Where Does My Time Go?

I've been a little distracted the last few days. School has started back and I have been adjusting to getting my game face on early and showing up for class. I am taking a web design class this semester and on the first day, the teacher recommended a site with a tutorial on html. I have been curious about learning more about how to write code, and so I checked it out.

I breezed through the first lesson and in the second lesson I hit a wall. The problem was that I needed to save the file as a text file. I could do that all right, but for some reason, still unbeknownst to me, my computer can not find notepad to open the text document. For three days now, I have been trying every which way I can to save my html practice document and to get it to open successfully. I don't know what it is about me that I will try the same thing fifteen times thinking maybe I am doing something wrong, and hoping that the very next try will be the one that will work. Reminds me of why I so identify with "life lesson #23: Heads bleed. Walls don't."

However, where there is a will, there is a way. And do I have a will (at least when it comes to certain trivial pursuits as this!). I think the most marvelous thing about computers is that there is always more than one way to skin a cat (FYI, I think the the most vexing thing about computers is that they will not let you be the boss!). This afternoon, I finally found a way to sucessfully torture myself by trying to write my own html code. I found that we have Microsoft's Front Page on our computer, and have been playing around in there this afternoon. I hope to be able to design a new blog template eventually, which, come to think of it, I should be able to do anyway by the end of the semester at least, because of the web page design class, which is really a class in learning to use the Dreamweaver software program to take care of the silly little details of html.

Another little distraction is the discovery that I can use watercolor pencils to shade in and add color to the pages of my paper journal, and that I can use them to paint the background on the Artist's Trading Cards that I have grown so find of creating. They are so small, and it hardly takes any time to color in a page in my journal, and then to smooth the color out with a damp cotton ball. That's how I made the background in the collage that was posted before this post. Watercolors are so pretty.

Finally, here is a funlittlesite to while away the hours, even for non-artiste types! Try painting a message to go along with your drawing. I painted two or three myself and framed them and hung them on the gallery wall, right next to the Mona Lisa. They looked good.