This was going to be my away message, and then it got way too long

The trouble with Photoshop for actually creating a graphic image collage thing--such as, say, a nice little illustrated card-type-thing explaining to one's parents how simple and nice online dvd rental is, and that their birthday present this year is a subscription to Netflix--is that there are just too many options. You sit there messing with layers for an hour, trying to create nicely matched up images of rolls of film with the same amount of light intensity and shading and such, while at the same time have it all line up and have the right things transluscent and little boxes for the text with colored backgrounds, etc. But it's so complex, you get all frustrated, so you drag everything into Powerpoint and mess around with it there, and get something that's at least halfway decent.

But even then, it's like ordering something besides your favorite entree at a restaurant. You may really enjoy what you order, but you still feel like it's not quite right. Or, in this case, you may look at the finished product and think "gee, this is spiffy and all, but I sure wish I just had some Pentel markers and an 8.5 by 11 sheet folded down the middle." And I do have Pentel pens and paper, but I of course forgot about the fact that it takes time for birthday cards to get places once you put them in the mail. ...And I guess I was being lazy.

I haven't made cards in a while, sadly. Apologies to anyone who's missed them. That was always fun. The problem is that I can't get into a real habit of making them during the schoolyear, unless I work well ahead of time, because it's unusual for me to have the time and materials to, say, cut out interesting words from a newspaper and collage them together with spaces in between to spell out "JEN". And a standard has been set with the cards now, even if it's been a year or two since I've done any.

I should really edit out that restaurant analogy up there. Metaphors that seem to work at 5AM usually fall under the categories of inspired, weird, or just plain silly, and I think that one is decidedly one of the latter. Though not as bad as a few I found in my freshman journal after 50-odd hours of no sleep. Those were more delusional, I think. I'm glad I don't do that anymore...

Wait a sec. So why am I still up? I was going to go to bed three hours ago so that I could be awake for tomorrow night's alcohol-related activities. (Speculate on that as you will, though it will mainly involve drinking beer and watching movies, with some possible intoxicated discussion of linguistics, as that usually seems to fit in somehow.) I should sleep. Okay. Going to go do that now.