Watery Wednesday Wrap-ups

I do hope those of you who read this blog remembered that I was up to my arss in tax returns and would not be counted on to blog with any regularity. Just in case you thought I drowned....

I almost did, but only figuratively. Man, the procrastinators on my client list are just gonna have to speed things up next year, cuz I'm getting too old for double all-niters (yep, I did not sleep from Saturday evening until Monday afternoon, then took a nap and stayed up again Monday night, just barely making the midnight deadline on my last 2 returns). When folks bring you moving boxes full of craps on the Thursday and Friday before a Monday deadline, ya kinda haveta stay up. But, no worries, they will get theirs, for I will remember this at invoicing time! LOL

Bad thing is, I did not have time to do my usual thorough start-to-finish on each client, so all my paperwork is still to be done for them, like document file copies, printing, collating, packaging and invoicing. And that all needs to be done this week in order to get paid before Christmas, because it starts all over again right after that! And plus, I want some time off. I want to at least pretend to be a seasonal worker! LOL

So anyway, back to drowning...good segueway to the one thing I did do yesterday (Tuesday) besides sleep all.day.long. I took off with my camera and snapped some shots of water for this week's Funky Photo Friday challenge. I really had fun doing this, although it was more difficult to get interesting shots than I anticipated. Once I figured out to use my zoom, though, it got easier. Didn't get up early enough to catch sunrise and didn't want to wait long enough to get sunset, so I had to settle for overcast midday. Then, I took the photos and editied them in PaintShopPro, some lightly, some heavily. So, I learned some new moves, not that I'm gonna remember them, LOL. One can hope.

That first shot (above) looks like a waterfall, right? Well, It's not. It's water rushing out of a bayou dredging outflow pipe into a containment pond. What I did was zoom in on the water when I snapped it. Then, back at my computer, I used the curves function to add some heavy duty whitecaps. I love how it came out, but I confess I did not know beforehand that I was going to do that. I was just playing around with the different things in my PSP. I had read of lots of people using this functions, so I thought, what does this do? Me likey!

This next photo (at left) is just barely edited with an unsharp mask and a tiny bit of brightening. This is a tributary gully creek that winds through my city and has the infamous nickname Gator Gully. More than a few alligators have been sighted on its banks over the years. There's luckily a safe concrete perch near the banks where I stood to take the shot, so no Aimeslees were sacrificed for it, LOL.

I have to admit, I had the most fun editing this photo (at left). This is just a boring old shot of our dirty brown bayou and bank near my house that flows into Galveston Bay. Boring shots like these make me want to glitz them up, so I went exploring in PSP's Effects. This one was done using the Rotating Mirror Reflection Effect. What it does is rotate part of your image however you tell it. This one is a very slight rotation, clockwise -- can you see it? What is cool is that it created a digital smush in the upper righthand quadrant that kind of looks like there's a buddhist fairy with wings sitting there on the grass. Click on any of these for a larger view.

Well, I have to say that during my overtime at work I almost literally ached to do some creative playing. I missed it that much. And I even missed blogging. Yet, no rest for the weary. As I explained, I'll be working on finishing up the paperwork, tomorrow it's to the dentist for a cleaning, and then I will be on vacation until November 1. Not from blogging, I'll still blog daily (ok, that's the plan). But I won't be crafting for that time. The crafting supplies are going to get packed up and put away, and I'm going to tackle the remaining parts of our house reorganization.

My goal is to have most of it done by Oct. 28th, which is the next day off for DH. I need to move my computer and internet cable to my front office from the family room, as well as clean up all the accumulated crap from the family room and the front dining room and office. Then, once that goal is met, I can work in my spare time on cleaning out the back 10' x 22' room behind the garage and making it into our fitness gym! I am so jazzed at the thought of getting that done that the mere visualization of it is enough to get me moving, even when I'm in pain. Hubs wants it badly too, and we really only have this remaining window of time open, since I need to use Missy's room to store stuff in while I move other stuff around. And she will be home for Thanksgiving. So, the craftings gotta go for now. Also, I won't be online as much, but that's going to be a good thing, because I've noticed that my old bones are less painful the less time I spent at the keyboard, ya know?

So, you have all been told! LOL Please, if ya see me online alot, feel free to whip me and yell at me to get back on plan! I just feel that if I get somewhere with this, my life's gonna improve to the next level, cuz all of this clutter and stuff not being where I want it to be is bugging the caniption outta me. And being able to use all of our gym equipment, OMG, I literally cannot wait!

Have a great HUMPerdink DAY, everybody. (Gina, I will do your tag on Thursday, okay?)