A Professional Dilettante

And may I (and more importantly my cats) have it back again?

It's pouring like November out there, and my cats are seriously annoyed.

What happened to August, folks? We average less than half an inch of rain for the entire month. We've had that much just this morning.

This is so, so wrong...

I should be going to bed, but instead...

Bold the ones you've done, italicize the ones you want to do, and strikethrough where the thought of it gives you hives.

1. Started your own blog

2. Slept under the stars

3. Played in a band.

4. Visited Hawaii

5. Watched a meteor shower

6. Given more than you can afford to charity

7. Been to Disneyworld

8. Climbed a mountain -- a small one

9. Held a praying mantis

10. Sang a solo

11. Bungee jumped

12. Visited Paris

13. Watched a lightning storm

14. Taught yourself an art from scratch – quilting, mostly

15. Adopted a child

16. Had food poisoning

17. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty -- the crown was closed when I was there, but I've been to the top of the pedestal

18. Grown your own vegetables

19. Seen the Mona Lisa in France

20. Slept on an overnight train bus -- train

21. Had a pillow fight

22. Hitchhiked

23. Taken a sick day when you're not ill – mental health day

24. Built a snow fort

25. Held a lamb

26. Gone skinny dipping

27. Run a marathon

28. Ridden in a gondola in Venice

29. Seen a total eclipse

30. Watched a sunrise or sunset

31. Hit a home run

32. Been on a cruise:

33. Seen Niagara Falls

34. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors -- generally speaking

35. Seen an Amish/Mennonite community

36. Taught yourself a new language

37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied -- the price wasn't worth it

38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person

39. Gone rock climbing

40. Seen Michelangelo's David

41. Sung karaoke

42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt -- snort -- Grand's the one you want to see

43. Bought a stranger a meal at a restaurant

44. Visited Africa

45. Walked on a beach by moonlight

46. Been transported in an ambulance -- once -- thought I was having a heart attack, turned out to be my gall bladder

47. Had your portrait painted

48. Gone deep sea fishing

49. Seen the Sistine Chapel in person

50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris

51. Gone scuba diving or snorkeling:

52. Kissed in the rain

53. Played in the mud

54. Gone to a drive-in theatre

55. Been in a movie

56. Visited the Great Wall of China

57. Started a business

58. Taken a martial arts class

59. Visited Russia

60. Served at a soup kitchen -- I delivered Thanksgiving dinner to shut-ins for the Red Cross one year

61. Sold Girl Scout Cookies -- I was a Camp Fire Girl, I sold nuts

62. Gone whale watching

63. Got flowers for no reason

64. Donated blood, platelets or plasma -- I have an abject horror of needles

65. Gone sky diving

66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp

67. Bounced a check

68. Flown in a helicopter

69. Saved a favourite childhood toy

70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial

71. Eaten caviar -- gick, that was awful

72. Pieced a quilt -- snort

73. Stood in Times Square / Stood in Trafalgar Square/Piccadilly -- Trafalgar and Piccadilly

74. Toured the Everglades

75. Been fired from a job -- well, laid off once and pushed into resigning once

76. Seen the Changing of the Guards in London

77. Broken a bone

78. Been on a speeding motorcycle

79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person/Pyramids at Giza -- the Grand Canyon

80. Published a book -- hee!

81. Visited the Vatican

82. Bought a brand new car

83. Walked in Jerusalem

84. Had your picture in the newspaper

85. Read the entire Bible

86. Visited the White House

87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating – do fish count?

88. Had chicken pox

89. Saved someone's life

90. Sat on a jury -- almost

91. Met someone famous - a few authors

92. Joined a book club

93. Lost a loved one

94. Had a baby

95. Seen the Alamo in person

96. Swam in the Atlantic, Lake Superior, Caribbean -- the Atlantic

97. Been involved in a lawsuit -- does a divorce count?

98. Owned a mobile phone

99. Been stung by a bee

100. Read an entire book in one day – far too many times

Dear godlings, but this photo is gorgeous. I love APOD.

Oh, and this is just perfect, too, in an entirely different way.

Just sayin'.

1) I love my local farmers' market with a passion. Spent all of about twelve bucks there yesterday and came home with baby potatoes, hugely ripe beefsteak tomatoes, bell pepper, and zucchinis, juicy nectarines, my first Bartlett pears of the season, and an enormous incredibly fragrant (and delicious -- I had some for breakfast this morning) cantaloupe. Granted, not huge amounts of anything (except the cantaloupe [g]), but still. As a single person, I don't want huge amounts of anything. And there is nothing better than fruit and veggies that are actually allowed to stay on the plant until ripe, dammit.

2) Migraines are weird. Sometimes triggers cause them, sometimes they show up on their own recognizance, as one did on my way home from lunch with a friend on Friday (it's probably just as well as the post-prandial used book store jaunt didn't happen -- I was not happy by the time I got home). And doctoring them into submission sometimes has weird side effects. This time I felt like I was looking out from the back of my brain through my eyes, sort of like a telescope. But it's better than the little jerk with the jackhammer, oh, yes. And the last of it seems to be fading away this morning. Hallelujah.

Oh, and before anyone asks, this one was mild, so it just got the ibuprofen and lots of caffeine treatment. Prescription migraine meds and I have a relationship that's shaky at best, so unless I'm in the fetal position in a dark room, which rarely happens, I tend to avoid them.

3) Yes, it's only the pre-season, and therefore nothing counts, but the Seahawks creamed Denver last night, 40-10, even with Peyton Manning playing the entire first half. The yardage stats look like Denver ought to have won, but they kept getting all the way to the end of the field, where the Seahawks would cause them to lose the ball one way or another. The 'Hawks ran one fumble (and one kickoff return) over 100 yards all the way back for a touchdown. They're 2-0 in the pre-season so far. Go, 'Hawks!

This seems to be my week for spotting wildlife.

In addition to seeing a bear for the first time in twenty years of hiking up at Sunrise on Mt. Rainier, I was out at my usual walking trail (the Chapman trail in South Hill) this afternoon when I saw a mule deer doe and two half-grown fawns. I didn't have my camera with me, alas.

But that was cool!

I'm not exactly sure that there's a word strong enough to express my feelings for how much I hate and despise Photoshop. No, there decidedly isn't. Whoever created Photoshop needs to burn in the hell of a thousand disjointed pixels.

There's this coarse horizontal woodgrain texture that I used to create the letters on the old covers of Repeating History, True Gold, and Finding Home, using Photoshop.

I need it again now, but can I find it? Noooo... Because it's not where it was the last time I used it. I have been through every texture in all the albums in Photoshop, and I cannot find it again. No, I did not download it from somewhere, because I don't know how to add downloaded textures to Photoshop to begin with, and even if I did, which I didn't, it should still be there.

The assignment for my covers class is due tomorrow night. I need this texture now, dammit.

Either that or I need a way to murder Photoshop, and I'm not sure I can find a way that's slow and painful enough to do the job right. Because this isn't the first time it's pulled something like this on me. Photoshop seems to be designed to be impossible for a non-pro to use.

Teddy came in this evening with a small scratch on his face, just below one of his eyes. It's not deep, or even bleeding, just a tiny place where his fur got scraped off, but I put some antibiotic stuff on it and will keep an eye on it. Cat injuries, no matter how tiny, have an alarming way of turning into abscesses, and those are no fun at all.

No damage anywhere else, which is good. I suspect he had a close encounter with a scratchy branch, not another critter, judging from what it looks like.

I'm glad it missed his eye.

The Seattle Seahawks' first pre-season game is this coming Thursday, against the San Diego Chargers (hey, stoutfellow [g]).

I don't know whether to be appalled that it's already that late in the summer, or appalled that the pre-season is starting this early, or chuffed because I'm looking forward to it, in spite of the hype this year (or maybe because of it).

The latter, I think. Why not?

Found, of all places, in a Reader's Digest while I was waiting to get my hair cut this morning:

"I'm not upset that you lied to me; I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you." Friedrich Nietzsche

I can think of several people I feel that way about right now. And I expect Ekaterin Vorsoisson would understand this sentiment deeply.

So, I went to read my RSS feeds at The Old Reader just now, and they're shutting down public operations. In two weeks, my page there will go away.

So, I notice that my version of LiveMail has an RSS feed thingy. Given that two RSS feed webpages have gone belly up on me this month (Google Reader, although I left them last spring when they said they were shutting down in July, and now The Old Reader), I'm wondering how to use this RSS feed thing on LiveMail, because it won't go away, at least as long as I keep using this version of LiveMail. I don't do anything with my RSS feed reader except, well, read my feeds, so I don't need the social stuff GR and TOR provided. I never used that part.

But I'm not sure how to go about transferring my feeds to LiveMail's reader, or how to find out. Also, when I transferred a sample RSS feed to LiveMail, it insisted that there weren't any new posts to read when I knew there were. I would need to know how to fix this, as well as transfer my OPML file to it.

Help? Or is this a supremely bad idea and should I go looking for yet another third party website for my RSS reading? And if so what guarantee am I going to have that I won't be going through this again in another month?

Oh, and I'm reminded in a comment that Feedly did not turn out to be a viable option for me the last go round, so if I do end up using another third party reader, it's going to have to be something else.

Please, someone, anyone? The days are counting down till I won't be able to read my RSS feeds anymore!

ETA: Well, I tried Feedly again because I literally didn't know what else to do, and so far it seems to be working okay -- I don't know what I did last time, but now, as long as Feedly stays afloat, I should be okay. [crosses fingers]