Popped out a new desktop last night/this afternoon, with a surprising burst of help from Tom. I was toying around with a pretty flat, simple, but pretty photo, Leia standing against a white (well, grey) background, white ground. I'd thrown some transparent stripes across the thing, added in some texture, some color, and couldn't quite sort out what to do with it. Tom decreed that the orange-blue gradient I had worked in just made it look like I couldn't decide whether to make the colors warm or cool...uh, which was exactly the case, to be honest. (In the end, I wound up building on the slight greenish tinge to the original.) He also commented that the concrete texture I'd used looked too much like stars, and given the context it was too heavy-handed. If I was going for a spaceship look, I should put in boxes for all the random panels and things that make up ships in the Star Wars universe. So I threw in some outlines really quick, and in like under a minute, I had a basic shape that looked astonishingly GOOD.

So, hell, I went with it. Added in some more detail, and threw in a different texture to sort of make the floor. Tom's suggestion to scootch Leia over to the right more was, in fact, correct, though it was a pain in the neck to do when I was so far into the thing already. I also had to re-work her shadow, and stretch out the background, and do all sorts of somewhat tedious tweaking to make things do what I wanted, underneath all my embellishments.

But I am oddly proud of this, simple as it looks. I can't recall ever inventing an actual background like this, and basic and plain though it is, I think it actually kind of works. Looking at the rough edges I was throwing around the thing, Tom said I should make it look like old, beat-up film...which is actually exactly what I had in mind by that point. Of course, ye old 35mm negatives are probably not in use in the SW universe, sooo I was stuck being a little more generic.

...I had finished this earlier today, but looking at it on my desktop, I finally had to go in and change the font. I was originally going to hand-write it myself, via my tablet, but had some trouble making my writing look like boy-writing. I can never quite manage to change how my "e"s look. So I went with a utilitarian computerish font, with the thought of like a label-maker type of look. But about half an hour ago, I decided it just wasn't happening, it made it look like it was dug out of a Lucasfilm archive, not Han's dresser drawer, which is what I'd wanted. So, a font-hunt it was, with me re-locating Fonts for Peas, a treasure-trove of real person handwritings. <3

Tom actually hasn't seen the script-bit at the bottom yet, I'm pretty sure he'll think it too cheesy, but I like it. His suggestions were 1) a blaster hole in the wall beside her (which looked ridiculously realistic, starfield and all, done with a few clicks of a oil stain brush), and 2) gansta-style graffiti on the wall, with an arrow pointing to her, reading "I'd tap that". (I grabbed the tablet pen and a watery looking brush, and made my attempt - Startled Tom: "You are WAY too good at that!")



...really, I feel kind of like I've wasted today, though I shouldn't. I made Tom a breakfast, I went out and bought myself a new pair of jeans (since my favorite pair is beginning to die), I worked on two other drawings in Photoshop (that are still in-progress, one's just not done and the other I'm angry at), I printed out a bunch of recipes to make for next week, aaaaand managed to wash all but like one of my stacks of dirty dishes. Took two loads, but I am caught up again. It's my day off, that should be plenty enough, right? I have a nasty hunch that the reason I feel unfulfilled is because I left work yesterday without having finished the things I'd been assigned the day before *that*. Granted, it was more than anyone would've finished in a day, it was busy yesterday *and* I was scheduled in the basement, where I had customers to watch, and about everything that needed doing was upstairs. Also, the banner isn't needed until, literally, June, and the rest were all random small things for the store, like making new stickers for the colored pencil display. Why on earth do I feel guilty over not finishing it all??

(Tom thinks I'm insane for caring as much as I do about things at work. I probably am, to a point. But rationalize as much as I might, I still feel a slight knot in my stomach today, and watched my phone in case someone from the store should call about something. sigh.)


edit: It occurs to me that I should probably mention, for the inanely curious, that the date "written" on the wallpaper is only half made-up. I wound up going onto Wookiepedia (yes that is really its name...Tom thinks it's awesome) and figuring out the dating system used in Star Wars. Turns out that the whole calendar system got changed like 20ish years after the Empire fell, so I had to look up the *old* calendar system. Turns out there were several. I figured Han would probably use the one the Empire was using, since that probably would've been the most pervasive one at the time. Of course, there were two different systems of years being used even within *that*... I should really leave fandom details like this for Tom to sort out next time. xp

 
Thanks to Dad and Beth bearing gifts of rare foods (from Wegmans! <3) on their visit yesterday, I have just made a pot full of miso soup.

It's pretty much AMAZINGly delicious.

Very simple, easy enough that I think I might actually be able to use up the whole giant pouch of miso paste somewhere in the near future. (It is "white" miso paste, though actually brown in color. There's quite a lot of it, but I suspect it has a pretty decent shelf life.)

As usual, the recipe is per Heidi Swanson's blog 101 Cookbooks, which is my trusty guide into the occasionally overwhelming world of eating as naturally as possible. I had some leftover shiitake mushrooms from a stir-fry I made the other day, and split up a block of tofu between a curry I made today and the soup. I actually had soba noodles on hand. While the comments on her post strongly suggested using vegetable or fish stock rather than water... I accidentally used all the vegetable broth I'd bought in my curry, so threw in maybe a quarter cup of what was left of that + some Thai fish sauce (which is insanely potent stuff). I dug some sheets of nori seaweed out of the recesses of my cupboard, and threw some crumpled bits of that in there as well.

I cannot get over how delicious this stuff is. I was really going to save some for Tom to have when he gets home tonight, buuut, I don't know if that's going to happen. Maybe I'll just make him a fresh pot tomorrow night. 0;)

I'm strongly considering laying in a stock of more Japanese noodles. Soba is very dense and delicious, and the udon I tried today with the curry was also really good - both are very sturdy, and hold up amazingly well in liquid, maintaining a much better level of firmness than, say, spaghetti. Granted, the pasta I usually buy is pretty cheap stuff, so maybe venturing into the realm of whole grains and things might land me something more interesting... but I'm not sure where Tom will draw the line on things he'll eat. Japanese food, he's always willing to at least try. (The first recipe I made with soba noodles, he had no use for, but I think he'll enjoy them in the soup.) But he has finally begun complaining about the "weird breads" I sometimes snag. Personally I find the sunflower Monk's bread pretty much the most wonderful thing ever, but, I think he misses Wonderbread. (Luckily, he has some level of uneasiness over things like high fructose corn syrup, and looked rather shocked and put-off when I told him it's usually in bread. So he's pretty understanding about me being picky over it.)

...on a related note, word on the interwebs is that Pepsi's going to do a limited run of Pepsi and Mountain Dew made with REAL SUGAR!!! Not only is that an insanely delicious prospect, but I'm also pretty psyched that such a major corporation is falling prey to the whole natural foods thing. bwahahahahaa.


Today is Tom'n'my four year anniversary. :) Given that he works today, and I work tomorrow, we didn't really make any plans, just hung around each other all morning and found ourselves to be remarkably content. The sweater I'm attempting to make him is, no surprise, not ANYWHERE near finished, and whatever it is he's getting me hasn't gotten here yet... but we discovered neither of us is really stressed about this. We'll go out to dinner maybe tomorrow night, or some other time we can relax and enjoy it. I did pick us up a bottle of wine and some sake, for whenever we next find ourselves in a lounge-about sort of mood. I also baked what might well be the most *amazingly* ridiculous brownies ever, but I discovered this morning that the top layer of chocolate ganache still hadn't set. So they're in the fridge at the moment, still untried.

I reached the conclusion that, y'know, it wasn't so much about the exact *day* of the thing, just the thought really, which we can reflect on anytime in the vaguely-near future. (Also, there is technically some debate on the actual date, but it's an odd and somewhat embarrassing story..) We both felt that the important thing was that we just enjoyed each others' company today, which we did. :)

Until the GPS Tom finally broke down and bought arrived, anyway. Then there was some pretty intensive playing with that, until he had to go to work. At which point, I bought tofu and came back to play in the kitchen. :)


...I'm so not in the mood to go back to work again. It's not so bad once I'm there, it's mostly just the thought of it that always gets to me. I've been feeling so productive and happy around the house lately - there may still be fairly constant piles of dirty dishes on my counters, but there's also delicious homemade food all over the place. I have a gorgeous new wallpaper I whipped up after finally watching "Prince Caspian" last night.



[Melissa's quick thoughts on the movie: Holy cow it never occurred to me that the Telmarines were Spanish (in the same way that the Tarkaans et al. are Hindu), and it seriously probably should have. But once I adjusted my mental Caspian away from being blonde and fifteen, I fell absolutely embarrassingly in love. I've always had a pretty deep fondness for his character, but, good god, I am nearly falling into fangirling now. APART from that... the movie felt odd to me, like its focus was totally different from the book. Which I suppose it wasn't, but the pacing was completely different. I really enjoyed it, and the deviations it made I think really only enhanced things and brought out interesting things about the characters and situations. But it still has a very, very different feel to it than the book did.]

[Also, I think the way the driads and hamadriads are rendered in the movies is *ABSOLUTELY* incorrect . It's driving me bonkers.]

...point being, I'm feeling very creative, and rather happy about where I'm at with Photoshop. I can whip up whatever's needed (graphically, at least) at work with the greatest of ease, and then come home and play around with my drawings, or throw something like this new one together, and, y'know, it's pretty. I like it.

I'm still not sure if I could spend all of my time doing graphics - I tend to feel a little sick, or at least uncomfortable one way or another, if I spend the whole day in front of a computer screen. And finding a good environment in which to do it... that's a whole beast unto itself. Paper Factory is a fantastic blend, of customers who know exactly what they want, and customers who really don't care so long as it has the person's name on it, and things for around the store - which are my favorite to do, since I pretty much have free reign with the design, and I'm always so happy with how the things look. And I feel like... like I'm really actually contributing something worthwhile, somehow. Like, the paper labels I made, knowing the way things work there, they'll be using them for *years*, even after I leave. And they're really sharp looking, and I think they really help the store's image (in a small way). And that, to me, feels like more than... oh I don't know, all the eight gazillion menial things I have to run around and do everyday there. Make sure the young'uns are actually working, and putting things away in the right places, and stalking obnoxious college kids around the store, and stress about pretty much everything.

I am not a fan of stress. I will take on responsibility, but I fret a lot about it, and it wears me out pretty quickly. This schedule is really working pretty amazingly for my sanity - I work three days, am off for a day, work a day, then off for two. The money is far from amazing, but, honestly, it's worth it to me in terms of sanity.

And in terms of being able to feed the both of us healthy things. :) I'm getting another helping of miso! (Uh, and a brownie. :9)