I decided that a rickety vintage table wasn’t cutting it anymore. I had a few ideas in mind when I set out: something solid, made of real trees instead of sawdust, hopefully with storage. That was it. I mentioned it in passing at work, how I’d looked for something used but decent and hadn’t found a damned thing.

A coworker mentioned that her mom was looking to get rid of a desk, twenty-five bucks if I picked it up. She mentioned some scuffs and dings, but hey, for $25 I was willing to give it a shot.

I fell in love instantly.

Storage!

Hanging files!

It’s beautifully crafted – that’s a red leather blotter on top! Plus, as soon as my mom saw it, she said it looks like a “real writer’s desk”. What more could I want?

(notes: 1. The blind is busted because my cats are assholes, 2. The lighters are for the candle; I don’t smoke. Why two? Why not? and 3. Because the desk is so big-slash-heavy, we can’t get it upstairs to the office, meaning there’s no real purpose for the office anymore, meaning the office is no more. HOWEVER, my genius husband suggested we make that room into a dressing room. Have I mentioned that I love this man?)

This Week in Sniderville: 3

March 2, 2013March 2, 2013Stefanie Snider

I spent the week with that nasty, chesty cough that’s going around. The one that makes you feel like your own lungs are trying to drown you, and your head isn’t far behind. I stayed home from work for two days, thinking I’d take it easy, maybe get a little writing done from the comfort of the sickbed. Instead I laid on the couch whining like a four year old while C patiently brought me food and drink. (In retrospect, I tended to sleep right after that: he may have been slipping me cold meds to make me shut the hell up. Frankly, I wouldn’t have blamed him.)

I read quite a bit, curled in a bitchy little ball in my bed, including Bentley Little’s His Father’s Son, the ending of which I predicted but loved just the same. It gave me fevered clown dreams, though, which were more terrifying than the book itself.

I decided to get a desk. A real, proper, writerly desk that weighs a ton and is beat to hell and back. I want something wooden, something substantial, something I can use as I pen stories and novels for years to come. Pen being the operative, here: my current setup isn’t cutting it. Writing longhand at a rickety chrome-and-formica table makes the whole works shake until I worry that it’ll all fall apart, severing my legs on the way to the floor. I went thrifting with my friend Leslie in hopes of finding a big wooden behemoth to call my own.
Somehow I came home with this instead:

That white horizontal line is the light catching her grooves. She’s lenticular and turns her head when you walk past her. Have you ever seen such splendor? Not for a dollar, you haven’t. I have the feeling she’ll be coming to live in my office.

Also, have this: