my new toy...

a Bamboo Pad. Awesomely fun. A complete time waster, for sure.

Zach needed it for a project for his English class, but doesn't think he will have much use or time to use it, so it's mine. And Awesome. Last night I was ready to fall asleep at oh, 7 pm, but didn't actually go to bed until after 11 because Tess and I were messing around with it.

Because you can do stuff like this with it. The program I used is Corel Painter Essential 3. There are a ton of settings and brushes and stuff that I haven't even looked at yet....But I did discover that at the moment I cannot recreate the brush strokes that give the grass texture in the work above. Of course. Because I really like the texture of the grasses.

Some stupid texture or design or effect that I don't want to use, I will recreate endlessly and accidentally. But the perfect texture to suggest grass, lucky one-time accident.

You can even upload a photo and create watercolors and stuff outta them. The hardest part is finding time to do all this stuff. As usual.

Since it was rather pricey, it's gonna be my birthday present, I think. No IPod Touch this year. Good thing my old first generation Nano still works...

Instead I got this new fabulous item for Christmas.
It's really nice to have a reliable source of espresso again. My old red beast is adorable,
but has become increasingly unsteady and unreliable.
Never a good thing when you rely on it for creamy goodness of the coffee variety. Old Red still made espresso, but the pump for the steamer seems to be kaput. Espresso without hot steamy milk is just wrong and a waste of caffeine.

Incidentally, that white box next to the source of all things espresso is my Happy Light.

Seems appropriate. My morning psuedo-sunlight and my source of happy caffeine, snuggled up together on the counter.

I turn it on in the morning and it blasts my retinas with the white hot light of a thousand fluorescent tubes. To make my brain think that I do not in fact live so far north that polar bears go "damn. The North Pole must be right around here somewhere."

Fortunately for my retinas, I have been waking up so late lately that the sun is already up, thus negating the need to sear said retinas with psuedo-sunlight. Or it's a day like today, when the sky was completely cloudless and bright sunshine shone down on us for all five and a half hours of daylight. That does mean it was zero degrees out. Step outside and your nose hairs freeze within 37 seconds, but it looks good from inside, especially if you are standing directly on the heater vent. Sunshine and cloudless skies and cold, or cloudy gray and slightly warmer. I go for the sunshine every time. We have lots of heater vents, and the Army pays our utilities.