Man.. finally Blogspot got going after some hairy scary problems that had them out for a long time (well... less than a day, but nearly a day). I had tried to post my Sunday entry several times, and I think that they had all of my attempts on there till I deleted them. Anyway.. I hope that things are cool now.

I wrote a new Photoshop tutorial today -- making an Action to create Rule of Thirds Guidelines. It's pretty cool, and I hope if you're into PS that you'll have a look! In fact.. if you're just into photography, this is kinda cool. Any comments are, of course, welcome!

I'm working on writing my new Fix Your Photos class. It will be offered starting in the Fall Session and it's looking cool so far.

Today I'm watching the Eagle Cam! I can't actually get it to work on this computer (my big one) but am watching it on my laptop. So now I have four screens active on my desk! LOL I'm such a brat!

Ok.. something a little different today! I installed the latest update to Firefox and installed a new Theme to go with the new version. I like it! It's called Metal Lion, and, while it seems very NOT ME right now, I'm getting used to it and ... who knows? Maybe I'll get to be all metal and Goth and stuff. Click the image to see it larger. Check out those groovy buttons!

Lovely day today and I'm about to get out in it. All the trees are blooming and getting green. I went out to the backyard this morning, and found 7 morels! I'll be frying those up for Michael for supper, since I hate any food that starts with an M. ... Well.. excepting milkshakes, and that's really more a beverage than a food, don't you think?

Happy Saturday to us! What a beautiful day it is today, too. It's low 70's at 1pm, sunny, the leaves are greening, flowered trees are all in bloom, and the bees are flying happily about. Perfect day for Little 500 Bicycle Race here in Bloomington.

And it was a perfect day for us to do some closet dejunking! We blessed Goodwill with 20 bags stuffed full of things that at one time were shiny and new and we couldn't live without. Today we can live without all of it!

I guess myJanee.com was down ydy afternoon, but I wasn't aware because we were gone. We drove to Louisville to visit our broker. On the way, we stopped at Backyard Burger and had a pleasant lunch. Then we drove through pouring, blowing, puddling rain almost the whole rest of the way down there (2 hours) and that was tough.

Our appointment went well, all's very cool with our investments, and we left there thinking that Grandpa would be proud. :)

Dinner was at California Pizza Kitchen, one of our favorite places to eat. We shared the fusilli with broccoli and sundried tomatoes.. with chicken, and it was divine, as always.

After that, we went to Graeter's where we had good ice cream, but we agreed that Graeter's does not even APPROACH Handel's. (I am just now printing a listing of Handel's locations for when we head east! There are a bunch in Ohio! hehe)

I had to get a crown prep done ydy. The appt wasn't till 2:10 and I didn't get out of there till after 5. All that time with my mouth propped open. Urf. Thank goodness for bite blocks and Trina who kept my slobber vacuumed up. I am happy that I'm going to be getting a sweet new crown to replace that tooth which had become a tongue-toy.

I've added a few new sites to my Photoshop Resource Links. I added Jill Greenberg's Manipulator site to my Photo Galleries and ArtWorld and t-Tutorials to my Tutorials: Special Effects page.

I am working on getting the junk out of the house. It's funny how it is so much easier to BUY things than it is to get rid of them! I do wish I had the GUTS to have a yard sale. I just hate to .. what? Give the stuff away? We're talking a garage FULL of stuff. And if we decide to sell this house ultimately to live in the motorhome, then there's going to be, of course, much more. Arf. Overwhelming to think about, but I'm working on it a little at a time, and that's all I can do.

Students are doing great in Week 4 of the Spring session.

Oh.. I'm looking into gmail. I actually have an account which I'm not now using. I found out that if you use "death" or "died" in your email, Google won't put ads on your email. A guy in a forum wrote that he'd gotten an email from someone about a relative dying, and there were ads down the side for coffins and funeral services! He wrote to them that that was in bad taste. No kidding! "No trees died in the creation of this message." for a sigline? LOL why not?

Ok, let's try Trebuchet. And let's get off that black! Next I need to figure out how to change that inane header art. NO, that is NOT my art! And why can't I put emoticons in here, anyway?

All day today my Hotmail was telling me that the server was unavailable. WEll.. so I finally wrote to their support folks and BAM! It's working again! I asked them in my posting if they would jiggle some wires.

Lovely and warm today. I should go out and look for mushrooms but... like everything else I should do, it's remaining undone.

Students and I come off break tomorrow. I got into the boards today to get caught up! They're on fire and I love it!

Man... I'm working on getting a guy to take my work off his site. He has the chutzpah to even suggest that I didn't come up with my ideas myself, that I've "borrowed" them or varied them somewhat to come up with my tutorials. Well I didn't.

And this guy didn't even vary my work. He pasted it up on his site intact, using my images and my text, word-for-word. I even wrote him a short essay on creativity in response to his suggestion that my work is not unique:

"And yes, it really is my work. It's naïve for you to suggest that there is a limited amount of Photoshop knowledge out there, to suggest that everyone copies everyone else, or that my ideas can't have been mine. You're wrong about this, and as a teacher, you should know better.

"There is an infinite variety of objects out there, each of which has its own artistic merit. If it can be seen, it can be photographed, and if it can be photographed, it can be shown as pixels. Pixels can be recreated in Photoshop, and so there you are. Anything that you can see can be recreated in Photoshop. And you can call it an effect and write a tutorial about how to do it. Dig deeply and find your own creativity! Your own ideas might even be better than mine, and they will be yours."

Well, I really hope that I don't have to take further action on this. I hate confrontation, but I'll do what I need to protect my work.

I nearly forgot! I've discovered something very fun and very cool for puzzle fiends out there. It's USA Today's Sudoku! They vary in difficulty and the interface is so easy to use and user-friendly. No more little pencil marks -- just little clicks! :D

Hey there!
We had a happy day for Easter, and I continue to enjoy my break from classes. Don't worry though; I'll be rarin' to get back into it on Wednesday!

I have been working on photos from our Tucson journey, and here's one:I took this on the Yetman Trail, a part of Saguaro National Park. This was an old house which had burned out, leaving only the stone shell. What a view they had!

I am working today to put links to my Online Classes onto each of my tutorial pages. Big job. I don't even know HOW many tutorial pages I have, but it's ... many.

Storms yesterday, but things are greening up here. Redbuds are budding and dogwoods are beginning to dog. They say the morels are going to be coming up very soon; I have not yet been out to look.

We arrived back in Bloomington last evening. We had gone first to Beech Grove, Indiana, where Michael did a lunchtime talk. Then we got to spend the rest of the day in Indy and then stay the night! We used our time to go up and walk on the Monon Trail.

We also went to the Runner's Forum where Michael got new shoes and I ordered new ones. They didn't have my exact shoes, so Mike O, our salesman, turned us on to a company he works with called myrunningshoes.com. They had TWO pairs of my favorite shoes, so I ordered both. They're going to be coming from a small store in Utah!

We had breakfast at the little restaurant in the Airport Radisson, and then headed off to the airport. The flight to Dallas was easy, and then we had a 3 hour layover. We used that time to walk! Dallas FW airport is an amazing place for fitness walking! It's just huge, taking us 15 minutes to go from the far end of the C terminal to the far end of the A terminal, and that was at a pretty serious clip. (No one stares if you walk fast in an airport! LOL!)

Then we boarded the prop plane to Longview. It was 3-across, and there was a tiny aisle separating Michael and me. But the worst part was that it was LOUD.

When we left Indy on Wednesday, it had still been kind of cold, so Texas gave us a nice little preview of spring. All the trees were well-leaved and it was warm and pleasant!

We got our rental car at the cute little Longview airport and easily found the Wingate Inn -- a business-oriented hotel on the "loop" and close to everything.

Dinner was at Johnny Carino's. We feasted on Chicken and Pasta Gorgonzola, soup for me, salad for Michael, and then we each had our own dessert! Stuffed? You betcha.

Thursday we had most of the day to just mess around. We started it by walking on the linear park trail close to the hotel off 4th street. It was lovely, and I took some pics.

Then we went to the mall, had lunch, and poked around a bit. Michael had a little nap while I worked the USA Today's Sudoku puzzles for the past 2 weeks.

Michael's dinner talk at Barron's went great! AND the dinner was delicious too.

We collapsed into bed early and headed off to the airport after we breakfasted in the Wingate lobby. (We love those prepare-it-yourself lobby breakfasts!)

Security was .. cute, and we climbed the stairs to our little puddle-jumper to Dallas. The flight attendant said that we were cruising at 6000 feet, but we think that she meant 16,000. (Didn't she?) We were low, but not THAT low!

We walked a bit in Dallas, but not for our official walk of the day, since we just had a bit over an hour layover here. This was long enough to establish that the gate in the C terminal was not what we needed after we walked there from A. Instead, our gate WAS in A! LOL! So we found it, got pizza, and then waited the short time till they were ready for us.

We walked the Monon Trail upon our return to Indy, ate at Shapiro's, and then desserted at Handel's! :)

We're home from Tucson! The trip was easy, since we took 2 weeks to make it. Here's what we did:

Stayed in *** Did
Willcox, AZ *** stayed 2 nights -- Chiricahua National Monument -- hiked 7.2 miles to the Circle of Rocks -- FAB, and do expect pictures!
Alamagordo NM *** 3 nights -- Three Rivers Petroglyph Site -- hiked all the way to the top, taking pics of lots of great petroglyphs. We will return! Also visited the Pistachio Tree Ranch and got some treats! Better than the other bigger pistachio place!
Lubbock, TX *** Stayed 3 nights here, cold, snowed! Walked at the mall once and outside around the campground a couple of times. Brrrr!
Oklahoma City *** Nice place with a neat walking trail. Just stayed one night though.
Joplin, MO *** Nice place where they had huge bonfire going (sheesh); we visited the huge Sandstone Gardens, a ... get this... garden center... built into a mansion-style building with a great restaurant!, walked downtown one day.
Someplace, MO *** Funky little place on a river, where they charter canoe trips in the summer, WiFi means you have to go outside to use it. ;)
Effingham, IL **** Stayed just one night, but woulda stayed 2 if they'd have given us a lake view site. WiFi in office only.
Richmond, IN *** Stayed at Tom Raper while we got our routine service done. Free camping, free hotdogs, walking on the Cardinal Greenway.. how could we ask for better?

Now we're settling in and getting things around here patched up and ready for summer!
See This link for pics from Tucson!