This week has been one hell of a week!  My pc has been acting up.  Talk about s l o w !  I went in and removed some stuff I didn’t use or need and tweeked things a bit.  I ran the registry cleaner and actually sped it up some.  LOL  I have the fast internet, at least, that is what I am paying for.  There have been a lot of storms and lots of outages in the past few weeks, so, maybe that is a part of it.  I got a little panicky earlier when I had to re-boot, after almost every piece of e-mail I read.  That sucked.

On the home front, everyone seems to be just a tad out of sorts.  The two little ones have been teary-eyed alot, especially Jaela, the drama queen.  She figured out that her high-pitched, obnoxious scream bugs the hell out of everyone.  Sometimes, she is hoarse afterwards.  I guess they have been giving in to her when she does it because it actually hurts your ears.  I am putting the skids on that.  Nicky started to give in to her the other day when she shrieked for her way.  I stopped him.  He said he didn’t want to hear her scream.  That was the point, I told him.  She knows you are going to give in to her if she does that.  So, we’re toughing it out.  We’ve had a few sessions that didn’t ever seem they would end, but, overall, I think she is getting the point.  Her scream sessions are shorter.

Nicky has been ornery.  (Maybe it is from hearing Jaela scream.  LOL)  I think it is that time of the year when school kids don’t think the last few weeks of school will ever pass.  Summer break is almost upon us.  They have already been going to the beach and the springs, plus, we have the pool.  They are ready for some time off! 

I kept Kaleb one morning so my DIL could do the shopping.  He is such a good little guy.  He loves to sit and listen to you talk.  His mommy and I were talking about stuff when she dropped him off.  He was in his seat on the sofa.  I looked down at him and he was just a smilin’ at his mom.  She wasn’t even looking at him, yet, he was tickled to pieces, watching her!  I took a couple of photos with my daughter’s camera, but, I can’t find the cord to upload them.  When I do, I will post them.  Kids!

Meanwhile, I found the coolest software!  Microsoft has come up with a program that takes a group of your images and splices them together in a panoramic image.  It is awesome!  It’s called ICE, for Image Composite Editor.  It takes the appropriate images that you load into the program and stitches them together where they look like one big panorama view.  I read the review on it and the writer did his own experiment with the program.  It seemed like it would be pretty cool, so, I downloaded it and grabbed my camera.  I stood on my front steps and shot a series of five(5) photos from left to right.  I didn’t even use a tripod.  Click, click.  Came inside, uploaded them into ICE and sat back. 

Here is what it did:

I think it is cool that, in one photo frame, you can see both ways down the street.  Neat!  Maybe no one else can see the implications where a shot like this would come in handy.  I can!  See?

I took this photo the day my son and his bride were married.  They are all a bunch of comedians!  It was an extremely casual and laid back affair, thank goodness!  But, the shot would have been improved greatly had I been able to take several shots and stitch them together.   Think of how terrific some nice outdoors shots would be.  Mountains, or the beach, perhaps.  Wow!  Have a look-see for yourself.  The program is free and it is from Microsoft.  Here is the link.

As of this point in this post, it has taken me three days and multiple reboots just to get this far.  Sheesh!

For all that, I have a little something for ya.  Several people commented on the background of my recent art challenge piece for Digital Whisper.  Since I saved it in .psd, in layers, I took all of the subject matter images off and left just the background.  Here it is if anyone else would like it.  Click to enlarge, then right-click and save to disk.

The DD at Magickal Scraps is coming along great.  All of the links, back to the first of May, are still active, as of this writing.  Snowy is in the process of working on the store.  I know I can’t wait until things are up and running once again.  Go pick up some lovelies in this colorful kit, “May Flowers”.  (Slide show at top of page)

I have something else, but, if I don’t get this posted, it won’t matter.  I’m just having too many pc issues.  It takes forever to upload anything.  I’ll see what I can do.  Either way, I will be back soon.

Take care and don’t forget to smile.  It’s better than any make-up.

Hugs,

Su