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Tag Archives: I made this
Wonderin’ If I’ll Sleep
What was going on last night? I woke up at 1am, completely wide awake. I flopped around a little bit. Bob was too asleep to be entertaining. I was so hopelessly awake I finally got up and fiddled on the computer and then read a book. At 3:30am I reasoned I must be tired by now and went back to bed and flopped around for another hour. I woke up at 7am. I don’t understand how I can be so wide awake in the middle of the night.
This morning I finally got around to pinning some pants I need to hem. I always hem my pants a little too short. I don’t do it on purpose and each time I remind myself: don’t hem them too short. Then I hem them and wear a few times and launder and notice, huh, these are kinda short. I’m sure I’ve been the subject of scorn and ridicule numerous times from the Properly Hemmed Pants Patrol.
The other thing is I have super short legs so if I end up with regulars there is tons of fabric in the length and I never cut it. I just fold it all up. I have giant hems in some of my pants.
The pants I worked on this morning must have been made for circus people who wear stilts (and wear dry clean only work slacks for their performances). If I don’t trim it the hem will be close to 7 inches. I’m tempted to leave it but I think I’ll trim this pair. But first I have to make sure they aren’t too short.
Posted in doing it wrong, sleepless in Vancouver
Tagged fukoladola, I made this, killing time
1 Comment
Hamburg Hauptbahnhof
This is one of those “make it look like a miniature” tutorials. But it’s kind-of a cheat because the photo looked like a miniature before I did my magic.
Turns Out This Tutorial Has A Page 2
I’ve been repeating the tutorials a bunch of times to help me learn better. Most of the time I understand how to do the steps but I’m not always sure what each step accomplishes.
I did this tutorial three times before I realized there’s a page 2. I still haven’t done page 2.
This one gets me practice with the pen tool. Luckily I remembered pretty quick because pen tool is a pain to learn. The hard part, which I’ve written about before, is that I mouse right-handed. I would love to go back in time and figure out why I did that. But after 20 years, I can’t mouse with my left hand.
I got the tablet out and tried to just use my left hand but it was hopeless. So I’m currently doing this crazy two-handed thing where I draw left-handed on the tablet but do all other clicking with my right hand.
If I get good at it there might be a documentary about me some day.
Bottles of Pills
I’ve never been a diehard vitamin taker but I’ve been a fairly regular vitamin taker. Several days a week I’d knock back a multivitamin and mineral and a vitamin C the size of school bus plus a few other nutrients in a pill. Some article would tell me how one vitamin would make me age backwards and another would reduce moodiness and combination of a bunch would help me remember things that happened before 1975.
Then I read an article that said that after tons of studies, scientists determined that vitamins don’t do anything.
So I stopped taking vitamins. Instantly. Just like that.
I also quit making a point to eat breakfast when I read an article that said breakfast is not the most important meal of the day.
When I had the idea for this post I’m not sure where I wanted to go with it. Mostly I think it’s funny that I will alter my behavior after simply reading an article.
But then I’ve read lots of health-related articles that I completely ignored. I guess I listened to these two because I never noticed a measurable benefit from vitamin taking or eating breakfast. In fact, a lot of classic breakfast foods make me sleepy.
I have no concluding sentence.
See A Little Light
Here’s today’s Photoshop tutorial, before and after. It’s supposed to be a cool retro effect. I’d link to the original tutorial except the guy who wrote it might find his way here and then brain himself thinking that he wrote a poor tutorial or else lock up his site so that color-blind doofs like me don’t sully the world with their attempts at a cool retro effect. But I think if I practice it another 100 times I might get better.
For the past week I’ve been looking forward to reporting that I slept through the night except that it still hasn’t happened. The only night this month I slept through the night was the night I returned from San Diego and that barely counts because I was so sleep deprived I could hardly stand upright.
At least the coughing isn’t waking me up 3-4 times per night.
I’m at about 98% now. I still cough now and then and there’s a slug of extra phlegm in the system but I’m off the cough drops. I’m exercising. I’m not going through 57 tissues an hour. No one is afraid to sit next to me on the bus.
When I got home tonight I made a pie. For tonight. Because I can.
I only need one crust for my pumpkin pie tomorrow and my recipe makes enough for two crusts. Since my current pie crust recipe is working for me and I’m afraid to mess with it, I decided, what the hell, I’ll make an extra pie. And I randomly decided on cherry while I was at the market. I bought a can of dark cherries and a can of tart cherries. I put bunch of orange zest in. I just took it out of the oven and it looks great.
No Fiber Diet
Without giving all the gory details, I will mention that my sweetheart has to do a little medical procedure and has been on a restricted diet. For two days he couldn’t have anything with fiber and since he loves meat, sauce, white rice and noodles, this was only a minimal hardship. I baked a loaf of regular old sandwich bread from Cooks Illustrated. Look how pretty it turned out. Tasted good, too.
Today he has to fast. I’ve known this man for 12 years and I’ve NEVER seen him go 24 hours without solid food. Pray for us. He was already grouchy this morning. He went to a movie about Joe Strummer and hopefully he has a movie to watch when he comes home. Or I think he was going to stop by his office and clear a few things off his desk. Keep him occupied until bed time.
Today was supposed to be my lazy day and I seem to be chasing my tail. I’m going to have to re-read that thing about big rocks first and then figure out what my big rocks are.
If it’s not raining I’m going to go do a bit of raking. You rarely want to wish for rain in this part of the world but since I have a hard time sitting around in the house when it’s nice outside, I’ve been kind of hoping it would get started.
I’m going to put on my work clothes and see if I can get it to start.
The Roaming Pear Pie of Vancovuer
Here’s the pear pie I made last weekend visiting Vermont. Pears aren’t like apples. They like to roam.
CREEM LETTER TO THE EDITOR #1
CREEM is the only magazine to ever print letters to the editor worth reading. They were hilarious and came in two categories. Irate letters from people who didn’t get the magazine (more on this in a future post) and loopy letters from crazy people. I had two published.
The first one was published in the February ’87 issue with David Byrne on the cover.
Mantle of Shame Descendeth Again!
What's the problem? One issue he is worthy of your most generous accolades, the next month, Alpo. I'm talking about a veritable icon of metal music and rock hero of our time, David Lee Roth. OK, so Christgau gave him a B+. Altman's impertinent commentary on the "Yankee Rose" video--wardrobe stolen from Stryper? Please! Gene Simmons might note the influence, but I say it's just coincidence. C'mon Billy, the guy has 400 pairs of tights. Quit nit-picking.
And what is Rick Johnson's problem? I'm all for employing the brain-damaged, but let them do something harmless--like host Wheel of Fortune. And the lousiest album he's heard in years? And he backs up this grandiose allegation by grumbling about lawn chairs and commemorative spoons. Just who pays this guy anyway? The album is great and the musicians are the best and Rick-John sucks! And not to change the subject, but what happened to Def Leppard? I don't want to be unsympathetic, but I think they've gotten enough mileage out of the ol' Rick Allen's arm excuse. They should call their next album Who? or, better yet, Who Cares? I'm sick of waiting for this mythical album. Entire civilizations have been known to rise, fall and disintegrate into dozens of solo projects in the time it's taken those bozos with their crummy record.
---
I wrote “veritable rock icon” — can you believe it? I loathe the word “vertiable” – it stinks of “too lazy to find a good word.”
They supplied the title. The letter is in response to Roth’s Eat ‘Em and Smile that I did buy but never listened to a whole lot. It wasn’t such a great album. I was going to include a link to his official website but it’s lame so don’t bother. You can see I’m not so loyal to Dave anymore. But I was fanatical on everything Van Halen and DLR back in the day.
A lot of this letter is in-jokes that only a person who read and re-read the magazine (or edited it) would get. I’d explain them to you but I can’t remember.
The Def Leppard thing has to do with the endless wait after Pyromania, which came out in 1983 and I kid you not, I probably heard that record 2000 times. I listened to it once a day for over a year. Hysteria came out in August of 1987 and promted another letter to CREEM which I will find and post later but now I’m hideously late and must get my overfed Thanksgiving ass on the move.
