Journal Entry of Randomness ...

[texchan]

Random journal entry is random.

Been in a pissy mood for a while now. Writing is frustrating. Too many demands on my time. And thus, life has become frustrating, too.

Parents are visiting. My dad just went home yesterday, and my mom has another week left of her stay. We redid our dining room to convert it into a playroom of sorts. Installed cabinets and then topped them out so they ended up looking like built-ins. They hold a lot of toys, too ... so I am the happy over that.

Rearranged the living room furniture because I had to move this HUGE (~200 lb) armoire out of the dining room. We have an open floor plan for our house, but the actual living room is pretty small. And I really have too much furniture to go in there. But I think we managed to find a room arrangement that fits the space and makes it feel cozy and comfy as opposed to overstuffed.

I found some old color photographs that I took years ago (sometime around 1998 or 1999) -- back when I was still shooting with film. Including my favorite photograph, ever, which is an above-view shot of a Greyhound bus station at night. I so love that picture. I framed a few of those and mixed them in with some of my black and whites, and I think they look nice in the new living room. I want to frame out some more photos to hang in the house. I take enough of the stupid things ... I should probably use them here and there.

The dining room / playroom and living room took most of a week to get done. It was a LOT of work.

My dad also built a new set of bookshelves for me in the office. They tuck in nicely behind the door, and so use that dead space really well. I always need more room for books.

Now that my dad is gone, I'm pretty sure my mom has her eye on some open shelving I have in the kitchen, my daughter's closet, and the linen closet (and probably more that she hasn't mentioned)-- all of which she thinks need to be "cleaned out". They probably do, but I'm not much in the mood to do it. So I'm not confident we'll get to it at all. I haven't admitted this out loud yet, as I don't think it will go over well, but ...

Slowly pecking away at the new prologue for my book. The past few weeks, for the most part, have been the suck for writing. But Saturday was a pretty good day. I managed to close myself in the office and get a good amount of work done. And moved the prologue along pretty well, too. So I was happy about that.

I've become totally addicted to Merlin, this show on Sci-Fi Network. I randomly ran across a marathon of it showing last weekend and watched a few episodes. Didn't take me long to get hooked. So I just got the first season box set at Best Buy yesterday. Yay for BB gift cards!

I'm (slowly) working on setting up a new production art gallery site. I think it's going to take me forever, as I only work on it here and there, when I'm not busy writing or doing other things. But at least it gives me something creative to do with my existing art ... which helps keep me from wanting to buy a lot of new art (because I really don't have the funds for that right now >.O). I do have some things I need to scan and update, though. I used to be so good about doing that stuff right away. And now I have become the suck about it. *shame*

Comments

[tex-chan.livejournal.com]

Ha! The same thing happens to me when I sit down to do screencaps. Even if I know exactly which episode the cel is from, I end up thinking: "Oh, but I love this other episode so much ... it won't hurt to watch it, too. I have time." And then I end up watching the whole darn show again. And yes, LOL'ing over individual, random screencaps that I can't help but grab "just because". Such is the life of a fangirl, right? ^.~

If you want, I can let my friend know you might be interested in her gallery software. I'm not sure she's decided yet whether or not to open it up for everyone in general. I know it's a project she's been working on for a couple of years, so I'm not sure where she is regarding her comfort level and such.

(And again ... ICON WIN!!! You are so good at making them. I totally suck at the whole iconage thing. >.O)

[skyrat13.livejournal.com]

I would be interested…assuming I can handle the skills required. The whole reason I am only on RS to date is because that’s about as far as my abilities go…if I had any webmaking skills myself I’d probably have made my own page by now like your separate Gecko Blue site… It’s totally fine though if your friend doesn’t want additional people joining or anything. I appreciate you asking. ^__^

Hehehe. I’m glad you like my icons! Although don’t go selling yourself short! You make incredibly good icons! And I’m too lazy to bother animating mine, haha (plus if you look back at earlier homemade icons I uploaded, you’ll see what a sad sight some of mine are…I really ought to delete a bunch now that I actually have Photoshop and don’t make them in MS Paint, haha.)

[tex-chan.livejournal.com]

It does require some HTML and some CSS knowledge -- which, admittedly, I don't have. I know some HTML, but I'm not confident I could code a whole page or website with it. So far, though, my HTML skills (altho not mad ... heh) have been sufficient. CSS comes into play with creating the templates for the layout, but there is a good tutorial for it. I haven't tried it yet; I figured I would monkey around with that stuff once I had finished uploading things. (Which is probably going to take me a while; it sounds dumb, but I had no idea I had so much stuff in my cel gallery! >.O)

I used a program, set up similar to photoshop, to design my Gecko Blue site. And I still use it to maintain that site, too. So, I'm definitely no web pro or anything. *nervous laugh*

I'll pass along your interest. I think she had, at one time, planned on taking the site and software public. But I don't know if that's still in the cards for her or not.

LOLz on the iconnage! But I can't take credit for many of mine. The animated ones were all made by my friend bladedfan. And most of the other really "neat" (well, IMO, anyhow ... LOLz) ones were made by other people. So, I still think your mad mad icon skills RAWK!!

I know what you mean, though, about needing to delete icons from LJ. I was just looking through all of mine and thinking the same thing. =D

[skyrat13.livejournal.com]

I only know enough html to format a chapter of fanfiction, heh. I pretty much always have to go look up code when I want to do anything more complex than italics... I don't know a thing about css. Which program did you use? I have dreamweaver already on my computer, and my friend just gave me a copy of frontpage...so I've been planning to work out how to make a page on my own hopefully....but haven't actually made any progress on that yet ^__^;;;;

Ah, sorry! I assumed you made them because you have so many that are most definitely unique to your journal. And I KNOW you have the skills to have made them because I've seen all those gallery layouts you make!!!

[tex-chan.livejournal.com]

That's me, too, with the html. I always have to look it up when I need to do anything with it. Ditto with CSS ... which worries me a little with this new gallery endeavor. But I'm crossing my fingers and hoping for the best. o_o

I used Dreamweaver for my Gecko Blue site. It took me a while to get comfortable with the program, but I really like it now. Of course, I think the one I'm using is two or three versions out of date by now. But I like what I like ... which is bad, when it comes to computer software. >.O I've heard good things about frontpage, too, but I've never used that one.

No apologies necessary! I'm flattered that you would think I could have made the icons. 'Cuz I definitely feel I don't have the mad skillz for that. (LOLz)

*GLOMS*

[skyrat13.livejournal.com]

My friend who gave me Frontpage said it was the easier thing to use…however I’ve been leaning towards Dreamweaver anyway because I’m waaay more comfortable with Adobe products than Microsoft (I honestly think I have a better grasp of Photoshop than Word haha.) And Dreamweaver links me to lots of online tutorials which explain things like CSS (which helped me a lot when I tried to teach myself Flash.) Sooo…hm. Maybe I’ll get a book from the library and start fooling around with this more…

I have CS4…but I haven’t been comfortable at all with it (applied to Photoshop and Illustrator) yet, I find a lot of the ‘improvements’ over CS3 kind of awkward and annoying (although once I adjusted I did like the CS3 improvements over CS2 so maybe I just haven’t given it enough of a chance yet)….but I’d guess whatever version you have is probably easier to use. And the ‘improvements’ are usually things I find trivial anyway, like how anchor points appear, not something that actually affects what the software is capable of producing.