Thanks, you guys, for your photo editing suggestions. I was emailing with local reader Jean, and I realized that there’s nothing I need to do that I probably couldn’t do perfectly well with PaintShop Pro. It’s not like I really need to PhotoShop my pictures all to hell and back – I prefer the more natural look, so aside from lightening, sharpening, and cropping pictures, I don’t really do anything that should be all that difficult. I’m going to get me a book that teaches me how to use PaintShop Pro, and if I find that it’s not meeting my needs, I’ll move over to PhotoShop Elements and then maybe some of your other suggestions.
I had no idea, by the way, that PhotoShop is THAT expensive. Holy cow! For a price like that, I hope they provide you with an instructor who’ll come to your house and yell at you for doing it wrong and maybe bake you a cake on the way out.
Thanks, also, those of you who recommended the over-the-door towel rack. I know I’ve seen those before, but had completely forgotten that they exist – that’s exactly what I need, and I’ll be looking for one when I go out tomorrow. Several of you suggested putting a towel rack on the side of the cabinet, but I don’t want to do that, because I’m not sure how well it would work (I don’t think the cabinet’s made of solid wood) and I don’t want to mark up the side of the cabinet in case I suddenly decide I don’t need ANY of that bathroom stuff, toss it, and decide to use it for something else.
And yes, Smocha, Fred could move the towel rack to another spot, but the issue is that there are no other spots in the bathroom where the towel rack would work, unless he hung it over the litter box and I don’t relish the thought of drying myself with a litterbox-smelling towel.
So, Monday night Fred said something, and I realized that I hadn’t, as he’d asked via email earlier in the day, taken two pounds of coffee out of the freezer and left them by the side door so he’d remember to take them to work with him. Yes, they provide coffee at work, but it’s Folger’s or Maxwell House, and his delicate taste buds shudder at the very idea and so he has a coffee maker in his office and he makes himself the fancy stuff and won’t share it with anyone else, because did they pay for the fancy stuff? They did not.
I said “Oh, I forgot to take your coffee out, why don’t you go do that while I finish making dinner?”, and he gave me a skeptical “You just PRETENDED to forget, you always make me do everything WOE IS ME” look and he went and started looking through the freezer. A moment later he said “We may have a problem.”
“WE don’t have a problem,” I said. “I don’t drink coffee!” I helped him look through the freezer, and sure enough, he was down to one pound of coffee. While I was searching, I came across some frozen broccoli I’d put in the freezer a few months ago. At the time, I was making stir-fry a couple of times a week for lunch, and so I’d bought a big bag of fresh broccoli and separated it out and froze it so that when I needed broccoli, I’d have the perfect amount I needed, on hand. Naturally, I’d fallen out of love with the stir fry and moved on to something else and the broccoli had been sitting in the freezer unused.
“I’m never going to use this,” I said, taking the frozen bags out of the freezer and setting them on the counter. “I’m going to let them thaw, I bet the pigs would love some broccoli.”
And so, on the counter the broccoli sat all evening long and into Tuesday morning. Mid-morning, when I was getting ready to make breakfast, I rediscovered the broccoli and decided to open the bags and put the broccoli into the pig bucket sitting on the counter so that when Fred got home from work, he could add whatever he was taking out to them (which he mixes with their Pig Chow) and the pigs could have themselves a nice, healthy snack.
I cut open the first bag and dumped the broccoli into the pig bucket, then tossed the bag into the sink (Food Saver bags can be washed and reused, as long as they aren’t holding meat. I mean, I’m sure bags that held meat could probably be sanitized enough for reuse, but I don’t like to take the chance) and turned to grab the second bag. I was about to cut the top off the second bag when the smell from the broccoli I’d tossed into the pig bucket hit my nose.
As an aside, let me inform you that I have a fairly strong stomach. I clean out litter boxes twice a day, and the damage Joe Bob does to a litter box – both visually and olfactorally – would do a weaker-stomached person in. I eat lunch at my desk which overlooks the back yard, and it’s not uncommon for me to look up from my lunch to see a cat making the back yard their super-sized litter box, and I am unfazed and go right back to eating. We routinely discuss cat and chicken poop while we’re eating, I suffer cat farts with mere exclamations of disgust, I walk through clouds of septic tank stank with just a grimace. I am not easily overcome by the nastiness of daily life, is what I’m telling you.
So when the smell from the opened bag of broccoli hit my nose, I was surprised to find myself standing over the sink gagging. It was the nastiest thing I have ever smelled in my entire life.
It smelled like evil.
Holding my nose closed, I dumped the broccoli from the pig bucket into the trash, took the trash out to the trash can, and came back inside to find the awful stench dancing merrily from one end of the house to the other. It took the better part of a day that included scrubbing down the counters, sinks, and pig bucket with bleach, lighting matches, spraying air freshener, and lighting candles in every room of the house before the smell was completely gone.
And that’s always a fun way to spend your day.
These goddamn kittens are never going to open their eyes. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that they’re all going to be blind (well, except for Inara, whose eyes are actually open) and plan to take up a collection to buy little white canes and miniature seeing-eye dogs for them.
(pic) Little pink toes and little round belleh.
(pic) Kaylee, nursing.
(pic) Not an uncommon sight – River, Inara, and Zoe snoozing in a pile while Kaylee communes with the wall of the box. She likes to scratch at it, I think she likes the sound it makes.
There are some truly awful pictures up over at Flickr. Like I said yesterday, I’m refraining from using the flash so as to avoid damaging their brand new eyeballs (assuming there are eyeballs IN there) but I couldn’t let their 12th day go by unrecorded.
(pic) Newt wonders who that good-lookin’ guy in the mirror is.
Previously
2007: I think you can imagine our happiness.
2006: No entry.
2005: Always/ Sometimes/ Never
2004: Erin should be more concerned with the fact that he’s been killing people and burying them in the back yard and less with his lying.
2003: I believe there’s a seat in the ass-singe section with my name on it.
2002: Sucks to be her.
2001: “Fuuuuuuuuck,” he said.
2000: Don’t come back here looking for no entry, my friends.