oh pot, it's always nice when you talk to kettle.

Hahahahaha!

Hooray -- my boss is going home sick and has therefore cancelled our update meeting, at which I had nothing to update. So that's a relief. I wish she had taken an actual sick day at some point, since she has been a mess all week. Ah well.

I'm writing copy for a Christmas romance anthology, and I used "It's that time of year when the world falls in love" as an intro. Now I have that song stuck in my head.

Everything crossed for you, Sue.

I so suck at lighting photographs. I'm working on composing shots and being aware of lighting. I do turn off the flash because I hate that washy foreground fill. But I wind up messing with it in post.

I don't even have official Photoshop--my pro video editor BiL gave us the program and I had to give it back. It was too complicated and intimidating. But I have a couple of much simpler photomanipulation programs, and I love them. Cropping to level, or cropping out distractions, or cropping down to focus on an object in a shot--or several distinct objects in the same shot, playing with lighting and contrast and saturation.... It's like fingerpainting in kindergarten. I've managed some fairly decent results from extremely indifferent photos.

I just keep trying to better my actual picture-taking, because I can't get over feeling like the P-shop is a cheat.

I am clearly looking at the wrong examples, because when I look for inspiration, I find selfie projects like this and this, and I'm just trying to find some clear space in a cluttered apartment. Someone suggested I make a softbox, and I had to demur gently.

Damn, why does it take *effort*???

Is it practical to preserve writing on a normal mug? Assuming I can avoid the dishwasher, is there some sort of treatment (or a specific medium) that could make markup feasible?

Mmm, gingerbread anything! Marked for later.

Clafoutis anything as well! This things a keeper.

I am going on a short roadtrip with one of my friends at the crack ass of pre-dawn tomorrow (3:30). We are a bit silly about it. It is for her oldest step-son's band competition (big deal actually and his school band is often State champions - btw - this will be mac's school). We plan to have lots of coffee and loud music and possibly some outlet shopping on the way back around noon.

And Combos. I don't know why, but somehow they became our ultimate roadtrip food.

Combos are weirdly filling, as I seem to recall. Haven't had any in a couple decades, but I used to use a pack to skip lunch. The fake cheese must have expanded in my stomach, or something. Do they have peanut butter too?

Is it practical to preserve writing on a normal mug? Assuming I can avoid the dishwasher, is there some sort of treatment (or a specific medium) that could make markup feasible?

I just saw a DIY thing about this recently, but of course I can't remember where. I think the blog said you could just use a Sharpie, but other people said no, it would wash off, and you should use a special kind of marker.

Ah! The one I saw was here, and apparently the key is baking it.