Bits&Pieces

and to think at first, I didn't love her

And now, I do. Let's face it: I'm easy. I'm putty in the hands of the aging senior canine set.

The first few days, when she was knocking over the garbage for snacks, and pulling my low-carb bread off the counter, and waking me up at 6 a.m. because she walks so loudly, I thought: THIS is exactly why I don't want a dog right now.

And then I fell in love.

She is so soft. And she smells SO good. Her ears... i have a thing for dog ears. I want to eat them, basically. And she's got her some good-uns. She is 13, as I may have mentioned, but what I didn't know for certain was confirmed by her owner: completely deaf. Oh… I cannot tell you how that made my heart go out to her.

I take her for a walk around the block, because she really can only make one block, and she walks so slowly, it's quite a different experience from Chippie "I may never get another walk again so i'm making this one count!" Smith. And the whole time, I talk to her, completely forgetting that she can't hear a single word. Sigh.

I love her.

There is a part of me that is considering asking her owner if he even wants her back. The reason is because he just inherited her from his father, and has a dog of his own, a new wife and son, and just took Brandi because she needed a place to go, just two months ago.

I'm not sure, however, if it's the confident decision-making part of me…

In other news…

• I've lost 10 pounds as of today, since i went back on Weight Watchers and started walking…every day. 10. I'm feeling pretty damned good about it. And i'm really friggin' hungry.

• Some of you might be familiar with the class I created for CKU called "Encyclopedia of Your Ordinary Life" (based on this book) which is now being taught by the very talented Carrie Owens (and if you get the chance to take this class, I strongly urge you to, because it will change how you view the minutiae of your life!)… well, yesterday, Kaylea posted about how people in the digital community are improvising and creating their own versions. You can read about that here.

Come to think of it, that might be my own fall scrapbooking project. It's the type of album one should really do in volumes.

Have a great Friday.

I lost a post

In the two years that I have used this blogging service…never, not one time, did I ever write out a post and lose it. You can't lose a post on a Mac. Come on. Everyone knows that. And yet, my post about the end of summer, the onset of fall, cooking food in pots, the evil nature of humidity, and my overzealous love of the weather widgets? Gone. Forever.

Sigh.

I will take this as a sign: write about more interesting things.

Anyhoo…here's the pic that was supposed to go with it. More later, gators.

and more talk of scrapbooking

I haven't done a chat in a while, so…tonight, come hang out with me at Scrappers Bliss, 8 p.m. CST.

I might even talk about something other than Neil Finn, but don't bank on it.

; )

And I'm glad you guys are diggin' the download!

something like 'thank you'

In my blog banner title, I always use the word 'scrapbooking.' As most of you know, that is my only real claim to fame, as both my poetry and my singing have failed to gain me notoriety of any kind. And yet, I don't much talk about scrapbooking here. So I decided to change that for today's post.

As a way of saying thank you to my blog readers, who generally are kind and don't add any newly formed openings to my person on a daily basis, I wanted to share a little album and encourage you to make one of your own.

Last spring, I had an assignment for our special issue, Album Shortcuts. And I started two album concepts, one of which showed up in the special issue, and one which sat on my table for months until last week. It's a simple theme album, designed to document the every day stuff of life. The name of the album project: It's Always Something. And it looks something like this:

To make this little album, you need a very few items, but…you could make it as elaborate as your inner designer likes.

You need:
1. An album—I used this 6 x 6 album from American Crafts.
2. Some patterned paper—I used this paper pack from BasicGrey.
3. Some cardstock.
4. An inkjet printer to print out the page titles (and a trimmer, of course).
5. Photos, and a pen to journal.

And this PDF below, which contains both the page template with journaling lines and the page title files. It's pretty straightforward. You simple trim all the elements, after printing them out on your choice of cardstock color. I used white Bazzil paper. All elements have crop marks. You'll figure it out pretty quickly.

Download SomethingAlbumTemplate.pdf

Here's what one of my spreads from this album looks like (forgive the photo, my scanner is not working!):

As you can see, in my version, it's SIMPLE. Nothing fancy here. Just the way I like it.

This is just an album of one title page, and filler spreads. You can use one big photo for each spread, or several little ones. Dress it up any way you like. It's totally up to you. I'm just giving you the page template with the lines, and the little title strips. (I also used a corner rounder on my page titles. Purely optional.)

Now…i hope the PDF works. I converted the type to outline, so it should print fine on just about any printer. Make sure you set your output to 100 percent. Hopefully, it's simple to use. Post any critical questions on this thread.

I just wanted to say thank you for listening to me always creating much ado about nothing. Believe me…this blog, and the ability to get stuff out of my head into written form is far more beneficial than therapy.

Happy scrapbooking.

hidden talents

callous fair go-ers
ambling through my neighborhood
don't puke on my grass

(I love knowing that if this graphic design gig doesn't work out, I've always got my poetry to fall back on.)

Community Ed Saves the Day

Hi…yes. That's Cathy with a 'C'. Yes. Here's my credit card. Oct. 17 you say? I have to  wait THAT long for my Best Day Ever? Okay…no, i know. Try to quell that negative self talk. Right. Okay… see you in October.

Seriously. I'm sitting at my kitchen table yesterday, in  a completely pissy mood, which stemmed mostly from a) hormonal imbalances, b) general imbalances, and c) that's pretty much how I get every three to seven days, and I opened the new St. Paul Community Ed catalog, to see about signing the boy up for swimming lessons, and i came across this. THIS is the best name EVER for a class. If I ever teach at CKU again in my life, I'm stealing that title for my class.

G5 is back. I've been working for nearly 4 hours to get stuff back where it's supposed to go. Upgrading, downloading, re-upgrading, uninstalling, re-installing. In addition to a host of malfunctions, the hard drive did in fact die during the repair process. I'd like to thank Adrian, of the Rosedale Apple Store, for having the foresight to see it coming and thusly transferring all of my data to the new, warranty-covered hard drive.

And i'd also like to prove my point about losing the dog on account of the blendability factor with this...  happy weekends, y'all.

ending the season with a bang

And two nights ago…Cole's life-changing Saints season as Mini Super Fan came to a close.

Dan took the camera and did his best to capture the magic that is Super Fan, and Mini Super Fan. Now he'll have to wait a whole 'nother year to do push ups for the fans. I hope he doesn't grow too much. I don't know if the crowd will respond as well to Medium Fan.

Have a great weekend.

I can smell the Pronto Pups already

Jennifer R. was close in her guess. I will mount this on the inside of the Honda Civic's dashboard window as I drive the gauntlet that is my neighborhood during these last two weeks of summer, and that oughta ward off those pesky "PARK HERE! $10!!!!!", over-exclamating, little fiends.

I think the flowers soften the message a bit, and really do prove my soul isn't completely black. Like I'm saying, "Out of my way, you heartless, money-grubbing bastards that have NOTHING better to do…love, Cathy."

how to lose a dog

The night before last, for nearly 5 good minutes, I lost Brandi the dog. In my home.

It's hard to lose a 75-pound chocolate lab who can't hear, see or walk well. I realize this. But when I came home from dropping off my sick G5 at the Apple Store, I came in and she was nowhere to be found on the main floor of my house. So, I went upstairs and checked the bedrooms. Nothing. Ah…the basement! So I went down to my mildly scary basement. No dog there, either.

What?

So I went back upstairs, to re-check the rooms…you know, look on the other side of the bed and in the closets. Nothing.

I wasn't panicked or anything. I actually thought, "Great. You've lost someone's dog who you don't even know."

When I came back downstairs, I realized my mistake. I didn't look closely enough at the couch in the family room, where she was wedged in between the throw pillows and completely camouflaged in her spot.

It never dawned on me that a dog who can barely walk would leap onto the furniture to catch a few z's. And besides that, Chippie never jumped on furniture. Chippie didn't really move throughout the day from her chosen location. Geez, Brandi. What's up with that?

In Other Newz

• There is a restaurant up in Nisswa, Minn., near the place we stay, and it's called Zorbaz. And every single 's' on the Zorbaz menu has been replaced with a 'z.' And it's the most obnoxious thing after a while, if you try to read it. Our pizzaz are zpilling over with zpecial zaucez. And yet strangely, something about it makes me want to do the zame thing in my perzonal life.

• My cute friend and hot mama, Emily just sent me one of these cool camera straps in the mail, and it will look so lovely adorning my neck. Thanks, Em!

• You know how your computer keyboard gets all mucky after years of use? And you try not to notice it, then all of sudden one day, it's as if you've been sharing it with a host of dirty-handed gnomes? Yeah, me too. When I go back to pick up my computer, I'm grabbing me one of these new Apple keyboards. That oughta stave off my iPhone twitch for a good month, at least.

• The Minnesota State Fair starts on Thursday. Tonight, I will be making the sign that I wrote about last year. Anyone remember what it's going to say? (Of course, you can't go back that far in my archives, because remember, I freaked out and pulled my blog that one time? because I needed to get in touch with me? Remember that one? Yeah…that was classic.)

• No other newz.

Goodbye, G5, alas…did we really know ye?

Introducing, my new set up:

Don't let that splashy, moderately outdated flat screen monitor fool you—THIS is what underpowered design stations looks like.

Ladies and gentlemen, the G5 has left the building.

Now for those of you who don't routinely base your self-esteem on what your computer allows you to do, or don't earn your healthcare plan from it, maybe my tale of woe will fall short of "this blog post is awesome, dude!" status. It's okay. Really. For some, technology failure is is about as interesting as sorting out the recycling. But for me, it is nothing less than a crisis of Hurculean proportion.

I'm not crying anymore. That's the good news. No. That was last weekend. I saw it coming and made the bold decision to BACK UP. Not everything on my hard drive, but stuff I deemed critical. Like work files. And old scans of scrapbook pages. And addresses for my favorite "adult" websites. And because of that, the November/December issue of Simple Scrapbooks will not have to be started from scratch! This is a very good thing. This is a mental health saving thing.

Maybe that's my message today, to you…right now. Back it up, sisters. If it's been a while since you've made nice little copies of the digital information that matters, today might just be your day to do so.

I have all the confidence in the world that Tom at the Apple Store in Rosedale Mall is looking out for me and my titanium clad baby. But in the meantime, bring on Photoshop with only 2 GB of RAM, and a single processor. I'm ready!