There was a combination of some sunlight and my brain remembering to take a photo of my latest finished painting today, so finally I can show you what the colors really look like. Still quite a bit of detail missing in the photo. Going to have to work out some way to take good photos of paintings without much hassle.

Click the pic for a larger view. (160kb)

Didn’t everyone have a mom who insisted you sit up straight … good posture and all that? I did. All of my friends did too. I always hated that, because sitting up really straight has never been comfortable to me. No, I didn’t get used to it, and no, it didn’t get better when my muscles got stronger (presumably from all that sitting up straight). I gave up sitting up straight as soon as I was able. My neck and back have never hated me for it.

While I normally don’t jump all over every medical or science study that comes out and get all “rah rah” about it, this one I have to get a little excited about:

Your mother probably told you, as her mother told her: sit up straight. Whether at table, in class or at work we have always been told that sitting stiff-backed and upright is good for our bones, our posture, our digestion, our alertness and our general air of looking as if we are plugged into the world.

Now research suggests that we would be far better off slouching and slumping.

The perfect angle? 135 degrees … as represented by the green line on the protractor below:

Vindicated at last. I will now return to my usual slouching position on the couch … right after I email this news story to my mother.

So my cranky whining won’t be at the top of my web site until I get around to making another post (may be a while), here’s a cute photo of Ronin I found today.

I finally got up off my butt and did some housework. My day was spent editing photographs of kittens, laying out that new book (more of a booklet, really), burning CD’s, and refereeing kitten fights. It was not a good kitten day. Fur literally flew, and I ended up having to sequester Ronin in the bedroom for a few hours.

Oh, and I talked to the vet’s assistant about their next appointment and whether or not they are going to de-sex them this time. The answer? We’ll see if they are ready. THEY ARE READY, and I AM READY! Ronin’s aggression level is off the scale, and his “interest” in Myu’s girly bits is getting worse. One of them is getting snipped early next week, or we go elsewhere. Period. I’m also curious to see whether or not she gives them their rabies shots this visit. They are also old enough for that. I swear it seems like she just keeps putting things off so I have to come in again and again … thus earning her more money on office visits. Yes, my dissatisfaction is growing. I’d just like to make it through the shots and the de-sexing with her. Then I can take my dear sweet time deciding whether or not to go back. I don’t have the time, nor do I feel like, looking for a new vet right this minute, and I am fairly certain she’s the best in town with cats … seeing as that’s all she studied. I guess we wait and see now how the visit on Saturday goes.

I made a stew with the last of the turkey tonight. Nothing fancy … the last of the turkey, the last of the gravy, the last of the green beans, and some water. I’m going to serve it with the last bits of the dressing on top with some cheese. I am officially sick of eating turkey. It’s not really the last of the turkey. There’s still enough in the freezer to make a nice turkey salad or some sandwiches … when I am ready to eat turkey again.

Lin must have decided to go out and see friends after work, so I am going to slop some turkey stew in a bowl, settle on the couch, and watch Heroes. Then I might go straight to bed and miss The Daily Show and Colbert Report (may be reruns anyway). I have a headache, I’m tired, and I am cranky. Sleep sounds like a good idea.

Oh dammit. I just remembered I started doing laundry. I guess sleep will have to wait a little while longer.

I am back to the drawing board on my iPhoto created book. Somehow I had added extra pages, and thus extra expense. I tried to trim it down, but I wasn’t as happy with it without the silly text pages. Sooooo … now I am going to put together an 8″x6″ book and only get one. I can squeeze a lot more photos into it, choose from a wider variety of themes, and I can put the text on the same page as the photos. I’m not perfectly thrilled with having to start over (and edit yet more photos), but once I am done … it’s going to be so cool! I can tell I am going to be happier with the larger book, but now I have to find the time to edit more photos and do the work on it. Always something, yes?

The kittens, by the way, are being total monsters again today. As I type this, Myu is insisting she should be able to drink out of my mug-o-water, and Ronin is attempting, for the ninth time this morning, to break into the furnace. I better go play with them and wear them out so I can get something done around here. Really, they are in full-on crazy monster mode today!

My internet is being flaky today. So is the electricity in my house. I suspect the two are related and neither are being caused by anything in our house. We’ve had it all checked. This happens every time it threatens to rain as it is today. Both Time Warner and the electric company have been informed so many times the last three years, and yet … here I sit with flaky internet and electricity that keeps blinking off and on. Color me annoyed.

All I want to do is finish downloading a few printable scrapbooking things to top off a CD I want to burn, and then the internet can be as flaky as it wants to be, because I have non-internet things to do today … like housework and a new painting and maybe some collage work. These are the things I like to do on grey and gloomy days. Well, not the housework, but that has to get done every day.

Or maybe I’ll go back to bed for a while. The kittens, overjoyed that Lin and I were both in bed sleeping at the same time and that our household has returned to its normal schedule, were on sheet sucking overload last night. It’s really hard to sleep with two kittens sucking on sheets right by your head. Cute? Yes. Loud and bothersome in the middle of the night? Hell yes. There’s no dissuading them when they get it into their heads they want to suck on something. I kept moving them to the foot of the bed or tossing them on the floor, and within seconds, there they were again … suck, suck, suck. Let’s not even talk about the “joy” of kitten-soaked sheet hems on warm human skin in the middle of a chilly night. Ugh. Are they ever going to outgrow this?!

I guess since my internet is still being flaky, I’ll try to post this and go find something else to do. I wanted to get that last CD burnt this morning so all my scrapbooking stuff would be off my computer, but it looks like that will have to wait until later.

For those into scrapbooking or digital scrapbooking, ComputerScrapbook.com is offering one of their full sets of elements, Fall Frolic, with the papers, elements and other goodies, for download until December 2nd: Free Digital Scrapbooking Downloads. There are also a few free samplers on that page for download. Get ‘em while you can!

I love the Fall Frolic set. Not that I need any more things to print and cut out and glue together, but you can never really have too many, can you? Now all I have to do is start printing some out and actually making the scrapbooks I have in my head a reality.

Instead of sleeping as I should be, seeing as I haven’t gotten much sleep the last few days and could REALLY use some, I started fussing around with my photographs and creating a book in iPhoto. The subject of the book? The kittens, of course!

When I get it just the way I want it, I’m going to order the set of three small softback mini-books. I think I am almost happy with it, though I’d like to get one good “family photo” with both of the humans and both of the kittens all in the same shot and looking good.

If you’d like to see what I have done so far, you can download this PDF file. Warning: It’s 6.8 MB, but if you love photos of cute kittens, it MIGHT be worth the wait.

I’ve been sitting here organizing my photos in iPhoto. Now I am annoyed.

knew that iPhoto saved modified versions of files I modified within iPhoto into a new folder and also kept the original as well (in case I wanted to revert back). Since iPhoto doesn’t meet all my image modifying needs, I got Photoshop Elements (older version) and started opening photos from within iPhoto in this external editor to size and crop them for posting or emailing without saving them back to iPhoto. I thought this would stop iPhoto from making a copy of it in the Modified Folder. I just discovered it doesn’t. As soon as I open a photo in the external editor from iPhoto, it copies it to the Modified Folder, no matter if I later save the modified version or not. So now I have duplicates of a bunch of photos sitting on my hard drive taking up space. This displeases me.

My intention was to have iPhoto be the place I kept all my original photos, without any corrections, resizing or rotation, and I certainly don’t need two copies of the same photo in two different folders, nor do I want to save the modifications I make (making them smaller) for use on the web. I just want iPhoto to store my originals and use it to organize them.

My first thought was to just open them from Elements without bothering with iPhoto. That works great for when I want to make a small version to send to someone or post here, and I guess that’s what I’ll do in those cases. But … I’d also like to rotate all my originals properly, without doing anything else to them. I don’t want copies of all of them in two places on my hard drive, one rotated and one not. My thought was to open them in Elements, change the original, and save it back into the iPhoto library. Works great, except for one thing … the thumbnail of the photo in iPhoto shows the old, non-rotated version.

So, some questions for my iPhoto/Mac using buddies out there:

1. Is there no way to stop iPhoto from making duplicates when I use an external editor and don’t save my changes?
2. Is there any way to update the thumbnails to show the actual image I have in my iPhoto library (after I have edited it without messing with iPhoto and saved over the original)? How to rebuild either the database or thumbnails in iPhoto. I don’t know what the options mean … small thumbnails or all thumbnails, so I did one first, it made no difference. I did both the next time, and that fixed the problem.
3. How the hell do I get rid of all the duplicates that already exist and regain my lost hard drive space?
4. Should I just give up on iPhoto and try something else? What else is there to try (as in free)?

In an ideal world, I would be able to browse my iPhoto library folders with Elements, make whatever changes I like to the images within, save them over the originals, and have the changes show in the thumbnails in iPhoto. Actually, in an ideal world, iPhoto wouldn’t make copies of every damn photo and save both versions, but apparently, this isn’t an ideal world.

I have to go feed the husband. Then more Google research to see if I can answer any of my own questions. I hadn’t had any luck yet, which is why I decided to toss this out there.

I don’t care what living or dead relatives I insult with the statement that follows, but … today’s Thanksgiving Day Feast was the absolute best I have ever eaten, and I only had to spend an hour in the kitchen getting everything heated to the proper temperature and the table set. I think it’s perfectly safe to say, for as long as we can afford to do so, there will never be an actual turkey roasted in this house. Not that I think I couldn’t do as well, with some practice, but there is no way my kitchen could have produced this abundance of food at this quality without leaving me a frazzled, freaked-out mess and leaving the kitchen so hot the only person who would be fit to sit at the table to eat would be Satan himself. Just juggling getting these dishes into the oven at the right times so they’d all be the right temperature at the same moment left me with food stacked everywhere available, and having the oven on for only an hour forced us to turn on the air conditioning and ceiling fans so humans could survive the heat. It was, on the whole, the best thing ever that I was too sick to cook. It think it saved Thanksgiving.

What was I thankful for today? My nuclear family unit was together without argument, the cats and dog didn’t kill each other on sight, and we were financially able to have someone else do the cooking.

Yes, in a surprising turn of events, no fur flew today among humans or animals. The cats set about hissing the moment Mom and the dog entered the house, but they quickly realized the walking mop couldn’t reach them on their usual perches, so they went back to napping quickly enough. Throughout the day the Terrible Two and Pixie approached one another to investigate. Luckily Pixie was wise enough not to chase them or bark at them, and they were wary enough not to do anything too stupid. By late afternoon, Myu was sleeping on one end of the couch while Pixie slept at the other, but Ronin was still keeping his distance. By evening, Ronin was sitting on my lap while the dog was sitting on Mom’s lap right beside me. I wouldn’t call them friends or playmates, but there seems to be understanding that no one is going to hurt anyone else … or there’d be hell to pay. Besides, the cats know the walking mop can’t jump like they can (or at all really, being a fat and old walking mop), so they pretty much went about their usual day … aside from stealing all the dog’s food and spilling her water bowl (my bad, should have known they’d get into it) and occasionally being grumpy because they wanted to be on the couch with us but that “thing” was there hogging it. There were even a few nose touches and almost playful movements. At least after the initial hissing fit, there wasn’t any apparent signs of impending carnage.

Phew. I had a few nightmares about my cats maiming my mom’s dog or my mom’s dog maiming my cats. I wouldn’t leave them alone together in the house (tomorrow, the dog stays in the bedroom while we are gone), but when we are here, they seem willing enough to behave well with each other. I am so relieved.

I even got to see the Macy’s Parade this morning! I can’t remember the last time I got to watch it, always being on the road somewhere when it’s on. I probably haven’t gotten to sit down and enjoy it since I was a kid. That was fun. Then we watched a dog show. I’m not especially fond of dog shows, but there wasn’t much else on, and mom loves them, so that’s what we watched while we gossiped (and Lin hid in the den). Why so the poofy poodles always seem to be the big winners? Of all the dog breeds on the planet, the one I really can’t stand are those overly-dressed poodles. Gads, who thought it was a good idea to shave a dog like that?! It’s almost grotesque!

Mom’s already in bed asleep. Lin’s passed out on the couch. The kittens have dozed off somewhere after having a little fit about not being able to get into the bedroom. I should toddle off to bed myself soon. Mom likes to get up REALLY early, and since we are both feeling much better after having gorged ourselves on turkey and all the fixings all day, she’s looking forward to a full day of … shopping.

I have never been shopping on Black Friday. Having worked so many years in retail, I know what a misery it is for the people working, and I know what total morons the people shopping can (and will) be. But Mom wants to go shopping (window shopping mostly), so that’s what we will do until we drop from fatigue. So far, Big Lots, Hobby Lobby, and IKEA are on the list, but I am certain the list will grow as the day progresses. I’m hoping to keep it under eight hours, but the woman is a steam engine when she’s shopping, so if you never hear from me again, just assume we are still shopping somewhere. Yup, I better get some sleep. Tomorrow is going to be a LONG day, but I think it’ll be a fun one too.

Today was the best Thanksgiving, possibly ever in my life. Finally. A holiday to remember fondly.