Goodbyes ...

Ryan left this afternoon to head back to Austin and his apartment. He was home for over a month and I was sort of getting used to the mess - I just might miss the guy ...

Gary left a few minutes ago to go camping with the scouts. Fifty degrees and raining! Fun times ahead for him.

And I find myself in a familiar position ... roaming this big old house alone. It is amazing how quickly I revert back to my formula to ward off the loneliness and the quiet.

Photoshop.

I predict that I have approximately 10 inches of reading in store for me. That would be if you stacked the books one on top of another the depth would be 10 inches, not just 1o inches of text ...

Photoshop is a very powerful tool, but also very complicated. I don't aspire to even grasp a quarter of all it does, but a minimal working knowledge would be nice. For instance - here is a sheet of Photoshop CS4 shortcuts ... PAGE ONE OF FOUR:

So reading it is. I discovered in my 3" books very first few pages something I have been dying to do - have a two page Photoshop ... and it was so simple I actually slapped myself on the forehead.

And of course, there is the playing. Watching tutorials on how to do fun things with your photos. Like this 'painting':

Looks like one of those favorites I had in a few posts back, but look closer:

Seriously - how cool is that?

It is just a filter that you can download called Pixel Bender and I think I want to use it on a bunch of my photos and hang them on my walls - there is something soothing about it for me.

And soothing I need.

More goodbyes in store next week.

Gary leaves for a business trip of a week and a half on Monday - with an itinerary I don't have yet but Istanbul, Turkey and Iraq are on it.

Yeah.

I don't want him to go and there is a 50% chance it won't happen ... so I am keeping my fingers crossed.

That is Monday.

Wednesday UPS is coming to my house and picking up my computer. This morning it had a little hiccup, then a cough, then it barfed and spewed data, destroyed things, things breaking left and right - so all in all - today was not the best day. So will be saying goodbye to my Super Duper Pimped out Computer - and will actually be glad to see it go ....



... not so happy about having to start all over again ...