Made to measure views

So I promised photos of the apartment some time ago. This isn't quite photos of the whole place but here's my office. It's alright, isn't it?

But yes, that is a brick wall I look out on.

Back in the summer, before I'd even seen our new apartment, I was at an Arvon course outside Inverness - at Moniack Mhor. This was the view from my window. I made a joke that I wanted to paste the view up on my window when I got to Bangkok. Ha; I had no idea that unless I wanted to look out on concrete I REALLY would need to stick up a picture.

All I needed to do was blow up my digital image onto really large photo paper and I could have Scotland outside my window. Voila:

Then I got to thinking.... I could do a few - dependent on my mood. It's a sunflowers in Lopburi kind of day today:

Tomorrow I might be homesick. Let's have Kent in July:

How about back to Asia? How about Kuala Lumpur at night:

Oh HOW much fun can we have here? Hastings beach anyone? With killer seagull...

Right; okay. I think it's time to go back to work now. Head down...

"Could do better"

I’m all cackhanded.

I haven’t been able to make a total switch the new MacBook Pro because I’m inept I hadn’t got the right software on it.

I am a bit ham-fisted too. I only have enough brain power either to write or use the Mac. Now that the four travel articles have been done and it’s only the edits I’m dealing with – which are going well – it’s crunch time.

I’ve got Scrivener installed – almost my sole reason for wanting a Mac – and yesterday I got all the other essential software organised. I need Microsoft Office because the children use it and we’re constantly passing work back and forwards. Most important though was Photoshop. I learned it so that I could prepare photos for the website I worked on. Honestly, the website software, Dreamweaver, left me likely to commit heinous crimes, but Photoshop? I fell in love. This 2007 example of my procrastination Photoshop skills is one of my all time favourites.

So all I need to do now is transfer the files from PC to Mac and work out why Mac keeps falling off the internet while PC doesn’t.

And then *gulp* it’s Mac time only.

Care in the community

Yesterday I was a disgrace. I spent all day alone in the apartment reading (until the children got home from school). I lay on my bed all day, reading (even when the children got home). I ate lunch on my bed, reading. The book? It was ‘Over You’ by Lucy Diamond. I finished it by bedtime and really enjoyed it. I can’t believe she made me laugh out loud at the bottom of page 111, just after that happened.

But I decided this morning that I really needed to get out or I might get institutionalised. I’ve been looking at chapter one it on screen for ages, and in order to break the habit of ‘opening document, looking, huffing and then closing document down again’, I decided to head off to Starbucks with a paper copy. Sometimes it fools my simple brain into thinking it’s seeing something different, rather than the same old drivel. I’ve been dealing with the first half for ages now and every time I read the transitional bit between first and second half, I lose the will to live. So I thought I’d ignore that bit and deal with the second half.

It was rather marvellous, not the writing, but the change in my mode of attack. I saw lots of stuff that was wrong and stuff that could be improved. Some conversations came into my head which I scribbled down. And I saw things in my head. I might’ve appeared like care in the community anyway.

I rushed home to write, but got caught up in the banners I’m designing at the moment – I do so ♥ playing with Photoshop. I’ve sent six banner examples off to the Chairman to see which one she likes (fingers crossed I don’t get the answer ‘keep going’). But it’s Friday night, the kids are happy, Husband leaves the UK for BK tonight so I shall write tonight instead.

Not hearting so much today

AM
Lovely morning: cup of coffee with Andrew Computer, gossiping and chatting about Photoshop: who’d’ve ever thought it?

PM
Filthy, foul mood caused by idiosyncrasies of the ‘way’ things are done here. Some tears; lots of swearing; general bad temper.

Late PM
Reasons to be cheerful:

• Daughter was pleased with how her English exam went.
• Son said his ‘cross hatch self portrait’ homework looked like a Halloween mask. Still chuckling: he was right.
• Penang curry: leaving the beef behind for Husband and eating all the eggplants.
• Son making me a cup of tea: more tears? Maybe.
• Daughter's science homework about a sperm running a marathon.

Five Things What Are Good

Right, in balance to my neurotic moment yesterday, today I am taking the advice of Jon M to produce a list of Five Things What Are Good:

1. Yesterday in my miniscule time available for writing I wrote 258 words. Nobody died; nobody shouted at me that I was crap; I enjoyed myself and have even got a few more words.
2. Daughter shone in her part in the school play; remembered all her lines; husband got out of work early and took me to lunch, and he operated the digital camera.
3. Photoshop. How did I ever live without being able to make pictures of The Archivist in a dodgy suit, myself with matchsticks in my eyes and maps of Fictionville? I so love Photoshop and I really want to get better at it.
4. Dim Sum, yellow dahl and tea.
5. Sleep

JazzRat

I am simply too pooped to write today. I've spent all day studying Dreamweaver and Photoshop and my brain is crying out in pain. They are too gargantuan and it hurts.

Instead I will leave you with JazzRat who we saw in a jazz bar in Bangkok before Christmas. He just couldn't get enough of the music.