Friday, July 3, 2009

Change. Stop. Reorient. Go.

This is definitely one of these days that I’d call an interesting day.

What began with rain and the 3rd day in a row migraine (albeit much less than yesterday), continued with a major change in work schedule; then switched to one of my favorite Panera Bread Cobblestone treats for breakfast - you can find here a great recipe for it; then it went on with organizing my new desktop computer, setting up scripts to keep the overburden of accumulation at bay; then there was the movie visit with Bear and now, with migraines gone and a wonderful dry and warm summer evening we are just about to run out for dinner

Not bad, all in all

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

It’s all in the Oil.

Alright, this is not a post meant for men, thus go right ahead and skip right now and move on.

It’s about Vaseline versus Baby Oil.

Told you. Not for you. And you can put all that innuendo and/or sexual thought that’s creeping up in your mind right back to where it came from.

It is about one of these things which I believe in and have used for such a long time but at the same time I am sure that it is not broadly known which is plainly a shame as I think it that good. For this reason, let it be known:

My mom swears by Vaseline, I do by Baby Oil.

Seriously, Vaseline was her preferred sun cream lotion and to keep the skin smooth and all. Of course she’d go redder than a boiled crab in no time.

My point is not to use Baby Oil as a sun tan replacement, that would be pretty suicidal for your skin. I’m talking about a general “skin lotion”. Seriously. Already as a teen I hated the feeling that a normal skin lotion leaves: it is STICKY, no matter how much it is touted as fast absorbent. And when your skin is sticky, everything sticks to it and your skin remains tacky to the touch. Eek. Next to that it’s difficult to find a lotion that doesn’t smell like a whore house (it’s the perfume I’m addressing here, not the whores).

Fast forward to Baby Oil. Barely, if even any, smelly stuff in it. You say it is way more sticky than lotion because it won’t absorb? You only need to know how to use it. So here it comes, perfect application:

The moment of application is between completing the shower (or bath) and drying yourself. Personally I love the good old Johnson Baby Oil. Very liquidly in consistency, perfect lightness, so do not get the Gel like one, it takes too much force to push out the bottle and is too thick in consistency.

Either pour some into the palm of your hand or squirt it directly onto the area you want to use it on (legs, upper arms etc.). LIGHTLY rub it in over the water pebbles which are still clinging to your body. When done, PAT yourself dry, don’t rub those locations. In spots you will have a bit more oil remaining then others. In light strokes go over those spots and spread (if needed) and it will leave your skin with a light, satiny feel - which smells only lightly and very pleasing. Your skin gets incredible soft and remains like that all day with this barely noticeable satiny smell.

In my world, Baby Oil definitely wins over Vaseline.

The perseverance it takes.

The explosion of creativity was in the head. And it still is. This is the result of this day. That’s the simplified version of it.

The long version is a day of computer hardware support, fixing, backing up, moving old to new, chasing down software only to find that the backed up disk image of Alias Sketchbook could not be mounted and the .zip of it had long time ago been trashed, but finding after a lot of back and forth the solution for this, but then only to find that Painter X would not install even though installed perfectly on another machine with the same OS version on it, and after 3 clean uninstalls and reinstalls and re-download of the software… given up on this for now but found solution for present time to get that what’s in my head OUT.

Exhausted?

That’s exactly how I felt after all of this.

Good news is that Alias Sketchbook is working and in combination with Photoshop can get the job done. And I am finally again able to draw on the big Cintiq 21UX and it is… delicious!

Tuesday, June 30, 2009

The Number 21

Working on the magical 21 - do something 21 times and it becomes a habit. True or not, it was a good number for me to get my regular morning treadmill “in” as it was a goal which seemed reachable for me and I could cling to it when my brain was trying to tell me that staying longer in bed would just be so much more rewarding. I think that’s the reason a “100-day diet” fail, that’s a LONG way to go!

So I wiped down my whiteboard and made my list of things: 3 times a week study some code; 6 times a week the morning treadmill and so on. Every day I go over the list and mark with an X what I did on the list until I have 21 of them on each line. It is now not about 3 weeks nor 21, the challenge is sticking to the single points 21 times in a row, so the things which are on the daily list will reach the 21 goal within 3 weeks, but other things, such as painting will take 7 weeks… as long as I keep on sticking to it

Having A LOT of weddings and birthdays and house visits planned for this July it will be a real huge challenge. The biggest though being the getting side-tracked, just as this evening. While studying some Ajax it pulled me into related but different subjects and there went my schedule for the night. Not only did I not get as far in my studies as planned, I was also tempted to drop my daily post (yes, another point on my list of 21).

Phew, did it all the same and won’t miss a red check-mark for this item today.



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