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Hey. This one's for that friend "out there" struggling for strength and for balance. Actually, I know a couple of you that are....
My prayers are with you through this time of uncertainty and change. Take courage, and take inventory.... what is it you are learning from this? YOU are not alone, there IS love in the world for you...
I love you.

Have a sweet weekend and try not to get all caught up...
in
the
Landslide...
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I took my love and I took it down
Climbed a mountain and turned around
And I saw my reflection in the snow-covered hills
'til the landslide brought it down

Oh, mirror in the sky -What is love?
Can the child within my heart rise above?
Can I sail through the changin'...ocean tides
Can I handle the seasons of my life?
I don't know.....I don't know

Well I've been afraid of changin'
because I've built my life around you
But time makes you bolder, even children get older
And I'm getting older too....

So, take my love...take it down
Climb a mountain and turn around
and if you see my reflection in the snow-covered hills...
well the landslide will bring it down
The landslide will bring it down

Line Rider

Reviewed as the Etch-o-Sketch for the U-Tube generation, you can find "Line Rider"
by using those key words in any good search engine... or just click the link ^ there!
"Top Line Rider" is a site that has some pretty inventive road trips already outlined (yep. pun intended) for the little rider dude. Check it out if you've got another spare moment or 3.
Special thanks to the "Bipanator" for turning me on to this cool and groovy site!

Trashball

NPR comes up with some crazy stuff - (exactly why I like it)!
I found this interesting tid bit under their Arts & Culture tab this past weekend. (CLICK the link and you can listen to the story)
Christopher Goodwin's blog can be found here:
TRASHBALL! A SUBSIDIARY OF EX-COMMUNICATED COMMUNICATIONS, INC.
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Made me slow down a bit to think: how fascinating, how ironic, too!
Oh, to revisit & really examine what we've throw away -and/or- see something we've deemed useless, close up, from another's perspective - someone like Mr. Good win perhaps...

My packrat Mother once told me to toss an unopened letter from an insurance carrier -she'd let the policy lapse... I pointed out that she'd not even opened the darn thing! She maintained it was trash and of 'no interest' at all, until I torn it open - [saying I was at least going to see what they'd had to say to her]. It was one a good time to be a disobedient child! I found a $230.00 check enclosed. They had refunded her premiums! Boy Howdy! Did her tune change then! Talk about one person's trash being another's treasure! lol! That was cold cash there, people!

Then... the other side of the "coin", so to speak... what kind of garbage do we hang on to - in our homes, and in our lives, that we should really, really pitch?
I mean, I've had ugly little items in my house - even moved them with me (!!?) - from one place to another - that I've absolutely hated. Couldn't stand to even look at them... why then did I keep them?
I've resolved a few years back to stop that. Boy, does it feel good to toss an ugly! I've been working on being "ruthless", when it comes to weeding out bricker-brack & with a packrat Mom, God knows I need to be! (She handed me a sack of "stuff" the other day - that I didn't need, but now have to go through, before I pitch it... because, YOU KNOW, If I try to pitch it before going through it, I'll have that mental flashback to the $230 check incident! LOL!!!)

Humm, some of us maybe inspired to do some Spring Cleaning...
so...
What about you?
You ever trash something you wish you could get back?
or...
You got anything you've been hanging on to - that has absolutely no use or value to you?

=)

Spring Fevers...

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OK. I confess. I pop over to Cathcy Color's Photo Blog every now and again - mainly to de-stress...
I may have spent too many hours in the laboratory, though, because, I do believe there's something... um, "sexy" about this tulip photo. . .
lol!
(Golly. I hope I still respect that flower and this post come morning!)
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(Go ahead. Click it. Enlarge it. so... you can get a reeeally good look at it. you know you want to... lol!)

Author Unknown

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1st things first! "Happy Birthday" to my sister! Love & LOVE s'more! Hope your day was everything you needed it to be!
Now then...
I had this drafted for a ArtZ Friday post. I just couldn't get to an honest internet connection to load it up last night...
I did this work in my first semester Photoshop class.
It was an assignment in photo composition.
It has undergone quite the transition since I first began it.
I plan on displaying the original photographs I used and the one or 2 'earlier' versions I have saved - before I arrived at this final piece, when I put up my work in the gallery, here at the Wrightstone, at semester's end.
(That's the last thing. to display/show our portfolio pieces.)
And I am at peace with the piece. lol! check the phrase-ology, I crack myself up sometimes!
I really liked the way it turned out.
I have shown finished prints to a few people already and they have asked me for copies.
I did give one to my boss for her husband - she said she wanted to make a gift out of it, to him.
She said the text, "Take with you words...."
Have a special meaning for him and between the 2 of them.

How cool is that?

=)
Dig it.

Cheerios (and nothing but good words) to you all!
dP

PS: You can click on it to enlarge, however because of the layers I had to reduce the image and so lost quite a bit from the original in order to post it on the web - so I don't believe any copy will print too well... e-mail me directly if you'd like a decent print.

Happy Spring!

Sushi Ya-Ya: I

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Take a look at these 2 web site home page designs and ... tell me what you think, 'K?
The imanginary "client" is a restaurant named: Sushi Ya-Ya.
The assignment is to come up with 2 rough designs for a web site.
This is design 1.
The site concept and metephor is "A Beachcomber's treasure"
Navigation will be through the thumbnails on the left.
Supporting pages include:
• About us
• Locations
• Menus
• Contact us
• Novelty Shop

Primary target end users would be young professionals -

Sushi Ya-Ya: II

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OK.
This is the 2nd design. I know. Same concept and site metaphor - this time the focus is more on the collectables as objects of art, themselves.
Same entry into the site navigation. I envisioned mapping the images to make them the hyperlinks to the various pages - once in the site the colors soften up and mute a bit and the icons reduce to smaller, ever present, buttons lined up horizontally along the upper right of each view pane.

Tell me,
Which one do you like better and why?

Fire Rainbow

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Rainbow's are special in my world.
A personal reminder to me, that: "God keeps his promises"

A true friend sent this picture and I thought...

"This IS too cool not to share."


THIS IS A FIRE RAINBOW - The Rarest of all naturally occurring atmospheric phenomena.

The picture was captured this week on the Idaho/Washington border. The event lasted about (1) hour.

Clouds have to be cirrus, at least 20K feet in the air, with just the right amount of ice crystals and the sun has to hit the clouds at precisely (58) degrees. .... or at least that's what the e-mail said!

Dig it.
=)

Gettin' snapy

Ok...
maybe it's the stress I"ve been under...
But...
Monday.
Driving back to work at the end of a nice lunch break.
Beautiful day!
Happy & healthy... =)
I am the only car on the road.
'The road' happens to be a wide, pleasant, paved residential street that rolls into a school zone and then stretches on down to business district and McCook's fabled cobblestones (the bricks).
I'm behaving my self respectably behind the wheel - speed limit - watching side street intersections (even though I'm on a 'through' street & all cross traffic would have stop signs...)
2 blocks from school zone it happens.
A behemoth SUV backs out of a driveway right in front of me!
It's almost like they waited for me to get up close and then at just the right second to screw me up - "I Own The Road" backeds right on out, onto the street.
Ou............
[I was So NOT impressed!]
Slam brakes!
Get a good, tight grip on that stearing wheel!
Then I get a clear looksie at the driver.
Some woman with a cel phone cocked up to her ear!
Ou............!!!!
NOW I WAS impressed! ...and not in a good way, mind you!
I mean what the heck is up with that???
If you've dialed the number .... in your drive way.... why not just finish the flippin' call while sitting in your flippin drive way, huh?????
Why, oh, why do we need you to back out in to traffic, at such a time as that???
Hey! Never mind the fact that I was the only one out there & headed her way - I still get counted as traffic!
Or, maybe we should give a little more thought to that - I was the ONLY vehicle heading that way - couldn't she have just let me get on by before she backed her big ol' boat out onto the road???
Heaven's to mergatroid!
I'm thinkin' this other driver, 'Ms Cell-lo Lame-brain' is just dang lucky I'm not a sociopath with a shotgun.
Otherwise, I might have just blasted away at her!
C'mon people!
A little common sense, please!?
*sheesh!*

!?

From my e-mail land...

"A wish for the more difficult people in your life... "

(Glad these inventive minds are on my side!)

=)

An exercise: composition with typography.
I actually did this last Spring, but can't find my original files so I had to replacate it.
That was a bit of a process, however I like this new one much better than the original.
(the quilted effect with the patterned Q over the pattern background... much more interesting than the plain yellow I had going before.)
This will be a portfolio piece.
I'll try to post them all by 'show time'
Hugs!
D.~

1 Corinthians 12:1...

There are powers inside of you which, if you could discover and use, would make of you everything you ever dream or imagined you could become.
~ Orson Swett Marden

Just wait... (lol!)

Somethin' to think about...

Mind set matters....
I was watching a late night show that took some e-mail tom-foolery out to the ''average Joes" on the streets of some big city. They got the least likely to be cyber savvy people to read some stuff out loud for their cameras. One lady (accompanied by a sweet looking gentleman I took to be her husband) stood out for me. When they came to a 'lol' abbreviation - she obviously didn't know what it meant, moments later, feeling the pressures of that rolling camera, she interpreted it to mean: Lot of Love... isn't that sweet?


"It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog."
-- Mark Twain

"Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire did. She just did it backwards and in high heels."
-- Former Governor of Texas, the Late Ann Richards (9/1/33 - 9/13/06)

"You can't be truly rude until you understand good manners."
-- Rita Mae Brown, novelist

"My mother always told me I wouldn't amount to anything because I procrastinate. I said, 'Just wait.'"
-- Judy Tenuta in Early To Rise, 4/14/06

"Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy."
-- Dale Carnegie as quoted in Early To Rise, 1/18/07

LoL, ya'll!
D.~

Peter Max...

Do you remember him?
C'mon! Remember the Beatles' "Yellow Submarine"?
Ifn you don't know don't remember... here's a bio-link to Peter Max.
and...
Here's a link to his official Home Page .
I loved theAnimated Scene (found under the fun button)

Note to self: When pulling together my new web page(s)... always include a "FUN" button. . . lol!

Cheerios!
D.~

When words fail...

“Occasionally in life there are those moments of unutterable fulfillment which cannot be completely explained by those symbols called words. Their meaning can only be articulated by the inaudible language of the heart.”

-- Martin Luther King, Jr. ~


Happy weekend!
D.~