A new Art Challenge! Well... almost! I was just about ready to get ready to announce it and then got carried away with putting my desk together in the RV.

It's a very cute desk! Mine is almost like this, except mine has cuter hardware. ;) This is the company we ordered from too -- Home Decorators Collection. GREAT service and I could not be happier with the desk! We took out a small table that was behind the passenger's seat and the new desk nestles comfortably in that area.

Lovely weather today here! 70's for our walk on the IU campus. Everything is in bloom and the air is fragrant!

Ok .. Eddie's telling me that it's time for him to be brushed! :D

Plastic kids?

I got another email from a woman wanting to know how to do "pageant retouching." Here is an example of this sort of thing. I pointed out that this is really not "retouching," but involves recreating the image so that not much of the original photo remains.

But what's the point of this? Is it good to take a photo of a beautiful child and make her look like she would shatter if she fell off the shelf? To take lovely expressive eyes and replace them with glassy vacant doll eyes? I'm just not there.

Sure, I'll retouch. I'll whiten teeth, open eyes up, make wrinkles a little less deep, trim up hair and neaten clothing. I'll even help someone lose a little weight. But to completely replace a child's mouth because she has lost a tooth? Remove braces? Urgh.. The money would have to be pretty good. LOL. However, I wouldn't take a kid and make her plastic for the measly $60 that these artists are getting.

Ok.. I know that I posted that it was green out today, but my post isn't there! Anyway.. what I said is that it is rainy and it's getting very green, almost to the point where it looks fakey.

I found 7 mushrooms (morels) in the backyard on Sunday and I cooked them up for Michael for supper tonight. He loved them!

It seemed like all I got done today was email, though I did get Lesson 5 sent out to my students and spent two hours going through their assignments and reading all the posts.

On our walk this evening, we tromped across campus in the dank 50° chill.

Oh, and I'm reading a book! Well, it's going to be a book when the right agent comes to his or her SENSES and decides to take this to a publisher. This is a mystery written by my best friend Dave, and it is SOOO good!

I've decided that I really love blogging. Here's a cherry pie that I made for the Hiking Club's picnic on the last day that we were in Tucson.

Yummy? You bet!

We just watched Deal or No Deal (my new favorite show) and Apprentice. The guy won over $400K on dond and my least fave pita Andrea, was fired. So a good night. :D

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?