It’s done…

My journal for Marilyn’s Alphabetica swap is done. (wooo hoooo!!) Pics tomorrow (lighting is too bad right now). It felt good to sit down and to art for a while. Soooo good for my soul.

This is my kids’ last week of school. Then it’s me and three young boys cooped up in the house, held hostage by 115 degree temperatures and general sluggishness. Yay for summer!!!

Out of sorts…

Everything is out of sorts….my brain, my house…everything. I’ve been having that oh-so-tired-down-deep-in-the-bones feeling again. Not good.

The goal this week is one art journal page. And to take a few pictures every day. And to pick up all the crud that’s out of place in this house. My "studio" is a mess and I simply can’t work in here. I need to get rid of the computer boxes and finish the rearranging that I started a few weeks ago.

Mother’s Day was okay. Nice. Reed & the kiddos made me breakfast. I have mixed feelings about Mother’s Day. For many years I loathed that day because I didn’t have a baby to call my own. Then I hated it because of those pompous church sermons about how glorified mothers are and how the best mothers never yell at their kids, never break down, always have fresh bread in the oven and dinner on the table when Dad comes home. Ya know, all those things that I most definitely AM NOT.

I am a good mother. But I’m imperfect. I try hard. And I figure that has to count for something.

And I can do the Napoleon dance. That should get me a few mothering bonus points.

Scrapping…

I’ve been hosting the online crop over at ScrapGal and have been scrapping like crazy this weekend. Fun stuff. Sorry for the blurry pics…I wasn’t taking good care when I took some of the pics & then didn’t want to redo.

Supastar

Tweener

Linkage…….

This post coming to you from my brand new computer from XT Group. (Big, big sigh of relief.) I set it up today all by myself…I rock, if I do say so myself. Got everything installed (hardware & software). Got all my files (9 gig worth) transferred over. Fun stuff. Indulge me for a minute while I work through my anger issues.

An Open Letter to Dell, Inc:

Dear Dell,

I’ve realized that your name rhymes with the place that you’re going when this life is over because of your unethical business practices. Maybe all your crappy computers will be there, too. Maybe your punishment will be to try to use Photoshop on one of your crappy computers while it crashes with every mouse click. Hope you like the heat, Dell. Bring marshamallows. Oh, and Dell, if you have a complaint or problem, please dial 1-800-WE-OUTSOURCE-TO-INDIA-BECAUSE-WE’RE-CHEAP.

Ah, I feel better. I’ve been too busy to take a self portrait…I’m repenting and will do one this week. I have an idea in mind.

Thought I’d share some of my favorite artsy blogs. I’ve probably shared these links before…but who cares, they’re worth visiting again.

Misty Eyed Art. I love, love, love her art. Misty recently had an article in Cloth Paper Scissors…I adore her style.

Roben Marie.The creater of Paperbag Studios stamps. Delectable.

The Crafty Girl. Lots of inspiration here.

Green Frog Studios. Collage artist and scrapper extraordinaire.

Khya’s Journal. Some interesting & very cool Photoshopping.

Alive & kicking…..

Yo. Long time no blog. I tried to blog last week but Typepad was down (bad Typepad). Then I went out of town to Women’s Conference at BYU. It was uplifting, so many wonderful messages. I’ll share one…

Johanna Flynn spoke and told a funny story about a farmer. He was out farming his land when a neighbor drove by. The neighbor observed the farmer and his practices and offered to help him. See, the farmer wasn’t too efficient and was farming in an amateurish way. The farmer scoffed at the neighbor and said, "I don’t need your help! I’m not farming half as good as I know how!"

We’re like that sometimes. We’re going through life doing only half as good as we know how. We need to wake up, do better, be better, be true to what we know. We need to ban complacency and start LIVING. Really living, not just going through the motions with a half-hearted effort. Carpe diem, ya know?

I love that.

I loved being near the mountains. I’ve decided that I’m really not a desert girl at heart. I’ve lived here 11 years, I’ve assimilated. Kinda. But I think I’d move back to the mountains in a heartbeat. This year they were green (a result of the wet Spring weather) and snowcapped. Just so beautiful. Sigh.

I came home to barfing kids and fevers…back into the fire!

Did I mention that the piece-o-crap Dell is going back? I had a tantrum on the phone with Harkreet from India (their customer support) and they agreed to take it back w/ no shipping fee or restocking penalty. Good riddance.

Technology dependency…

You know my spanking new computer? The one I was giddy about, the one I was in love with?

It sucks.

Raise your right hand and repeat after me. "I will never, ever, as long as live, until the cows come home and leave again, buy a computer from Dell!"

Very good.

Here’s the gist…..this computer came loaded with Windows Media Center Edition XP (MCE). MCE is an operating system that supports DVR technology, among another things. MCE is NOT meant to be run on dinky, cheap home computers. It just won’t let your applications work right.But we didn’t know that then….

So, I load all my applications. I try to use basic functionality in PSE 3.0…and CRASH, the program shuts down. I have this shiny, fast new computer that won’t run Photoshop Elements! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! My old, dinky computer will run this software. Why won’t the new one run it?

Dell Support is a joke…no help at all. You can only understand them 50% of the time, anyway (Dell currently outsources to India). Half the time I felt like I was schooling the Dell person instead of them schooling me.

We updated device drivers. We uninstalled & reinstalled the software. We upgraded the PSE software. We eliminated devices one by one. We restored factory settings. We formatted the hard drive, repartitioned, and started over.

Nothing worked. Nothing. We finally narrowed the problem down (after extensive research) to the operating system. Did you know that there are dozens & dozens of posts on Google Groups and other IT sites about the incompatibility of MCE with Dell home computers? So, it’s clear, we need a different operating system.

We tried to load XP Professional. Dell is so darn proprietary & exclusive that they make it almost impossible to load a new operating system that does not come from them. XP could not detect Dell’s hard drive. We could have gotten it to work with downloaded SATA drivers if we had a floppy drive…but guess what…Dell doesn’t put floppy drives in computers any more (unless you ask).

Soo…..we call Dell (again). They agree to send us XP Home without any argument. In fact, they are familiar with the problem (why they didn’t mention this the first 2 times we called, I don’t know). Hmm….something is definitely rotten in the State of Denmark (obscure Hamlet reference…did you get it??). Anyhoo….obviously Dell is having big problems with MCE loaded onto its crappy home computers.

Moral of the story. Do NOT use MCE unless you have the proper system. Do NOT buy a computer from Dell. They sell products designed to fail.