So yesterday was my last day at work. Stretching before me now is a whole month to figure stuff out. Yesterday was also my friends Ram and Mezan’s respective birthdays. It was a lot of fun to go out for dinner and before we left, Ram was awesome enough to let me borrow his Canon DSLR for a couple weeks. I’ve been drooling over the Canon Rebel series from afar for a while now, and it will be nice to actually get to try one out. Especially now that I have this time off and I want to blog my way through it, having a camera that takes great pictures will be super helpful, I think.
I’m a very visual person, and being able to see the world around me through a camera lens, while I decide which path to take, will be a different and challenging experience. I’m usually too wrapped up in myself to remember to take pictures of anything. Yet, whenever I do, I’m always so happy with them. They end up meaning a lot to me, like my grad photos that I just edited and uploaded this morning. I was happy to have those pictures and with them, the ability to remember that moment clearly. Since I am trying to slow down, be more deliberate and think about things more, the camera should help. I just have to remember not to get so caught up in it that I’m not actually experiencing the moment. The perfect capture every time is not necessary.
But on the side of the slightly ironic, what do you suppose happened today, on this, my first day off? Why, I feel like I’m coming down with something, that’s what. The feeling I had in my lungs and chest this morning was as though I had spent last night puffing my way through an entire pack of cigarettes. Something I have not actually done in a long time, and certainly didn’t do last night. I really hope this doesn’t knock me down for the count, but I was planning on forcing myself to take this time slowly, so this may just be the universe’s way of making sure that I do.
You know, it really is amazing how much of a weight I feel lifted off of me, just since I got the okay from my boss to take this time off. It’s shocking really, especially since earlier this week I could feel myself drowning fast. I’m almost worried that this euphoria will mask some of the goals I have for this time. This feel-good surge will be all too fleeting if I wind up right back where I started after this month is over. I just can’t let that happen. I’ve been letting almost everything blow past me in a daze of unresponsiveness lately. If this is going to work, it will have to be deliberate.
Fingers crossed and here we go.
In my travels around the web I tend to find cool stuff. So I think to myself, why not share?
Other people like finding links to free, cool stuff too, right?
This week: All things Font-y!
- First up, who hasn’t dreamed of turning their own handwriting into a font on the computer? I know I have! Well, I’ve come across a couple of sites that allow you to do it! How cool is that? I plan on doing this sometime very soon.
- By far, in my humble opinion, the best site for free fonts has got to be Da Font (pictured above.) There, you’ll find fonts for both PCs and Macs, in all sorts of shapes and sizes. Some free for personal use and others just plain free.
- How many of you have ever wondered how the heck to get your regular, old keyboard to type out all those crazy accented letters and odd symbols? Well, you can stop wondering because these websites have a bunch of codes for the Extended and Special Character Sets.
- And on a font-y tangent, it was this awesome site that I used to make the word cloud of me the other day. The plus is that you can save and use your created word clouds any way you choose (as long as you let people know you created it using the Wordle site.)
Anyhoo, that’s all I’ve got for you this week. Check back in 2 weeks and I’ll probably have found some more! You know, because the internet is awesome like that.
Okay, so you know how I’m always saying that I’m broke? Well, here’s why!
Yup, that’s right. Last weekend I bought a Macbook! Surprise! (‘Cause I know some of you are.)
Up till now I’ve been slogging along using my old 2005 Dell Craptop. (No offense, Dell.) But ‘Crappy’ was dying fast. On the dimmest screen setting the battery would only last half an hour, and just being on meant that Crappy was blowing and ticking as loudly as any ’90s desktop tower. Things would crash. Things wouldn’t open. Things would freeze. My brain was exploding daily.
But what, do you ask, was the final straw that made Dave and I get up last Sunday morning and say, “today’s the day”? Crappy started asking me to connect to the internet. Incessantly. Using a dial-up connection. When I was already connected wirelessly to my high-speed cable modem. Yeah. The end, right?
So here the two of us are. Dave decided to document the unveiling because I was that excited. If you look closely you can see a) the computer and I having a moment and; b) the ‘crazy eyes’ of joy and excitement in more than one picture. This little guy is awesome. So silent and battery life like you wouldn’t believe! Sigh, this is the start of a beautiful friendship, I can just feel it.
