Thursday, September 23, 1999

by the Wunderland Toast Society

Hurricane Floyd may not have flattened Baltimore, but we didn't entirely escape its impact either. Along with just about everyone in the area, KLON suffered a major power outage on Friday. Unfortunately, the power went out just as one of their big machines was digging away at the drone cavity, and it tore up the work so badly that they had to scrap it and start over again with a fresh piece of steel. So the Icehouse pieces will be delayed, by a week or so at least. But considering how badly many folks on the east coast were hit by Floyd, I don't think we really have the right to complain. We've waited ten years for these pieces, we can wait another week. Besides, we built an extra month into our schedule, and certain other elements are running late too, so this isn't really a big deal.

As for the home front, we took on some water but escaped actual flooding. Being nocturnal, I sleep during the day; but after just a couple of hours, Kristin woke me up with urgency in her voice. "The power is out," she said, "and Alison and I are bailing water out of the sump pump in order to keep the basement from flooding." We have a waterproofing system in our basement that automatically pumps out any water that comes in - except when the power is off. With no alternative, they were carrying out the water in buckets, but they couldn't keep up, and needed my help. So for the next couple of hours, we worked as a bucket brigade, and we managed to keep the floor dry. (Of course, as soon as the storm let up and the water stopped flowing, the power came on again...)

A couple of months ago, I doodled up a curious little picture of Tirade, sort of springing forth from the ground in a starburst of energy, or something. The local audience thought it was pretty cool, so I colorized it, and then we liked it even more. And so we got the idea to make it into a sticker.

We've made stickers before... last year we made a set of 3 stickers featuring Aquarius artwork, and we've been using them as promo items at events ever since. But while those stickers have been very popular with the people we've been giving them to, at shows and festivals and such like, we've been wanting to make a new one, for two reasons: first, we're running out of the old ones, and second, we've come to wish it had a little more info on the back.

It's clear that the old sticker design was popular because it had no slogans or other advertising noise... it was just a cool image. So we knew we had to keep the front of the sticker clean of text. But we also wanted these stickers to serve as little advertisements for this webzine of ours, so we crammed a whole bunch of text onto the back, re-using a business card design we cooked up a couple of years ago. We sent off the order a few weeks ago, and yesterday, the new stickers arrived!

They're available now from our stickers page, but we're also planning to put one in with each Icehouse set we sell, so if you're on the pre-order list, you'll be getting one in just a few weeks.

Lastly, as if the hurricane hadn't provided enough excitement for one week, our big white cat Marley developed a serious health condition, which required immediate hospitalization. The problem: a completely obstructed urinary tract. This condition, if left untreated, can kill a cat in just a couple of days; but fortunately, having gone through similar problems with other cats, I quickly noticed the telltale signs of trouble and we got him to the vet before the problem was critical. He had to spend a couple of pretty miserable days as a guest of the vet, but he's home with us now and it looks like he'll make a full recovery. Whew!