Oh, wait, maybe I should back up a bit.
I managed to salvage some of Saturday night after my rant. Took about 45 minutes but I did, in fact, get over it and even thought about heading out to a club. None of the bands in town were anything I really wanted to see/hear so instead I picked up some take-out and a movie and managed to do a few sketches while watching Premonition (not bad; not great, but not bad).
Sunday I went over to Mom’s to install her new towel rack which had given her a significant amount of trouble earlier in the week. Everything has to be an adventure, right? One trip to Home Depot, two sets of drywall-mounts, and several backup plans (I think we finally finished on Plan E?) later that bad-boy is installed and no way are we moving it. Ever. Mom remarked, after the craziness, “Well, it’s not perfectly straight.” At that point I told her she’d just have to fluff up the towel on that side and she’d never notice, because it was /not/ moving. Luckily she wasn’t serious about nudging it to be a hair more level. Work got a kick out of the ordeal but at least I got to play with power tools and then Mom took me to dinner. 🙂
Today, however. Today. Monday. Oh my word was it. I hit cranky at about 11 and moved into catty around 2. Then I had the wonderful idea (since the blue pencil was not erasing well from the grabby paper I mistakenly bought last shopping trip) that I would scan the next several ‘strips’ (the bio pages that are 3 weeks of procrastinating filler… shhhh! don’t tell anyone!) and color and letter them digitally.
What fresh hell did I get myself into? I found a great tutorial only, see, I have Photoshop Elements (came with the tablet) and I can do most anything I need to in it. Except, apparently, channels, and that’s what this super simple and understandable tutorial had me using. Layers weren’t quite cutting it so I remembered that GIMPshop (the open source equivalent) was on Sonja so I go to check and see if it’ll do layers. Sure! Okay, minor setback but we’re working now.
Nope. I don’t care what they say about it being a great stand-in, for this task it was not up to the challenge. Or, rather, I wasn’t. I searched for a better tutorial and, honestly, learned some things in the process, but by 9:30 I hadn’t gotten the first pixel colored. I was almost to the point of putting up a filler image (filler for filler, I know, I know) but I couldn’t let myself. So, blue pencil notwithstanding, I did it my usual way (with brush markers) and lettered totally on the fly (which is why there is a typo… hypo? wripo? whatever it is, I totally wrote RA4ND0M and totally didn’t catch it til I was done), scanned it and then proceeded to upload the wrong version of the image (and this is why I check each post before it goes live).
Add to this the rude salesman on the phone and idiot coworkers, I’ve had a hell of a day. On the eventual purchase list gets added a copy of CS2 (or whatever is available by then), the to-do list gets a bullet for finding non-photo blue mechanical pencil leads so my sketches are even less noticable, and the realization that something has /got/ to give. Soon.
If I’d have given into the panic from an hour ago I think I would have dropped out of the SCA and quit eHow immediately just to get some pressure off my shoulders. Thankfully I realize that the current crazy-load is temporary and I just need to manage things better. Nothing will change for the next few months and I can–and will–deal. It’s my personal projects that are languishing and while many would say those are the most important, I’ve made committments that I’m going to do my best to keep because that’s important to me. Fun and sleep are overrated, anyway.