Where do they all come from? * *

In which our Hero has a sleepless night contemplating the customer service aspects of his diary

Given the last few complaints that my email riddle is just too hard, I’ve been thinking about my front page and how to make it a little more user friendly. And about creating a new cast page, since it’s been a few years and the last one has fallen below the friends-only margin I was forced to set.

I went back to look at the old one, because in my memory it went over well and I’d forgotten the doodles. So I’m thinking I need a new cast page, partly for the benefit of the users and partly because the last time it was a lot of fun to draw out. Except now I have the old drawings in my head so I guess I need a little time to pass before I can play with that.

Actually, I need to get back to doodling altogether. (And I’m seriously tempted to provoke myself into playing with the new Intuous 5 series from Wacom, because my old digitizing tablet is old and flaky and the new one is sexy sexy. Because I *need* to start a webcomic amid all the other things that I’m not getting done.) Just reinstalled Sketchbook Mobile, so at least I’ll be able to amuse myself in meetings.

Anyway, thinking about the old drawings made me think about what i’d draw this time, and how things have changed. There’s more Bobs, with Oven and Fridge. A couple of regulars that have crab-scrabbled onto the stage.

And some relationships have changed, and it’s… well, it’s not anything, I just noticed the sadness in some places. One of my cousins is moving to the west coast for a job, and I’m a little surprised and a little disappointed that she didn’t mention that to me at all. It’s just one more sign of relationship failure and it makes me said to see things go this way. Not sad enough to take action myself, but enough to feel all poignant.

So that’s something.

I’ve been up since 3 this morning. That’s the bad news. The good news is that I still got 5 hours of sleep because I went to bed exhausted. But normally I don’t wake up till I’ve gotten 6 hours. I don’t understand.

How do you fill your small hours? I tried to sleep, played a game on the tablet, started teaching myself how to write an extension in Firefox and then settled into reading. And then, about 10 minutes before it was time for my alarm, I finally started feeling sleepy.

Yeah.

Weirdly, today hasn’t been all that bad. No real artifacts in my day until the last 20 minutes of work. Probably because I got the 5 hours which is pretty close to where I tend to stabilize anyway. Or because of my experiment with Tea yesterday. Ooh!

So at some point I read that you can cold-brew coffee and tea. (For that matter, you can sun-brew them too, but I had ice and no windows.) And I came back from lunch with a soft-drink cup full of ice and I filled it with water but wasn’t feeling all that interested. I also had a packet of creamy earl grey that was a little more aromatic than I was really enjoying so I figured, what a candidate for cold brew experimenting.

Poured probably about 30% more tea than I would have for the same amount of hot water, and then occasionally stirred for the next two hours. The water gradually darkened a little but even without the colouring there was a nice subtle taste to the water, and it was delicious.

And now I wonder if it was also strongly caffeinated. Because that would explain a whole hell of a lot.

*EDIT*

Un-Favorite-Only’d the “cast” entries. Except that really Nocturne belongs at the top of the entry with everyone else. Still, she’s worth sharing again.

*EDIT2*

Updated the front page. Let me know if the email riddle is easier.