i love my new banner

yesterday, i discovered these brushes through dooce that can do magical things with photoshop (which is magical to begin with). i managed to waste approximately an hour and a half of good work time playing with various photoshop filters and brushes. it's dangerous. i know only a couple of folks still come by here with any degree of regularity, but if either of you want a new banner, let me know. i'd love to make one for you.

in other news, i'm going to houston tomorrow. i'm excited because it means that the temperature will have to be more than 30 degrees. i don't even care if it rains the whole time... wait, scratch that. i do care, but it would still be preferable to this past week of "feels like 2."

yesterday, i was on the subway, and i saw something, and i thought... now this would be a really funny thing to write about on my blog... or at least somewhat funny thing to write about, and by the time i finished thinking all that, the original thought was gone. just like that. amazing.

new toy

this afternoon i got a new laptop. i waited maybe 24 hours after the first zig-zagging lines appeared on my old laptop screen before zipping over to the apple store on 5th ave to buy myself a new one. it is a beautiful little machine, and it zooms through documents five times as fast as my old powerbook. as much as i am enjoying my new toy, i can't help but feel a little disappointed in myself. recently, mil and i started a habit of going to these quaker meetings. though we have yet to make any kind of a commitment to one religion over another, we seem to like the silent spirituality of the unprogrammed quaker meetings. i try to use the quiet time to decompress and process the week. i also contemplate the possibility of becoming less materialistic. so far, i haven't had much luck (case in point stares back at me blankly). i try to de-newyorkify myself a bit as well... smooth out some of the prickly bits of my character that have built up after 12 years in the city. unfortunately, by the time friday rolls around any mellowness achieved in the meeting is long gone. all it takes is a woman sneaking in front of me at the exit turnstile at 116th street station... or a couple of folks walking side-by-side on a narrow sidewalk, not bothering to make room for me coming in the opposite direction. it's amazing how long i can let something like that steam me up for absolutely no good reason. 13 hours later i'm still wishing bad karma on that first lady. anyway, all i can say is i'm working on it... that's good for something, no?