Busy still!

Things are still creeping at me from the depths of photoshop and Dreamweaver/Fireworks MX. Even though it is volunteer time and I am not getting paid (I can't remember the last time I got paid for anything I ever did) I am still enjoying myself immensely.

Hubby and I were talking yesterday about this feeling we both get. He described it so perfectly I was amazed he knew what I was talking about. I was trying to explain how I feel when I am learning something new, and I am so excited about it that I get this pit in my stomach and my head feels like it wants to explode and I just want to know everything there is to know about it. I explained it as urgency, but he hit it on the nose when he said it was a sense of anxiety. It is!! It's like I cannot learn fast enough or enough quantity, I just want to soak it in and do the things that are bubbling up in my mind. It's crazy, really. I just feel I cannot do anything fast enough to manifest what I see in my mind, and not quite having the tools to be able to create is an exercise in frustration!

Ah well, baby steps, as they say.

Busy today.

Working on website stuff today. Hoping to just blend the day away is photoshop/imageview/dreamweaver woes.

On a different note. Do people really get so bent out of shape in the outside non-internet world? So many people getting so riled up on message boards. It really amuses me. What do they do all day? Do they chomp at the bit to fire away in text? Do they possess so little power in their lives that they feel it necessary to argue and criticize and be cruel to people in a digital medium? I find it all terribly funny, in truth.

If anything it has proven my assertion that most people are really very dull witted and easily manipulated.


Did I say that out loud??

Saved the best for last. Sunrise on our third day there. We take the golf cart out on the beach, not a soul around - it's about 6:30am and just enjoy the perfect weather and the sounds of the surf and the gorgeous sunrise. 

Active Mazi! She ran all over, got in the water, tried to follow me out into the surf. Even chased seabirds. She had a BLAST! It was so good to see her run around and have a good time. 

My fearless daughter on the boogie board out in the ocean. She did it over and over and over again! 

I wasn't kidding about the shrimpboats :) 

This is the house we stay in when we go out there. It is beautiful! 

My Border Collie, Mazi. She is a rescue, was 2 hours from the euthanization room, when a Border Collie rescue group found her. I found her 3 months later. This is her first outing of many to the beach. She was /great/! 

Not quite what I planned.

Well I wanted to write up something quite nice, something along the lines of an itinerary, something to really encapsulate my wonderful relaxing vacation. But what ended up happening is that I just wanted to get home and do nothing at all. It was more tiring than I thought, to be out on this secluded island and go out on the beach everyday, get sunburned and swim in the strong eastern current along the shore.

I have pictures uploaded from my camera and some are breathtaking. I can't wait to post them, but the husband is using that computer and I don't feel like kicking him off. He is on his well-earned vacation, too.

Why is it that vacations tire you out anyway? It's a paradox, for certain.

I'm baaaaack!

Alright, just got tucked back in my house after a nice long relaxing spot at the beach. Will upload pics and set some here for viewing. I got some great ones in!

Don't have much time, still un-packing, but I'll do a nice summation tomorrow.

Ahhh videos.

I have been transferring all my old videos to DvDs since last night. It is taking forever!! I can't figure out why burning a DvD is so godawful but it is eternally slow. Ah well. It'll be great once I can get it all done.

I have been working on my Border Collie website today. Having moderate success with what I initially visualized. But I am happy overall. I could not have done any of these things just a few days ago. Much <3 to the photoshop tutorials!

I need to also start work on doing my own custom blogger template. But that can come later, the package one I am using now is pretty and works fine. But I do want to make my own at some point, something to add even more of my own flavor to.

My vacation looms.

Just a few days away. I am sooooo looking forward to getting out there and unplugging. We stay in this huge house on this private island that my father-in-law has connections with the owner. Been going out there for years. There is nothing like it, the southeast coast. It is so different than the kind of beaches I grew up on, the surfers, the tanned hardbodies of California Girls, volleyball and sunbathing and checking everyone out. On these private beaches here, it's you and shelling on quiet soft white sands, no one else about - and if there is, they aren't wearing a bikini and glistening with oil.

It's relaxing, peaceful in a zen kind of way. Watching shrimp boats out on the ocean, the sunrises so intensely beautiful you actually want to get up to view them every morning.

I can't wait. Our yearly trek to peace and quiet. I promise to take lots and lots of pictures!

Here are some weird tentacles that I created using a web tutorial. I didn't really get the effect that I wanted, but I had never done anything like this before, so its a success in my book! 

Here is another button I did -- though it is being zoomed in with the Hello protocol. Still, pretty darn good for a second try! :) 

Here is the pic of the plastic tab -- though when I converted it to JPEG something weird happened to the edges. But if you view the PSD it looks perrrrect dahhhling. 

Photoshop is the Debil!!

It has me in its grip. A vicelike one, I tell you!!

I have been doing tutorials two days straight non-stop. It's insane. Ever since Mondays influx of creativity.

Well ok, Tuesday I ran errands all day long, but still.

I have been having the best time!!

plastictabTest.psd

If you have photoshop you can see what I've made :) I am super proud of myself, even if it seems rather elementary. It is much harder than it looks and there are a lot of steps involved. Now I need to figure out exactly how I want to format this website I am creating. It is volunteer work, so I don't have a deadline perse, but I want to get it completed, as 'stuff on my to-do list' gets on my nerves after awhile and starts making me paranoid and crazy.

Now if only I could start working on my screenplay. Then I'd be the happiest person alive. Or at least very satisfied.

Mondays are creative.

I know that probably sounds crazy. But for me it's a start of a new week. Things get back into the swing of a normal routine and I sit down at my computer and feel ready for anything.

At this point, I want to create my own blogger template. I have abysmal knowledge of HTML at this point, so my sights are set high right now. I have browsed around and found some beautiful templates but I am loathe to use someone else's work, I want to do my own. I know I can, but the time commitment factor weighs heavily.

I used someone's source code, I liked what he did and copied it, but it really didn't get me any closer to doing things how I liked. Perhaps because the image he used didn't stretch to fit my 1600x1200 screen and I found that lacking.

In any event, that is what my day consists of, and I for one, love it!

Nothing

That's right. Not a ding darn thing. Yet. I need to let this day happen in order to blog about something. So far it's been all about rain and that's no fun.

Well some thing did already happen. My daughter went for a sleepover last night - and her friend's parents decided to bring her home when we're gone dropping my son off at a birthday party. Without calling first. So we come home to find our daughter's stuff at the door and she no where to be found, only to get a message on our phone saying that they brought her to church.

UGH.

That is a travesty.

Too hot to blog...

It's nasty today. I hate the south sometimes. I also have a large headache and I am tired. *growl*

So, I'm peevy.

On a good note, I did go see The Chronicles of Riddick last night and I really enjoyed it. I thought it to be well done and it was certainly entertaining. I reccomend it for anyone into Sci-Fi, Fantasy or a good ass-kicker action flick.

Happy to see Karl Urban taking some scene from Vin. Anything positive that a Lord of the Rings alum can get is good, in my opinion.

My uneventful day is waiting around for 4 eBay auctions to end to see if I win. 3 hours or so to wait. Joyous. Hope your weekend is as fun. :p

Oh, on a even more pleasant sidenote, I am reprieved from attending the husband's company picnic. Hubby deemed it too hot to go outside all day long and bake. Hurrah for him!!

Too Much Too Soon

I find that I am always thinking of things to blog now. Watched a movie last night (The Day After Tomorrow) and wanted to blog about it. Had a great conversation with my husband about his job and the people working under him at dinner (Outback Steakhouse) and wanted to blog about that. Wanted to blog about the movie I am going to see tonight (Chronicles of Riddick). Wanted to blog about how my kids are gone for three days so we're on a mini-break and I'm loving it!

Blog Blog Blog.

I tend to get this way about something new. Obsessive. Impulsive behavior, to be sure. The way I see it is that there is so much to know about me, so much I need to talk about and get off my chest, that I feel like its going to spill out of me at a frantic rate. I wondered if in a few months if I'd still be doing this, or if I'd give up like almost every other endeavor I have tried in my life.

I tend to be the type of person who tries something new to see if I can master it, learn all there is I want to bother to learn (sometimes it's quite a lot about something, sometimes it is just enough to find out I never really wanted to learn about it in the first place) and then I shed that need rather quickly. I feel bad about this, as if I had no follow-through, but then I go back to my online gaming wont, and realize that isn't the case. Where there is desire, there is will.

My motivations are still sketchy, even to myself, however. One day I might discover what they are, but until that time comes, I'm content to say that I'm basically a hedonist.

And is that so truly bad? ;)

So I'm homesick today

I'm originally from California. Northern, but still -- California. Lived there 22 years. Been away 9. Yeah, that ages me but I don't care.

I'm listening to the Radio today, 'net Radio, which I prefer. I always listen to the 80s stations. Perhaps I am nostalgic about my youth. Likely so. In any event, Wang Chung's To Live and Die in L.A. came on. I got so homesick I couldn't stand it. I was missing the warm, mild summer days, the beach being 30 minutes away.

I haven't ever been homesick even once in the 9 years I've been away. Now I miss my brother, who moved to New Mexico anyway so it's not like if I went back I'd even see him. Crazy.

I promised a sleep update

Hubby fell asleep at his desk. I called just a minute ago and he answered rather smearily. "Yeah, hey - I think I was just in the tower somewhere. Did you go? I think so, too."

He's out of it!

I had to repeat "BABE!" about four times before he snapped out of it. I don't want him driving home but he wouldn't let me come get him and call the neighbor to watch the kids. Bleh.

On a good note, he had two awesome meetings today where he was told by his district managing partner that "He will make partner" and that he got yet another exceptional rating, which is insane for a first year senior manager to get. Almost no one does. He rocks, my husband, yes he does. If he wasn't so tired I'd celebrate with some serious oral -- but he'd likely sleep right through it!!

In the meantime, I just applied for a job at Ubisoft. Seems they need some women gamers to work for them playing games from home and writing about it. I think it's just about the perfect goddamn job for me. I haven't one single iota on how to write a resume, but I whipped one up that looked alright in Publisher and sent it along.

Tossed it to the four winds, we'll see where it goes.

Alright I just can't have the Testing post...

Alright this ought to be interesting, really. I mean, what could possibly be so attractive about reading posts about what I think? Perhaps because I have such non-PC opinions. I also want to polish up my writing and getting in the habit of doing it everyday is a Good Thing.

Today I have had the pleasure of replying to messages on some favorite boards, fixing a screen flicker on my LCD and creating this blog. Haven't even showered yet and it's 3:04 -- got to jet! Don't want to get too fragrant before the husband gets home :) Poor thing was up all night last night working on some 400 page write up for his banking client. He is going to come home and instantly fall asleep.

Will keep updated on his sleep :p

Other fascinating fact of my day/week: I am hoping and praying that this humungoid pimple under my nose doesn't explode before Saturday - the Day of the Company Picnic. I do NOT look forward to bumping elbows with a bunch of Accountants and Accountant's wives. And I have to bring my kids! Unbearable.

'Til later then.

Testing

Alright let's see how this goes....