Froggy, Froggy on the wall...

Just a quick post, mostly to share a cool photo I took today. We had lunch at Rosa's Café, a very colorfully decorated Mexican restaurant, while we were out running errands. In the middle of one wall, there were four brightly painted frogs, each probably about 3-feet wide? They're very cool and I love them. Anyway, this is a shot of two of them.

Weehuudalee hoober noobit

My hands are blue. I forgot to put gloves on when I was rinsing the dye out of the second backdrop. The first one turned out a bee-yoo-tiful brown. The second is very blue. Much brighter than I thought it would be. I'll assess it after it dries, but I may have to bleach it a bit.

This morning I grabbed my friend Stephanie and her 21-month-old daughter and we drove to Frisco to IKEA, where I bought the fabric to dye. Stopped at Cowboy Studio Lighting on our way (in Dallas). After school, Sunshine and I headed to Walmart and Hobby Lobby to get the RIT, and got back to Bookman's school just in time to retrieve him before heading home.

I would describe how utterly exhausted I am, but being that David just dragged in from work minutes ago (nearly 11pm) all muddy and sore, I'll keep my measly tiredness to myself.

I will, however, tell you that it was determined this morning that 'Weehuudalee hoober noobit' is much more fun to say than 'Weehuudalee hoo ha.' (In case you ever wondered.)

Oh Canada

We're working on a Canada project. She had to choose and research a country that interested her. I suggested Germany, or Italy, or Great Britain. Nope. Canada, eh. Had to look up the word 'patriated', since I'd never heard it before (Canada's constitution was patriated from the United Kingdom in 1982 *nodding sagely*).

Received those settlement documents today (woohoo!). Only had to check the mailbox six times. Celebrated by going out to Peter Piper Pizza for the PTA fundraiser night. The kids spent 40 tokens, cashed in tickets and chose prizes with no input from me--I sat and chatted with other PTA moms. :)

8:41 and David just got home. Going to visit with him....

Mr. Postman, bring to me...

I'm expecting some documents via mail from the insurance company, so I've been sitting here listening for the mailman while reading through some Veteran's Day articles and working on various Photoshop projects. Went out to check the mailbox twice in the last two hours. Was headed out a third time, but eventually made the connection in my brain between 'Veterans Day' to 'no mail service'. *rolling my eyes at myself* Dangit! I want the mail!

One of the photoshop projects I've been working on is beefing up the portfolio on my website. So I'm sifting through all kinds of old photos (the kind printed from 'film'--remember that? Yeah... *sigh* mem-ries), looking for anything that might be considered 'good.' Found these two and scanned them, then muted the colors a bit (that's the photoshop part). Taken the same day at a park in Altus. Such cuties!

Ooh look, a penny!

--Thirty minutes on the elliptical machine, 10 minutes on the nautilus machines, and 30 minutes on the recumbent bike. Worked out with Mom tonight and I'm beat.

--I was invited to visit a photography studio in Euless next week to kibitz with the owner and shoot some portraits of a willing victim. Just need to find said willing victim.

--Am doing some preliminary logo work for a newly-established non-profit organization dedicated to kids with congenital heart defects, like my Sunshine. Check out the website here: http://www.blessherheart.org. Very sad story under 'Our Story.'

--Spent a good amount of time on hold with JPS today, but have the info I need to hopefully negotiate my bill down a few thousand dollars. Will fax that off tomorrow.

--Got absolutely no laundry done today. (I know you were wondering...)

Almost behind me

Three milestones today:
1) I sent off the signature page for my part of the accident settlement.
2) The lawsuit was filed for David's part of the settlement.
3) I have a brand new shiny Tax ID number for my brand new shiny photography business.

So we spent some money to retain the lawyer, but will hopefully have a check in our hands by the end of the week. It's not nearly as much as I'd hoped I could get. Not nearly enough to cover the stuff I still go through on a daily basis as a direct result of this whole thing. But enough to just let it go. Put it behind me, pay the medical bills, and move on.

I suspect the accident that happened 17 years ago today may have a lot to do with why the accident that happened two years ago Wednesday affected me the way it has. The brain works in weird weird ways.

Designer Shirts :)

Every year, the PTA purchases class shirts for the 6th graders--not sure why exactly, it's just a tradition that's been upheld since before I got there. We discovered last year that it's a lot cheaper to design and have them printed ourselves than to use a company that specifically caters to school shirts--they cost the PTA less than half as much, actually. Since I'm able, I offered to submit a design again for this year's shirts. This is what I've been working on:


Photoshop is my program of choice, but I did this entirely in Illustrator, using another design as inspiration. This may be the most complex thing I've ever done from scratch in Illustrator. It's a little messy as far as construction, but I'm quite pleased with how it turned out, and I REALLY hope the other Board members love it. I'd love to see this on a t-shirt and say, "Hey, I did that!"

Settlement

We talked with the lawyer yesterday, and he kind of creeped me out a little. He seemed to dismiss David entirely, and really just rubbed us the wrong way. However, it's amazing how a phone call from an attorney's office will light a fire under a claims rep's booty. I talked to the rep at Farmers five or six times yesterday afternoon, negotiating a settlement amount that I could live with. It's not nearly what I asked for, but putting it behind me is much more valuable at this point. Hopefully we'll be able to get the release language worked out so I can sign and fax the forms on Monday.

David is deciding. Yesterday he was pretty intent on pursuing a lawsuit. Today he's considering settling. We need the money, but if he settles, he won't get even half of what he thinks is fair. So we'll see.

Anxiety

I'm going with David to the appointment with the lawyer today, so this morning I'm gathering up files, printing off copies of the accident report and burning photos to disc. Feeling lightheaded and nauseated already, so this is probably going to be a long day.

I really like to pretend nothing ever happened. It's much easier to remember only when I can't squash it down, like when I'm the last person in line at a stoplight, or worse, the last person in line in stopped traffic. And just go ahead and hand me the kleenex and look up the number for my 'counselor' if I'm the last person in line in stopped traffic on a bridge... It's been almost two years, and it still very much affects my life. Dammit.

Funky

Feeling kinda funky, not sick really. Just... Funky.

Tomorrow David meets with a lawyer about a possible lawsuit related to the 2007 accident. It would need to be filed before Wednesday if it can even happen. I'm thinking I need to attend this meeting, too, but David was kinda non-committal.

Not sure what's going on with the other guy's insurance. We were supposed to have another offer early last week, and have received no word. They're probably dragging their feet, hoping we won't file a lawsuit and they can offer whatever they want.

Update forthcoming...

I'm not a guy, either.

I think the check-out girls at Kroger this evening thought I was a guy. And possibly a cute guy? If so, should I be flattered? First, I'm pretty sure my $50 worth of groceries didn't need two extra girls to bag them. Second, as I was unloading my cart, they were talking rather loudly in odd, breathy voices between giggles about how very long ago they'd been seventeen (two years for one, three years for the other two). Third.... well, there is no third thing. It was just very odd.

Okay, I was wearing a Cowboy's ball cap over my bad-hair-day short hair, jeans, sneakers, and a hooded sweatshirt jacket. And no makeup. My decidedly diminutive bosom doesn't help, either. But I was wearing one-inch hoop earrings! Do guys wear earrings that big?

I just know they were screeching to each other as soon as I was out of earshot: "OMG! OMG! I totally thought that lady was a guy, didn't you?"

I'm pretty sure I couldn't care less...

I do not have a luggage fixation! I don't think. Do I?

Bookman isn't feeling well this evening, but I suspect it has more to do with the amount of homework he's put off until the last minute than with an actual bug. Gave him some echinacea and some tylenol for his sore throat, and told him to either go to bed (as in turn out the light and sleep) or get back to work. He's back to work.

In other news, apparently someone in Phoenix with a name remarkably similar to mine has a luggage fixation. Here's the story on CNN. I stumbled across the story on a Phoenix news website earlier today while looking at my site stats, which showed that several people arrived at my website by plugging her name into google and yahoo. While I'm glad to have the traffic at my site, I do hope her name doesn't tarnish mine.

And in a bit of totally unrelated news: I need to lay off the aspartame in diet sodas. It's been linked to memory loss, and I kind of scared myself today with a memory-lapse incident. I'll spare you the details, but I seriously thought I might be losing it. I'll blame the aspartame for now, and hope the short-term memory improves!

Autobiographer's Block

I spent much of the day today trying to come up with a short biography for my photography blog. One would think writing about the one person I know best would be relatively easy. But how do you simmer down all the pertinent information about yourself into four or five sentences? I ended up not posting one, but what was I gonna say? "I'm a geek and proud of it, grew up all over the world. I love nearly every sort of artistic pursuit and am even good at a few: photography, graphic design, painting, papercraft. I'm not good at interpretive dance."

Actually, that's not half bad.

NaBloPoMo and tall tales

November is National Blog Posting Month, and I'm going to take a stab at the goal of posting at least once a day for 30 days--on TWO different blogs. Check out the November 1st postings on Shutter Muse for my other NaBloPoMo project :)

My mother asked me today, "What did you do to your neck?" I'd kind of forgotten about it, because I um... sort of... um... injured... my neck at the base of my throat on Friday morning. David says it looks like I clotheslined myself, which is a much better explanation that what actually happened. Can't you see it? Maybe I was chasing after ChiChi to save her from the jaws of a rabid dog that had somehow gotten into our yard, and perhaps was so focused on her that I didn't see the clothesline, but didn't let it stop me. It could be that I hit the clothesline so hard and kept running that it snapped off, leaving a bright red welt on my neck.

What. It could totally have happened like that.

Or maybe--MAYBE I was in line at the convenience store when I saw the guy ahead of me pull out a gun! So perhaps I tackled him, making him hit his head on the counter and knocking him out, but the gun discharged and the bullet grazed my neck!

Maybe that one's a little far fetched, but still completely feasible! Right?

Right?

Okay, okay... *sigh* The truth is... I um... I.... I burned my neck baking muffins. Okay? Geez!

I was in a hurry. David was ready to walk out the door, and I was trying to get the muffins out of the oven and flipped onto a plate so he could scoop some up with a paper towel and take them with for breakfast. But my hands were in the wrong position for flipping. So I tried to reposition my hands without losing my grip on the potholders. Which I accomplished successfully. I did NOT lose my grip on the potholders.

I did, however, lose my grip on the pan, and it slid into my neck.

There, are you happy now? Surely I'm not the only person who has ever burned her neck whilst baking muffins.

;)

Happy Last Day of October!

That's the only significance of today, right?

Last night was the yearly Family Fun Night (aka 'Carnival') at Sunshine's school. This is our last year there, so I purposefully didn't take as active a role as I normally would... or that was the plan, anyway. I'd only signed up to do some decorations and to work in the silent auction for an hour.

BUT... then the silent auction coordinator got swine flu. No, I did not volunteer to take it over (aren't you proud of me?). But on Thursday morning when the power went out, I went in to the school a day earlier than planned to get some decorations made and see how else I could help.

Yeeeah. That whole 'no real active role' notion? Overcome by marker fumes, apparently, as I wrote out 60+ bid forms and estimated the value of the donated auction items. Yesterday I did manage to get some decorations made and hung up before diving back into auction stuff. I was at the school from 8:30 am to after 10:00 pm, except for two fairly brief stops at home to potty the dogs.

Needless to say, I was utterly exhausted by the time I got home last night. Stiff and sore from being on my feet for sixteen straight hours, brain-dead, but still very caffeinated. Got into my jammies and drooled on my keyboard while I surfed facebook like a zombie. Couldn't even think about sleep until after midnight.

Was still very tired and creaky at seven this morning, so stayed in my pajamas nearly all day. Does it say anything to how exhausted I was, that around 2:00 pm I noticed for the first time that I'd put my pajama bottoms on backwards last night, and it took another hour or so to work up the energy to do anything about it?

Bookman also wore himself out by spending quite a bit of time inside the dragon mascot outfit. He did a great job, letting kids hug him, giving high-fives, posing for pictures. Inside a mascot outfit, he's free to use those *ahem* amazing dance moves...

On a related note (if I may bore you with just a smidge more auction chatter), I donated a portrait session, 11x14 print, and be-yooo-tiful 11x14 frame to the silent auction. I put a minimum bid of $30 on it because that's how much the whole gift cost me in actual dollars (I got the frame for half price), and if it were to 'sell' for less than that, I'd just as well give the money directly to the PTA. At the right is a picture of my item alongside other auction items.

Get this: TOTAL STRANGERS bid on it. People I do not know! How cool is that? It ended up selling for only $20 less than the total estimated value, which for a PTA silent auction is really good! Most things go for about half their estimated value, so I'm kinda grinning about that. The person who eventually won it is a fellow PTA Board member, which is cool. I'm already familiar with her kiddos, so photographing them will be relatively easy.

Off to watch Year One with the family!

Pazow!

So in addition to getting my new website up and running, I've been working on another project--a collaboration on the illustration of a childrens' book about battling cancer. My friend Guerin did the character sketches, and I'm helping take those sketches from paper to PAZOW! My first transformation was a Chemo Dragon, representative of chemotherapy drugs. The first pic below is Guerin's drawing as he sent it to me (he sent it bigger, of course):



Now here's a small version of my interpretation:
Pretty cool, huh? The book hasn't been submitted to any publisher yet, and won't be until we get most/all the illustrations done, so it'll be a while before you can look for it in your local book store, but it's kinda fun. It's coloring book to the nth power. :)

New website live!

I've been volunteering/donating my portraiture skills to friends, family, and PTA for the past few years. Finally enough people asked, "Why aren't you making money for this?", that I decided maybe I should give it a try.

For about three years, my web site at staceylking.com has been more of a portfolio of an assortment of skills, among them book covers, graphic design, web design, photography, and flash animation. It had no real purpose, except to show my students when I was teaching a class on web design, or photography, or graphics, or flash. It now has a purpose.

For the past three or four days, I've been brushing up on my Flash skills (it's been a long time since I taught it), and cranking out a new and improved website, this one a home for my portrait photography. Rather than an entire site in a single flash animation, I split it up into separate pages, so the browser buttons work, and individual pages can be bookmarked. And I'm very pleased with the result! Still working on getting pictures into the gallery.

Woop!

Please visit the site and test out the gallery, and send me a note from the contact form, help me find any kinks in the plumbing sooner rather than later.

Woop! Woop!

She's a King-Fisher!

[British accent] Beautiful plumage, eh!?

*ahem*

Friday evening was the much-anticipated wedding of David's sister, Michelle King, to her long-time beau, Cory Fisher. After a few 'What to do with Lucy' glitches on Friday morning, we managed to get on the road to Tulsa by noon-ish. We checked into the hotel by 5:00, relaxed a bit, found the rest of the family down the hall, then got dressed and headed to the chapel.

Now, before we left home, David asked if I had the video camera. I said yes, it's in my camera bag, and of course I take my camera bag pretty much everywhere we go. Didn't give it another thought.

Until we were all standing in the the small vestibule of the chapel minutes before the wedding was to start, and Rosaleen, running through a verbal checklist, ended by pointing to the bag over my shoulder and saying, "And you've got the video camera."

I blinked at her for a moment, processing several things at once: 1) She said 'the' video camera, not 'a' video camera, 2) 'the' video camera is expected to film the ceremony, please, 3) David has never operated the video camera, 4) that means I'll be filming the ceremony, 5) OHMYGOSH I never checked the camera to see if the battery was charged!!!, and 6) it's been more than a month since I last touched it so chances are slim that it will have enough charge to film an entire ceremony.

After a few moments of mental stammering, I blazed into action, finding a corner by a power outlet, tearing into my camera bag, discovering that the camera battery in fact had ZERO juice (!!) and quickly plugging it in to charge for the few scant moments left before the bridal party started lining up.

All worked out in the end. There was a power outlet at the side of the altar area, so I was able to film the entire ceremony. The angles are a little odd sometimes, and the camera spazzes a few times while I plug and unplug it, and without a tripod the entire thing is a bit shaky, but it's a decent record of the event. While they finished taking pictures, I was also able to find an outlet in the reception hall, so I got lots of video of the reception, too.

I was actually relieved to have something meaningful to contribute. I'd been feeling bad that we couldn't get there early to help with flowers or food, as the rest of the family had done. I do wish I'd been prepared to film it (known to charge the battery and bring a tripod), but as crazy as the preparation stuff was, with family coming into town from North Carolina and Great Britain, I can see how it fell through the communication gaps. Besides, family and friends know well that I always bring the cameras. I may leave the rescue asthma meds in the car or at the hotel, but I will definitely have the cameras.

The professional photographer didn't stay for the reception, so between videotaping and dancing and dancing and more dancing, I managed to get some good still photos, too.

To the right is a particularly sweet photo of David and his sister. And yes, that's my goober Sunshine, too. More reception pics if you're interested.

The dancing machine gene must be genetic (but if so, where did we get it, Erin?). As soon as MJ's 'Smooth Criminal' started, the reception video starts bouncing around because I just could not keep my booty from groovin'. The rest of my family soon congregated on the dance floor and proceded to boogie. (By the way, call it heresy, but the Alien Ant Farm version of that song is WAY better than the original.) We tore up the floor, and at the very end of the night, we were the last ones still dancing, along with David's big sis Maggie.

All in all, it was a beautiful wedding!

Lock down!

It's book fair time, and this year I'm the chairperson again. I love this job. All the cases were delivered today, and we managed to get it mostly set up. Also got a long list of other things accomplished (mostly decorations). But today had a little bonus excitement. :)

Sunshine's school used to sit in the middle of nowhere, nothing but fields surrounding it. Now, however, the area has been built up, and it sits near the intersection of two major roads, and within spitting distance of several pharmacies, grocery stores, gas stations, and.... banks. Today's excitement was thanks to a bank robbery across the street, after which the gunman made a break on foot toward the elementary school. So we were under complete lock-down for a good portion of the day while helicopters searched from the air. ALL doors locked, blinds drawn, lights out, kids silent and away from windows. There were five of us PTA volunteers in the work room, huddling in the dark behind the counter, calling people 'on the outside' to try to get more information.

It's kind of weird to be in a situation like that with other people--it's an opportunity to see how differently people handle the stress of potentially dangerous situations. I totally kept my cool. I was more worried about the Scholastic delivery guy being hijacked while attempting to deliver my book fair (which would have completely screwed up the book fair schedule! *wink*). I also worried just a smidge about Sunshine, and whether or not she was freaking out, but figured she was worrying more about me than about her (which turned out to be the case).

Anyway. The moral of today's story is that small towns are not exempt from big city crime, particularly in more desperate times. Thank goodness the lock-down was the extent of the excitement.

**Edited 9/17 to add photo.

Monday night madness and more

Last night I taught an Introduction to Computer Graphics class. The last time I taught the class it was a four-hour Saturday morning class with no text. Now they've expanded the class to three weeknights, and the text they gave me to use is a 15-year-old TEXTBOOK for a semester-long college course. Now you probably know that 15 years in computer age is longer than the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods combined. And even if the material were current, there's no way we could cover anywhere close to the contents of the text in three nights. So I was scrambling. We were supposed to go until 10:00 pm, but made it to about 8:35 and decided to call it a night.

On the way home, I decided to swing by Fry's electronics to purchase a DVD burner to replace the DVD-ROM which had quit months and months ago. I got there with a few minutes to spare before they closed. Got home a smidge before 10:00.

And... since it was fresh on my brain, I decided to just go ahead and install the dang thing then, rather than waiting until morning. Instead of unhooking everything and bringing my computer tower into the light where I could see it, I crawled under my desk with a screwdriver. Of course just plugging the DVD drive in caused errors in the boot registry, so I spent another 90 minutes troubleshooting. Stuck my finger in the CPU cooling fan (that's when I decided I should find the camp light), bled on my good jeans ('cause I didn't change out of my teaching clothes first), and now have two gashes in my fingertip (which is hindering my typing a bit).

But I got it working (!), and was able to also get Vista repaired using the installation DVD (Vista crashed months ago, too), so I now have access to my Adobe CS3 design suite again! Wooo! I tried to do something creative with it last night, but alas, all my good thinking was used up. By that time it was nearing 2:30 am, so it's also quite possible that I was just dang tired.

This morning I had a date with Sunshine to take her to Justice (I hate that store) to spend some gift cards she'd acquired over the last year or so. I took my DSi and did sudoku puzzles while she shopped and tried on clothes.

Tonight's class was the third night of a four-night Photoshop class. I do try so very hard to be patient, but I confess I get frustrated sometimes. Photoshop is a robust, advanced program. If you have little experience using computers in general (and are unable to find and open a file, for instance) you should probably consider taking a class in computer basics before trying to tackle advanced software. And the people who use computers and can keep up get frustrated and bored while I spend more than half the class time repeatedly bringing the turtles up to speed. There are 16 people in this class--the largest I've ever had for Photoshop. It's tough with that many turtles and snails in one class. But I love the program, and hopefully my enthusiasm masks my impatience.