Decided to play along with a Photoshop tutorial today - chroma, a neat glowing swooshy kind of thing. I knew from the start mine would look nothing like theirs, but um... my glowy bits went a completely different direction. I wound up with rainbows, and stars that looked rather pretty, but the colors just got to be too much, so on a whim, I made it all pink.

And it worked! Some tweaking from there, and then I drew in a pretty little heart... which, honestly, took way more time to do than the warped lines in the background, I threw on and took back off so many effects, trying to make things subtle but visible. sigh.

Anyway - happy early Valentine's! :) Click to get the thing full-sized (1280x1024):

 
I. am freaking psyched.

Thanks to BemaniStyle, I now have the following songs to DDR to:

Du Hast.
Dragosta Din Tei. (aka "Numa Numa") (Which, I have happily discovered, I still know all the words to.)
Avril Lavigne's "Girlfriend" (Which is one of Tom's favorite songs to sing.)
Ievan Polkka. Sung by a Japanese chick. Retro video game-y music. And a flash-style animation of a little chibi anime girl waving a leek. IT IS AMAZING.

Also Tunak Tunak Tun, White and Nerdy, and You Spin Me Right Round (Like a Record), which I am holding off on trying out 'til tomorrow, as motivation to play.

OH! AND! "It's the End of the World as We Know It". Which is pure fun on a 5, and more of the high-speed crazy spurts you'd expect on a 7. I really do enjoy spazzy high-pitched Jpop for DDR'ing, but, well-done tracks for things like U2 and R.E.M. and other things I love dearly are feeeew and far between.

All of the ones I've played so far, are FUN, and PLAYABLE, and not 13-feet or stupidly high bpms or anything obnoxious. ("Girlfriend" is a bit bland, mainly following the lyrics, but that works for that song.)


//end spazz


In other news! When Tom was finally able to drag himself back into work yesterday (his stomach is still easily disturbed, he wasn't hungry at all for dinner tonight), he found a message waiting for him.

One of the California WalMarts ACTUALLY GOT BACK TO HIM. !!!!! The guy said they had a few openings... one of which was the same shitty shift in the same department he's in now, go figure. But other options as well - mainly they were just calling to see if he was still interested.

As awesome as that is, what made me even happier, I think, was hearing Tom's bosses' reactions. Tom told his immediate boss that he'd call them back on his lunch break - and his boss pretty much dragged him bodily into a private office, and placed a store-to-store call, and while he was on hold for the guy who'd called Tom, he handed the phone to Tom and said "here ya go!". (Tom commented that a kick in the ass was exactly what he'd needed - and I was really happy to see that he realized that on his own, I've been thinking that for, oh, months? and I'm not really good at ass-kicking.)

Tom's mega-boss, I want to say he's an assistant manager? something higher-up, anyway. Took Tom aside and told him, very seriously, "I don't want to see you get screwed over." If, while looking into the California store, the offer, whatever, he had any concerns, any questions, this guy offered to talk to anyone in that store to make sure things would be good for Tom. He basically said, in almost as many words, that Tom's too good of a worker to get screwed over by WalMart. While this is something that we know...it's really reassuring to see that his bosses see it too. From what Tom told me, they're willing to go WAY out of their way to help Tom out, even if it means losing him in their own store.

...despite the inevitable evil of a chain-store's bureaucracy, I think Tom's got some pretty good people around him. (It's a little more obvious in my case, I think, I work right alongside the owners just about every day.)

Tom did make sure to tell them he'd need at LEAST a month's notice to make the move - on talking to me later, he said he'll push for a month and a half. Which has me *very* relieved, that spazzy chaos back in the fall was pretty terrifying for me.


In my own little world... never did hear back on the Photoshop tutoring thing. Pretty sure the girl's mom talked the dad out of it, he seemed like the kind of guy to jump waaaaay overboard before things have a chance to get thought through. I'm a little sad, inasmuch as I think it would've been really, really fun to work with the girl, but setting it all up would've been a decent enough hassle that I'm not heartbroken.

And I'm having enough design-fun on my own lately. This week, I learned how to print up lettering onto adhesive vinyl, and have our printer cut them out, and stick it onto plasticore sign-stuff - though the actual sticking-letters-onto-sign bit, I wimped out and just watched Chad do it, since I know full well I am awful at lining things up nicely. (Meanwhile *he* can freaking eyeball things, and line it up within like an eighth of an inch. gahh.) BUT! I also got commissioned to make brand-new labels for all the paper we repackage and sell in smaller amounts. Chad wanted a *total* overhaul on the labels, a much cleaner look, like the type used by other companies. Something we could adapt to all the stationary. I need to snag a jpg of it when I have a chance and post it, because I am seriously proud of what I came up with. Very simple, very elegant, very clean, black and white, readable, very usable - but with pretty little toile-esque swirls and flourishes in a thin border around the edge. It is so freaking pretty, it makes me so happy to look at it.

God I am such a nerd.

I have also been drawing, mainly on my days off, because once I get into Photoshop, I pretty much disappear for a few hours. Three works-in-progress, in varying stages of completion... really, I have no idea how close I am to finished with any of them. The naiad, I thought I had a long way to go, BUT, in playing around with my bajillion different layers... I found a much more stripped-down look that I really, really like. So it might go in that direction and be done a lot sooner. We'll see. These are me-projects, things I am doing entirely for myself, starting with something totally random that popped into my head, and finding out what happens when I put it into Photoshop.

I still don't have a real style to my drawing+Photoshop. I have two very different ideas of what I want, which is half of my problem.


...aaaand so much for getting to bed early tonight! Time to drag the eyeballs away from the ol' glowing screen.

 
Our local Pizza Hut absolutely sucks. It's miserable. We went once, like six months ago or something, and waited foreeeeever to get our food - even our drinks! which were about forgotten, and even when the manager stepped in to cover for someone, she got us the wrong drinks. So, uh, we don't get over there much. Yesterday, however, Tom and I were out and about, failing at finding the oddball chemicals Tom was shopping for. We wanted to stay out a bit longer, but pretty much the entire damn town shuts down at 5pm on a Sunday. We decided, hey! what the hell, let's go to Pizza Hut, it'll be entertaining anyway, we have time to kill.

So, we went, and caught the tail end of a kid's birthday party, wherein the parents were actually louder and more obnoxious than the kids. Thanks for setting such a great example. Service was slow, but Tom and I had some good long conversations, about.. oh god, I don't even know, genetic engineering and homosexuality and cultural morality and all sorts of things.

Fortunately for our sanity, we didn't actually time how long our food took to arrive, but... it was easily 15-20 minutes or more for the garlic bread, and then another 10-15 or more for the pizza. Now I understand that it takes a little while for pizza to cook, but, they weren't like swamped or anything, and even tiny little local pizza places don't take more than half an hour on a football Sunday. Loooong stretches of time between anything happening. Again, we were in the mood to be amused by this more than anything, but, they've had their second chance now, we are soooo not going back anytime soon.

Later that evening, my stomach was acting up, and I couldn't decide if it was an upset stomach or feminine cramps settling in, but I was pretty miserable until I fell asleep. Tom was randomly in the mood for hot sauce, and decided to take a few shots of it - like, literally, he will drink the stuff straight. It's a bit disconcerting. He also got hungry and polished off the rest of the pizza we'd brought home.

Once I'd slept a few hours, and taken some medicine to ward off cramps, I felt much better. Sometime during the night/morning, however, I awoke to the sound of Tom wretching his guts out in the bathroom. It is seriously upsetting to hear a guy throwing up, they're so freaking loud you swear internal organs are going to come flying out.

He returned to the bathroom like three more times between then and when I rolled out of bed around noon. And even then... he wasn't moving, he was downright miserable. Couldn't sleep, but couldn't move without nearly throwing up again. He swears it was the pizza, though I figure the hot sauce probably factors in as well.

My stomach was a little wonky for awhile, but it cleared up after some toast and water and moving around. Tom, however, is STILL in bed. Not moving. He *has* gotten up and walked around a little, but it's never long before he's back to laying down.

...I feel so bad, there's really not much I can do...though I've tried anyway. Poking around online, I discovered WebMD had a recipe for a homemade rehydration drink, so I mixed up some of that once Tom had been quiet for an hour or two. Unfortunately, the taste (though not at all bad to me) was too much, so he's stuck to water. I think he's been able to stomach exactly two saltine crackers. I made up some rice pudding for the both of us, and he's been able to take a few bites of that at least. He's got an awful headache now too, from laying down all day... so we've put my little cornbag in the freezer a few times, and gotten a cool damp washcloth, to soothe his head a bit.

It was a *gorgeous* day out today, up to 40 or so, bright and sunny, and the air was so fresh and crisp and wonderful, that we actually opened some windows, which made him feel a little better. I walked over to RiteAid to pick up a few things, I baked some cookies, played a little DDR... and I'd *really* wanted to dye my hair today (I picked out a different color so I'm all excited about it), but, the boy says his stomach's too touchy still to handle the smell. Just walking near the kitchen while I was baking cookies was too much... he feels so helpless when he's sick, I know it really frustrates him. Hell, the very fact that he's vocalized how sick he's feeling is a sign that he feels absolutely awful.


Meh, I wish there was more I could do. I also wish I could do my hair, that was my main plan for the evening. darnit. I've been drawing in Photoshop a good bit lately, and I've been looking at drawings of unicorns over on Deviant Art, and I really want to draw one but I'm intimidated by the fact that other people understand horse muscle structure, and I haven't the faintest. I can do unicorn horns really well! and I'm sure I could do manes and tails nicely! but musculature and structural subtleties? not so much. Reference photos, here I come...