Thursday, May 25, 2006

I am going camping this weekend! I love camping. Although.....it is supposed to be not warm and fairly rainy, which is not ideal.....but still will be a ton-o-fun. We are going to the same place we went last Labor Day, Rasar state park. Ethan and I are staying Friday 'til Monday, but some others are staying an extra night. We are all set with camping gear now. We have our ginormous tent that Mom gave us years ago, an air mattress (that we got for when Mom came over), a tarp (we bought it Wednesday.....hard to believe we had no tarp), a fancy schmancy electric lantern (Justin had one last year and it was REALLY bright and nice to have), and a big cooler with wheels. It is, sadly enough, too tall to fit in the trunk, but it is a nice one. It is square in shape instead of rectangular, and taller than most, and has some cup holders cut into the lid. We needed a really big one for when Ethan goes boar hunting--he will have 100lbs at least of meat to bring home. He may end up buying some cheapie styrofoam ones to fit everything in...this one is 70 quarts or 70 gallons or whatever they measure coolers by. 70 something. The only bigger one I saw was the one that fits across the bed of a truck. Seeing as how we have no truck, we decided against going with that one. And by 'we' I mean 'me', since I was the one doing the choosing and purchasing.
So....tent, tarp, air mattress, cooler......we still don't have sleeping bags, but we have a million quilts that mom has made us, and they work just fine.

Last year there was a torrential downpour of rain, and we improvised a roof by tying grocery bags together to make a rope and using them to hold up a tarp over the picnic table. Hopefully not quite so bad this year.....only 30% chance of rain for saturday and sunday, and Monday should be nice....but a 60% chance of rain on Friday........

AND.....I bought a wacom tablet to use with my laptop. It is still taking a bit to get used to it, but I like it so far. Lots of possibilities. And, the pen is pressure sensitive, so if I push harder I draw a thicker line, and if I push softer it is a thinner line. Pretty cool! There is a mouse for the tablet, too, and it works like a regular wireless mouse. Very exciting. I did a layout yesterday of Ethan at the microbrew festival we went to in Reno last year. Entitled :Got beer??. Very exciting. I will finish tweaking it and add it to my digiscrapping website at some point. Not my finest work, but my first digital layout attempt in a couple months. Actually, maybe more than that.....it has been quite a while since I did that......

Lots o scrapping. I have to choose paper or computer now, too many options! I discovered that I can play a DVD movie on the laptop while I scrap in my little room, so I am entertained while I make a mess. And I DO make a mess....I need to wheel my last cart in there, it has a drawer of paper scraps, and I need to add all the ones taking over the desk into the drawer so I can actually SEE the desk. And figure out everything else, too. I still need a chair that is adjustable in height, and can swivel. I like swivelling. The desk is a bit tall now, I find myself kneeling a lot of the time (until my feet fall asleep). The cats have taken to hanging out in the shelves below the desk (which is fine by me...nothing they can hurt down there), or sitting on my lap while I scrap (Shadow), although the lap thing doesn't work well. Shadow can see what I am up to, then he notices the strings and teeny bits everywhere and wants to play with them. We can't let him into the computer room, either. He wants to chase the mouse across the screen. Cute, because he is a cat and it is a mouse, but not so cute when he furs up the keyboard and sits on it.

What else....oh--we are so in love with a new show! Actually, it is an old show, but we recently found it and really like it. Anyone remember a movie that came out last year called Serenity?? Billed as possibly the best sci-fi movie ever?? I don't think it is the best ever, but it WAS good. We found out that it is based off a TV show called Firefly that was cancelled after its first season. We found some episodes, then bought the entire season. What a great show!! I can't believe it was cancelled! The show is basically a sci-fi show with chinese and western influences. I know, I know.....sounds really odd, but it is good! The chinese influence is in some of the clothing and decor, and whenever people get upset and curse, they switch to speaking in Chinese, so the censors don't get upset. People generally argue in chinese/english, and yell at each other in chinese/english. It really works. The western thing is that the show is about people who are not happy about the new government that is taking over all the planets and trying to rule them, so these people have gone to the very edges of civilization, where there aren't always futuristic amenities--people ride horses instead of cars or flying machines, and live on ranches. Almost feels like the 1800s. Such a good show, though!! The show is based on a group of people living on a ship called Serentity, and working as sort of theives to do jobs for money , and try to screw over the government that they don't like.

Sounds really stupid, but it is a really good show. The one-liners they have are just so funny! Excellent writing.

Anyway..........Camping, scrapbooking, TV watching........busy life for a busy girl!!

11 comments:

Sabrina said...

Oh wow, camping will be such fun!! Have a good time!!

Davinie Fiero said...

Hey, I'm going camping too! Just Saturday to Sunday, because Steve is on shift Friday and Monday. But it still counts! We are headed to Suttle Lake, I think. Well, maybe. Payton got some of the Raegan to Morgan gunk, so she and I may stay home. Poor thing needs to learn out to huck (?) a loogie, and she'd be good to go. Poor horizontal thing!

And .... what the heck is a wacum (sp) tablet. I have been reading about these but have never seen them before. They seem to do great work though. Is this a digital scrapbooking thing? I need to get more proficient in Photoshop.... I need to learn more about editing my photos and playing with different ways to do my journaling on my photos, etc. It's the rage! Get "Designing with Type" or "Freestyle" both put out by Autumn Leaves. Very cool. Anyway, cool beans on the camping, and cool beans on the waucum tablet. :)

Sabrina said...

Here, this is what you need to buy for camping...

QVC.com

Item Number M8961

Playhut 14'x 8' Deluxe Portable Hexagonal Screen Room

It folds up pretty small, and how USEFUL!

alyca said...

Oh....a wacom tablet is a special kind of mouse. It is a square plasticky thing that plugs into a USB port, just like a mouse. There is a wireless mouse you can use that only works when it is on top of the tablet, but the really cool thing is the pen. There is a pen, feels like a regular pen, as far as size and weight, and the tip of the pen is your cursor. You can write things for scrapbooking using your own handwriting, because you are using a PEN. If you put lined paper on the tablet part (there is a clear plastic top that lifts up that you can put things underneath, such as paper or other guides to follow), you can write paragraphs of stuff. It comes with a program to convert handwriting to typed words for documents, but it is just really helpful for detail work--getting the cursor EXACTLY where you want it, and moving it JUST the way you want to move it. It even has a feature where if I flip the pen over, the backside automatically functions as an eraser, just like on a regular pencil. So I don't have to go and choose the erasor thing and all that. And, the harder I push down, the bigger the brush I write with is, or the bigger the eraser is. It claims to have 520 different pressure levels for that detail work.

Back in Crane, Mr. Bennett had some sort of similar tablet with a pen (not cordless), that worked similarly. An awesome thing that can be done is to find a picture of a flower or some cool thing and put it on the tablet, then trace around it with the pen, for cool doodling on scrapbook pages, if you are not artistic (like me). Lots o possibilities.
I like that the pen works within an inch of the tablet--I can move it around without touching the tablet, and the cursor moves with it, then if I tap it, it is like clicking, and there is a button on the side, under my index finger, that I push for a double click, and another for right clicking. It fits well and is comfortable to hold, just will take a bit to get used to remembering the differences between this and a regular mouse.
But...very cool. A bit spendy, but I really like it, and mice these days are spendier and spendier anyway.

Davinie Fiero said...

So.... I wouldn't have to be a digital scrapper to use it? I could doodle, etc., on my photos and print them out and scrap as usual?

Davinie Fiero said...

@$200? I'm looking ahead to Christmas... that or a wishblade! :)

alyca said...

Actually, thw wacom was only $110, so maybe you can get it earlier.....

You can do all sorts of things to print out on photos, not just for digiscrapping

Davinie Fiero said...

We camped at Suttle Lake for about an hour..... pulled in, set the camper, had lunch, decided we weren't THAT die hard, pulled up the jacks, and headed home. We have a baby that's not even two months old..... the weather was toooo nasty. Very windy, raining, and cold. PJ and I already had a touch of a cold, and I didn't think Morgan's 3 minute attention span for fishing would be worth the pneumonia. Hope you had more fun! :)

Davinie Fiero said...

Ooh. a wacom AND a wishblade! :)

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