Tag: rants

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Head head go away

Hey look! I have a blog! Who knew? Maybe I should just dedicate this space as a place to write about my migraines. You know, like 500 words on trying to figure out the combination to the gun safe, or my waxing all lyrical about the ebony handled ice pick I found online. Maybe detailed descriptions of what it feels like to have an elephant step on your head. People would like that right? The rantings of a mad woman?! If reality TV has taught us anything it’s that crazy sells! My blog would become extremely popular, allowing me to use ads that would then generate enough income for me to finally purchase that guillotine I found on Ebay!

::sigh::

Maybe I need to write a little program that locks my computer down for 48 hours after I type any combination of the words: migraines suck, day #4, hey I have an idea.

Anyways, I went to see a neurologist this morning. He basically said that I am a walking 24/7/365 migraine waiting to happen. great. And guess what? I get to try another drug! Fun fun fun. And then I go back in a month.

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School daze

so… yeah… been busy.

And not busy sitting on my butt watching George Clooney movies – not that there’s anything wrong with that! School busy. Turns out a Russian history class is rather time-consuming. I don’t mind all the reading because I like the subject, but those essays! ohmygod the pain. I don’t even want to talk about it. And apparently there is gonna be more writing in my future. Like the speech class isn’t terrible enough, I’m looking at having to take another English Comp class! WTH? I’m too old for this shit.

I met with a counselor this week to go over my transcripts and what I need for not only my AA, but to transfer to university. ugh. Now, I don’t mind having to take another History class, or even the Science/lab – but another writing class?! Short stories, poetry? Kill me now. Oh, and I need to take a sculpture class for the AA in Art! blah. But since I’m slow-boating this degree business, looks like I’ll get to stay at Sierra another year or two. If I only take 1 “unpleasant” class a semester, and I have like 5 more… well that’s cool, the commute is a lot easier.

~

On a happier note, I have been taking some great images for the book I have to make for my photography class. And my “Alternative Processes: Hand-coloring Photographs” class was great! Add another technique to my arsenal.

~

On a decidedly unhappier note, RIP Nina Janis.
And a speeding cancer-free recovery to my dear friend Lisa!
Yesterday kinda sucked.

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Cold Coding

or coding with a cold. Either way – don’t do it.

Early last week Erin got sick and spent a night throwing up. It was … unpleasant. She had a slight fever the next day and then was fine. Of course, the following day Chris went down. He tried to drag me down with him, but I managed to stay out of the range of “deathly-ill, can’t get out of bed, must sleep more” and just hung out in the “Land of Feeling Like Crap and Fighting a Migraine” all weekend. I don’t recommend that place, the service sucks and the towels are really scratchy.

Anyways, the weekend was a slug-fest with Chris and I just lying around while the whirling dervish that we call Erin made a huge mess all around us. I basically spent 3 days just hanging out in my chair with the laptop keeping me warm. And since I had a bit of a break from Sweet Blog design work, I decided to finish up the work on my own design portfolio site and the photo-blog I created last Dec.

And apparently I was a bit sicker than I thought, because things were much more difficult than they should have been. I spent Friday trying – unsuccessfully I might add – to figure out how to add links to a WordPress theme. Links! What theme doesn’t allow links?! Could not get that stupid theme to work the way I wanted! So I moved on to other themes. That I couldn’t seem to get to work right either. weird. Of course I woke up Saturday morning and had a huge “DUH!” moment, climbed under the warmth of the laptop and viola! Links.

I moved on to the photo-blog. Now I thought this one was ready to go a week or so ago. I had a theme that I had customized to my liking, and had already spent quite some time hacking the files to add a navigation menu. What kind of theme doesn’t have a nav menu?! But like I said, I had added one and everything looked good. Then I tried to add a post with some text, not just a photo, and that’s when things got ugly. The formatting was all effed up. And this is where I came in on Saturday. Well, I can fix this. No I can’t. After much flailing around in the files, I decided to re-install the theme. Without making a copy first! oh what a rookie mistake. Lost everything. It wasn’t hard to recreate the styling changes, but the nav bar… ugh. After working on it for more endless hours, I still wasn’t happy with the formatting and decided to go another route. I would use the Thesis theme and design it to look like the photo-blog I originally had. Brilliant. And by this time it was Sunday and my head was much clearer. This was working. I even learned how to add a 4 column widget-ready footer to Thesis. Bitchin’.

and then when I was almost finished, just adding a few more little css tweaks… ::POOF:: all my custom code was deleted! everything but the line I had just added… gone. No backup. I took a couple deep breaths and started again. Again. And let me tell you, by this time I had that code dialed. I started from the top of the page and moved down div by div, copying and saving every few steps. And I was done in no time. And let me tell you – that is some lean, clean, code baby!

Check it out – Slamdance Photography.

wow. That kinda went on for awhile eh? Guess I’ll save those deranged princesses for next time. Something to look forward to.

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Lost marbles. Reward.

Damn. I have been unemployed a total of 10 days and I’ve gotta tell ya – I’ve never felt busier. And this isn’t a good happy busy – as in conflicting lunch dates. It’s not even the generally dreaded “work” busy. It’s more like a “soccer-mom” busy! And that becomes an all too real description tomorrow when Kyle starts his week-long soccer camp! A not-so-small part of me is dying here people.

So, adding to the now longer drive to the babysitter’s new house in Roseville (20 minutes each way!). I will have to drive Kyle across town to the other end of Lincoln by 9:00am and then go pick him up again at noon. Throw in week #2 of swim lessons on Tue, Wed, and Thurs in Loomis and I’ll be driving back and forth and back again from about 8:30am to 3:00pm. And that is going to suck. I’m not going to be able to get anything done with that kind of schedule. And I’ve suddenly got a lot to do. 

All the work I’ve been doing on designing the new website for dawnblanchfield.com is going to have to simmer on the back burner for a bit. A gentleman that Chris works with has hired me to build him a website! And that is fantastic of course, but (there always is one) the site he needs is not a simple static HTML site. This one will need log-in capabilities, a data-base, forms for user data input, and searchable results. Woo boy. Luckily I’m a learn as you go kinda gal, cause it looks like I’ll doing a lot more programming right out of the gate.

In addition to all that, I still need to update my resume, edit photos in Lightroom, choose the photos for the VoxSac show to print and frame, and do the always present laundry. I haven’t even thought about picking up my camera to make some new images. And I have that Lighting Workshop with Joe McNally at the end of the month. The day after my birthday! Damn, I forgot that I have a birthday coming up. That is bad. Oh! and my wedding anniversary is in 6 days! Crap. I am losing it people.

I keep recalling a painting I did long ago (early ‘90s) that depicted a figure being pulled in opposite directions by its arms while large blackbirds pecked at its head. Cheery no? What can I say, I was heavily influenced by the German Expressionists and that must have been how I was feeling at the time. It was never a ‘finished’ work, but a loose sketch done to ‘paint out the demons’ as I was prone to do. I ended up reusing the canvas some time later. The only evidence it ever existed is that you can see part of it in the background of a photo taken during that time. But the image keeps popping into my head. That’s probably not a good thing…

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Progress. It’s what’s for dinner.

or Progress. The other white meat. I couldn’t decide.

I hate having to push the picture of Erin-in-the-hood down the page, but life moves on. And so does this blog. Albeit at a much slower pace. But hey! Tomorrow is that thing. The Second Saturday Event at Mather Golf Course that has been ruining my life for the past month and a half. Besides adding the rest of the price tags to the prints, finding my folding chair in the garage, withdrawing cash from the bank for change (which I better well need!), and packing the rest of my stuff – I am done. I think.

I talked to Sharon yesterday afternoon. Told her that at this point in time, I no longer feel the need to cause her physical pain. Although, Chris might, when he goes to balance the checkbook and sees how much money I have spent on this affair! And then I told her that while I was not necessarily looking forward to Saturday, I wasn’t dreading it either. Yup, that’s as much as I was willing to give her. She who finagled-tricked-hoodwinked me into this gig. And she’s already talking about next month! Um, lets wait and see how tomorrow goes first eh?

Hmm. All this brings me back to thoughts of trying to sell prints on-line. I was toying with the idea at the beginning of the year and doing some research into Etsy.com. Going that route, I would post the items for sale, and do the printing and shipping myself. Another option is Imagekind. For them, I would create a gallery (up to 24 images) and they would handle the rest; printing, shipping even framing. Which seems like a no-brainer. Except it’s not. The big problem is aspect ratios. Good god how I hate the whole concept of aspect ratios. The skinny is that my camera’s sensor creates a picture that has the same aspect ratio of a 4×6 print. Now if you go and make an 8×10 print of that file, you are cropping off A LOT of the picture as I had intended it to be! Because I frame my shots in camera. So, using Imagekind puts my photos at risk of unwanted cropping whenever someone orders an innocent 8×10 print. 99% of my photographs do not work at 8x10inchs. The stuff that would be cropped off needs to be there! Ugh. Now I want to hurt someone again. Maybe a mathematician (or Chris). I knew I was correct in blaming math for all my woes.

Oh. I apologize. I spoke too soon. In going to their website to create the above link, I found out that Imagekind “will never change the aspect ratio of your image (the ratio between height and width) or arbitrarily crop your images.” Well, that changes everything. I’ll probably start there and save Etsy for a later date. Depends on how many prints I end up bringing back home tomorrow afternoon.

And I’m not going to edit the above paragraph about Imagekind and aspect ratios because that rant about aspect ratios has been a long time coming! That is why I had to cut so many damn custom mats for tomorrow’s event. When the hell are the mat-makers that supply Michael’s and Aaron Bros going to get on the 3:2 aspect ratio band-wagon?! Half the world is shooting with cameras that have this size image sensor. Make us mats that fit our pictures! Must I do all the work?!

Damn.

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Lidsville

I have a cold. Or the flu. Possibly a random plague. I blame Julie. She cursed me – a pox upon my house no less! Sure, sure, she promptly lifted the curse, but obviously not fast enough. Because a couple weeks ago Kyle got sick. And Kyle never gets sick! And then while we were in Santa Cruz, Erin started getting sick. She was sick all last week, poor baby. And now I am sick. So yes, I blame Julie. Although I believe she has paid for her sins. She was also sick last week. And then yesterday she called me for tween anecdotes for an article she is writing. Ha! she ended up listening to an almost certainly feverish me babble on about Kyle for 30+ minutes. I have no recollection of what I said to her. More ramblings of a lunatic. She should have been recording that shit. Chopped it up, added some random images and a funky electronic dub, uploaded to YouTube, and become an instant internet phenomenon. Oh well, maybe next time she’ll be ready for me.

Warning. Abrupt change in subject.

I have been collecting images of Erin in all her hats. Girl likes to wear hats! And if Chris wants to point his genetic blaming finger at me for that one, well I’ll take it. Hats are cool. Use to wear them all the time myself. Still have a couple funky hats, but most are of the practical and warm variety now. Hmm, will have to remedy that situation at some point. More funky hats for the people! Anyway, Erin loves to wear random hats around the house. She’s also obsessed with her bike helmet. Shocking. This hat was pilfered off a stuffed dog that Kyle gave her. It always cracks us up when she wears it. She looks like a stoned snow-boarder, or one of the McKenzie Brothers.

“Beauty Clark!”

“Take off, eh!”

And that’s all I’ve got for ya today. You too can blame Julie. Or Sharon. Sharon has not yet paid for all the suffering she’s causing me. I’ll tell you more about that tomorrow. Or as soon as Julie’s pox removal cream starts working. The nice man on the TV said the results were guaranteed or I’d get my money back less shipping and handling. That’s a good deal right?