Winter’s log, earthdate 201505.22

*There has been an update to the “As Seen On…” page – this one’s for you, Josh! 😉

Half past four – about the right-ish time to start writing, I guess 🙂 Well, I’ve been busy occupied – with lots of little things today. I did a very small amount of Rifting, but the lure of the graphics was too strong. I fiddled around, and fiddled around, trying this… that… and something else… I was trying, at one stage, to create a “haze” (aura, halo, whatever) behind a highly stylized tree brush that I’d put a very nice finish on – it was on a dark, midnight blue background, and I thought a soft, mystic haze behind it might look rather fetching… but no matter what I did, the damn thing looked dreadful! Somehow or other, the “haze” was getting covered in the same style as the tree, even though I was doing it on a different layer! In the end I removed the style from the tree, and the haze worked perfectly – only it didn’t look nearly as nice as I thought it would I abandoned the tree… Then I started experimenting with some flowering vine brushes – there were only four of them, but they’re really stunning. I made a vertical “prototype” of each one and asked himself which one he liked best. He chose one, and asked “what do you want to do with it?” Honestly! Men! “What did I want to do with it??!!” I didn’t have a clue! It’s pretty! (they’re all “pretty“!), and it should be used… for something! Then I wondered what would happen if I laid it on its side… i.e. horizontally… It looked good that way, too, but one end curled up, and the other curled down. It looked “right” when it was vertical, but it looked a little “odd” on the horizontal. I wondered if I could use it for a header… I wouldn’t have room for text, but that was OK, I could let the template put its own text in. I’d have to make it a little smaller… but if I made it quite a bit smaller, I could duplicate it, reverse it, and put it end to end with the other one, then it wouldn’t look funny, curling a different way at each end. Hmmm… I experimented. It looked terrific! 🙂 Later on I might try making it a bit more smaller, to see if I can fit some text in with it – if I decide to try to use it as a header, that is – but I don’t want to make it too much smaller – it darkens up the colours too much when you do that. It’s complicated! The styles I use – well, most of them, anyway – put a one-pixel-wide black (or a very dark coloured) line around the whole graphic – this makes the graphic look nice and crisp, but if you make the graphic too small, that black line gets too close to the other black lines and ends up making the whole graphic look dark, ugly, and “clumpy”. And besides… you’re not given very much room for your header – so I’m thinking that if I make the pretty horizontal vine smaller and add some text, the whole thing’s going to look horribly crowded and squashed. I’ll try it and see, but I’m afraid I don’t feel hopeful. I’ll also see how it looks with just the graphic, leaving the template to insert its own, horribly boring and plain, text. 🙂 Well, you’ll either see it… or you won’t 🙂

We also looked for, and found, three other places to go and look at tomorrow. All in Templestowe, and all within what could laughingly be called “an enthusiastic (and very long) walk” from The Pines Shopping Centre! Not for the likes of me, however! 😉  Two of the ones we found today are two storey or split level, and the other two are flat, ground level houses. They all look a bit like “McMansions”, but… what’s wrong with McMansions, anyway? You know, around about this time last year, we wouldn’t even have considered moving into a house with stairs… I wouldn’t have been able to handle them. Now, if I can scamper up and down four floors worth of stairs, three times a day, I reckon I’d be able to handle one floor! (in bare feet, I can scamper! Put shoes on me, and I can barely hobble… I hate shoes!) Mind you, I’d have to do it twelve times a day to get in the exercise I’m getting here, and we’d be losing the number and variety of shops at Shoppingtown, for the convenience of living closer to Autograph and My Size! 😉 So anyway, tomorrow should be an interesting day. I have no idea why, but the house in Flowerdrum Close has rather taken my fancy – maybe it’s because I absolutely loved the movie “The Flowerdrum Song“, or maybe it’s the idea of tipping a whole heap of dirt into the swimming pool and having a veggie garden at long last, or then again, it might be because it has a nice, high, security gate… but I’m already starting to think of it as “mine”, which is very foolish! I’m pretty sure, too, that it won’t be nearly as nice as I think it’s going to be (then again, I didn’t think that our old place in Glen Waverley was going to be very nice from what we could see from the outside – but it was! So, who knows?! 🙂 ) Anyway, I’ll tell you all about them tomorrow night 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. Well, I knew it was coming. I didn’t quite go up – I stayed the same, at 90.5kg. I’ll be up tomorrow though – this was sort-of the “run up” before the high jump!

Julian went to the doctor this morning about the scans he had done of his ankle. He’s injured his tendon – I’m not sure what it’s called, but it’s the tendon that runs down the length of the top of the foot, and under another one that goes across the top of the foot (or something like that, anyway! “Damn it Jim, I’m an artist, not a doctor!” (with apologies to Dr. McCoy from Star Trek, the Original Series)) So the upshot of it all is, he has to go to a Physiotherapist – guess who? 🙂 And where? 🙂 My old “trainer”, I. A., at “Bounce“, where I used to go to the gym, until I found that going up and down the stairs was much more easier and far less stressful than exercising! 😉

So, with four houses to go and look at tomorrow, I expect that I shan’t be doing much Rifting, or graphic-ing! But there will be loads of stuff to tell you about the four places we are seeing, and about the neighbourhood, and the agents – apparently this lady Carmen, whom we saw yesterday, is quite the go-getter! She gave us some references, and one of them happened to be a couple who used to live here at The Ridge, on the next floor up – she sold that place first to them, and then later on, for them, so because we know them anyway, Julian called them and had a nice long chat with Mr. B.  Apparently they waxed quite lyrical about Carmen, and told Julian that she’d sold six other properties for them as well, at very good prices! (and a very good commission for herself, too, I’d imagine!) So that’s about it from me for the evening – is anyone going to be watching “Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries” at half past eight on ABC1 tonight? We will be! 🙂 Be sure to drop in again tomorrow night! Find out if my weight did go up, or stayed the same – for another day! And wouldn’t it be a laugh if we’d liked one of the places so much that we’d gone and bought it? Well, I don’t know about a “laugh”, but it would certainly be a surprise! For us, more than you, I think! 😉 Anyway, until then, please, bee good! remember that it’s good to be a pessimist, because you’ll never be disappointed, but… above all, please… stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂