I am so totally cranky right now.

I have so much to do today, and I'm totally not motivated, I'm dragging around and feeling very bleh.

To top it all off, I was contacted by an eBay customer from hell. She's in Japan, and she contacted me privately and asked me to send her some things, which is against eBay policies. It was a large order, so I agreed. It took about fifteen emails to hammer it all out, mostly because it's very hard to understand what she is saying. Her emails are nearly indecipherable.

Anyway, I agreed to send her some very popular items at a very low price per item, because she was buying 50-100 of each. Because the items are a bit on the fragile side (but not terribly so), I sent extra, so I really wasn't making much money per item, seriously. I packaged some of them individually just in case. Then we discussed shipping at some point, and I ended up charging her $8 global priority, which is normally fairly cheap.

Well, because of all the extra padding and weight and such, it ended up costing THIRTY FIVE DOLLARS to ship. I think I just barely broke even on this stupid transaction, and I sent her most of what I had of one popular item, which kind of bothers me now, because it is a really good seller, and I've been making decent money selling it one at a time, and I don't have many left.

She has sent me a new nearly undecipherable email, and claims that I didn't send her the above popular item AT ALL. Or they're broken. I can't tell. Seriously, she says "missing or broken". WTF?! I packed those myself, and I packed them very well. AND I sent her extra in case any were broken.

She's claiming one of the other items is "halved". I don't know if she means half the quantity (which is impossible, let me tell you) or that the items are broken in half (more probable, but it would still be unlikely that more than twenty (that's right, I sent an EXTRA TWENTY @#&%*^@#$&*%) would be broken).

And the fact that this was not done through official channels bothers me, too. I hate it when I'm approached privately.

The worst part is that I know my reply will be inscrutable to her, as all of them have obviously been. I wrote that she needed to tell me the number of broken beads, and I will subtract the extra from that, and then I will subtract the extra shipping, and send her a refund for the rest. Even though it's not my responsibility, technically; it's the Post Office's problem because I insured the package as well, and obviously there was some mishandling. What are the chances that she will understand this? Zero.

I'm sorry, I just have to rant. This pisses me off like whoa.

ETA: I have just received an even more unintelligible reply. I cannot understand what she wants. I just want to scream at something right now.

Help!

Can anyone help me with this mess? I need someone to write up a simple letter for me in Japanese, tonight.

Seriously. I am completely at the end of my rope with this woman. She does not seem to understand what I am saying and I have no clue what she's saying. She uses relatively complex words, but strung together in the most impossible manner.

I am pleased in these two goods.
If my state of goods is good, I want much more numbers.
The number which I wish becomes below.

Because there are so many variables in this transaction I'm GOING INSANE trying to figure out what she wants. And I'm going out of town tomorrow, so I really need to clear this up.

cranky lion post #2!

Sometimes eBay is a source of happiness, though, too.

Just received this feedback:

I Love You!

I'll take that as a positive.

Art for the Last Sanguimagus!

The incredible ac1d6urn has finished a fantastic new piece of artwork for The Last Sanguimagus!

It's so awesome! She really is an incredible artist. It's funny, I imagined the scene in a completely different way, but when I looked at what she had drawn, I was immediately intrigued by how different it was and yet how well it worked! It's fabulous.

It's from chapter 48, from a dream Severus had of the ghosts leaving Hogwarts. He is relatively unfazed by the ghosts leaving, but then he finds that Sarah is walking out the door as well, and he is a little disconcerted by that. It's a changing point for him; he had been hoping to forget about her utterly after their "debt" is settled, but finds he cannot.

I absolutely adore the Bloody Baron in this. Ac1d has done an extraordinary job and transformed the scene into something fascinating and beautiful.

( Clicky for fantabulous art! )

One more thing, then bed.

It's been a hellacious day. Simply put, everything I have tried to do somehow became a mess. When I was hanging pics on the wall, for example, one of the other pics fell apart, dropping a piece of glass behind a desk, where it was virtually impossible for me to grab.

Everything was like that.

But on to more interesting things. I have just read Three Little Words by rickfan37. Most of you know that I am not a SS/OFC fan (oddly enough), yet I was immediately drawn into this story. It's short, and finished, only four chapters, but Rickfan has definitely packed a lot of punch into it.

It follows Snape at Spinner's End during the events of OotP and HBP, and the city itself that harbors Spinner's End is so real and vividly painted that you think you're walking its streets. It is a character in its own right, and Rickfan captures the mood so well that you can feel the claustrophobia of being stuck there. It's a quick read, but it was satisfying. The OFC was a bit cheerful, which is not my thing, but most people seem to like that. Snape was sharp and mannered and quite well-drawn. I enjoyed reading it very much.

Definitely nice to have a bit of escape between all of the cursing and wallowing in self-pity that today brought.