Do you think you might do a run of these as postcards? I love your art and want to buy more of it, but I'm starting to run out of room on the Studio JJ wall in my office, haha.
... to be honest, if I ended up next to you on a flight, I'd probably have a brief internal "OMG it's John Scalzi!!!!" moment, politely say hello and ask you about your cats, then spend the rest of the flight zoning out to some Star Trek.
aaah, spring break is so close I can feel it
Today's one of the days I really miss having Rana around - I'm trying to update PHP on my blog's web server. Whenever she updated the PHP installation, everything went smoothly.
Me? Every time I try to update PHP, I end up temporarily bricking my site. (Until I undo the PHP update, anyway) 😭
My partner got a donation solicitation mailing from IU saying "hey, did you know you can now donate using crypto?"
uuuugh. 🤬
... oh hey, it's the super bowl today, isn't it
... if I don't inadvertently crochet myself into a repetitive stress injury, anyway 😅
Aw, that sucks about your CD player. I... just realized I have more than one way to listen to CDs! I forgot I can listen using the same PS4 that's currently acting as a very fancy Blu-Ray/DVD player. (Mostly just been listening to CDs in my car - somehow my 2023 Crosstrek has a CD player in it!)
I did that recently with my own CD binder to make some space for my Babylon 5 Blu-Ray discs (the case they originally came in is terrible) - and I found my original Tori Amos CDs in there! I thought I'd lost them ages ago.
Now comes the ridiculous part of getting back into writing stuff for The Crafty Nerd: getting ALL THE IDEAS for things to write about and hoping the drive to write sticks around for a while. 😅
... it took entirely too long to do it, because I typoed the damn email address on the first try and had to make a second account, buuuuut I finally got a Bluesky account set up for The Crafty Nerd: @thecraftynerd.bsky.social
... I realized I don't have another place to post this at the moment, at least not until I get a Bluesky account for the blog, so I'll share this here instead: I'm playing board games again, and apparently writing blog posts about it too.
thecraftynerd.com/2026/02/08/f...
I'm weirdly looking forward to the big snowstorm headed my way this weekend. It's nature's way of saying "stay home and stay cozy". (I know not everyone has the option to do that, but I'm really hoping everyone can stay home and enjoy getting snowed in this weekend.)
Photograph of one corner of my home office, with a number of prints and postcards by artist J. J. Lendl hanging on the walls. On the left wall, across the top is a series of Star Trek postcards featuring different episodes of Picard, TNG, and DS9. Under the clock is a bonus Star Trek print I got when ordering the postcards. On the right wall is a series of Severance prints, one for each episode in seasons 1 and 2. (The smaller frames contain printouts of the actual prints, because I'm too broke to buy all 15 prints, but I did buy the larger Cold Harbor print.)
And this isn't even all my Studio JJ prints - I have one from Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3 that I still need to get a frame for!
(the postcards in the crossed out frame are some I got from a Star Trek advent calendar, done by a different artist)
Oh, I really hope these get released as prints. I may not be able to afford all of them, but I clearly need at least one for what's clearly turning into the Studio JJ corner of my office.
Watched the first two episodes of Starfleet Academy last night, and oh my GOD it was good. Like, I'm really glad Peter didn't get too bothered by my excessive excited flails about everything. Not gonna ramble about it here, I don't wanna spoil anything, but ohh it's so good.
Now I just have to wrangle the whole "ooooh now I want to do this all the time" feeling I know I'm gonna get when I start riding more again so I don't completely wreck myself. I've done it before, pushing myself too much because I want the dopamine/endorphin hit I get from working out.
Following up on the "I used my exercise bike for the first time in years" post from earlier: decided to try out Zwift, a virtual riding app where you can go on rides with other people. Did one ride so far, and daaaaaang that was fun and a hell of a workout. (and a reminder that I'm so out of shape)
A good thing I did for myself today: dusted off the exercise bike and rode for 10 minutes to make up for not being able to easily go for a walk when working from home. (I hate the lack of sidewalks in my area.) Felt good to get moving, even if just for a little bit.
Managed to make it through the holidays, though the week between Christmas and New Year's was pretty rough. It was a little harder to deal with the anniversary of Rana's passing without Hannah.
Still hanging in there, though, even though the world is a dumpster fire right now.
and honestly: DoA was the only good thing to come out of that internship
yeah- I dunno if you remember being approached by a startup called inkd (their goal was to make a webcomic reader app) back in the day, but I had a... short-lived internship with them. reading DoA was my first assignment since they planned on talking to you during one of your Bloomington trips
and it wasn't all I did for two days - just all I did when I wasn't stuck in class/work/etc. If I didn't have work or classes, I probably would've torn through it all in a day.
I mean, I read through the entire run of Dumbing of Age in 2 days for an internship assignment, but that was back in 2012, sooooo
not sure if I should be proud of myself for defeating ADHD and actually mailing the letter, or if I should panic and grab the letter out of the mailbox before the post office picks it up
so I wrote fan mail to one of my favorite authors
and instead of letting it languish as a Word doc on my computer's desktop for months until I chicken out and decide not to send it like every other time I've written fan mail, I actually sent it this time
😱
To the random person I met at Morgensterns Books yesterday who excitedly chatted with me about tarot cards, tattoos, cats, Tolkein, and Dungeon Crawler Carl: you made my day. ❤️
You've been in my thoughts ever since the news broke. I can't entirely imagine what you're going through, but I do know firsthand that it's heartbreaking and devastating to lose someone who's so important to you.
🫂
these days you learn something new and horrible every 5 seconds
in the pit
This entire weekend
