OK - so I gotta say that I am totally and completely hooked on this digi scrapping thing.....now I just have to figure out what to do with my many $$$ worth of paper scraping stuff....but I digress....Computers & the internet...wow!
It's just so awesome to be able to check the weather, catch up on the news, read the Bible (any & all versions!!), do shopping, manage the family social life, do research (comes in really handy for that home school stuff), and just be able to find info on any topic at any time....amazing!
Then you have some dumb@$$ at AT&T who decided that the Fri evening of Labor Day w/e would be a good time to roll out the new code that Bennett has been working on. Which means that I will be taking all 3 kidlets solo to my parents' lake house (pray for my sanity)....until Bennett can get there late, late, late Fri night (Sat AM?).
OK - enough griping!
I just had a wonderful evening with my awesome new good friend, Gail. She & I met at this little Italian restaurant in the Smyrna Square after her choir practice and it was so nice to spend some time with a kindred soul....she and I have so much in common that it is scary. We both home school, both our husbands are quieter than we are and are sort of nerdy in their own endearing way, we both love to sing, we both struggle with the balance of family/school/personal.....anyway, it was nice. You know how you meet somebody and you just feel like you've known them forever? Yeah, that...
So - I will be without the internet for 5 whole days.....eeeek! If nothing else, maybe I can get the TONS of free digi stash that I've been downloading organized. If you are not already an addict, check out the online digi classes at Jessica Sprague's site and then go check out all the free digi goodness you can find on this fabulous blog - it gets updated every day!! I'm running out of hard drive space!! Is it weird that all I want for Xmas is a 500 gb (ooooh....or even a terabyte) drive??
Anyway - have a fab Labor Day & I'll see you all next week!
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Gettin' by with a little help from my friends....
OK - so I'm taking this really intense digi scrapping class from Jessica Sprague and this weeks challenge had us making an entire 24-page album after we made all our own templates....phew!
So - I made all my templates and I'm working on getting the papers, pictures, elements, etc. loaded....lots of work! I noticed that somebody posted this very cool website that has tons of grat ideas for LOs - for when you get that digi block that I suffer from daily. Check it out:
http://pagemaps.com/
This would have saved me hours!! Oh well....at least I got some more experience with designng LOs...part of our class is incorporating design elements....practice makes perfect?!
Off to lunch with my sweet grandmother.....then home to fold laundry and get ready for a small medical procedure on Monday morning...yippee....
Have a fabulous rest of the weekend...take care, Meg
So - I made all my templates and I'm working on getting the papers, pictures, elements, etc. loaded....lots of work! I noticed that somebody posted this very cool website that has tons of grat ideas for LOs - for when you get that digi block that I suffer from daily. Check it out:
http://pagemaps.com/
This would have saved me hours!! Oh well....at least I got some more experience with designng LOs...part of our class is incorporating design elements....practice makes perfect?!
Off to lunch with my sweet grandmother.....then home to fold laundry and get ready for a small medical procedure on Monday morning...yippee....
Have a fabulous rest of the weekend...take care, Meg
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Torn between two loves....
Like working mothers everywhere, I have a dilemma. Do I continue to divide my time, energy, talents, etc. between my family and my professional work or do I go on the long-term mommy-track and give up my 2nd (3rd, 4th?) job of doing all the contracts, etc. for an interactive media design firm here in Atlanta?
This has an added pressure - as a homeschooler, I don't have the luxury of my kids being educated by someone else - all the lesson planning, teaching, evaluating - I do all that. I love it and I feel overwhelmed by it - like all great endeavors it has challenges and rewards.
I do get to work from home 3 days a week - but that has its pros and cons as well. The flexibility is nice but there is little or no separation of work and personal time. When you work from home, your co-workers don't care if they interrupt lunch/dinner/math lessons or whatever.
While I love what I do professionally - I adore the minutiae that is required for contracts review and negotiation (especially in the area of internet-based apps as the law is woefully behind the technology) but I regret having to cram lessons in the morning so I can be available for work in the afternoons. I detest the crabbiness that comes from being pulled in multiple directions all day every day - by 5pm, I'm ready to duct tape my kids to the mailbox and/or tell my boss to shove it. Since I get to do neither, the pressure builds. This does wonders for your love life, too.
So - what's a girl to do? Yes, we can afford for me to quit. But since I only get paid for PT (20) hours a week and after we pay for a sitter, gas, dry cleaning, lunches, etc., it's not the money that keeps my attention. I fear never getting a break from the kids. I dread never having a real "reason" to wear things other than jeans or sweats or put on makeup. I fear becoming that "frumpy" mom you always see at Target. I dread totally losing touch with the legal and professional world. But - I hate that I work many, many more hours than I get paid for...dilemma.
Off to watch some Olympics and ponder this some more......
This has an added pressure - as a homeschooler, I don't have the luxury of my kids being educated by someone else - all the lesson planning, teaching, evaluating - I do all that. I love it and I feel overwhelmed by it - like all great endeavors it has challenges and rewards.
I do get to work from home 3 days a week - but that has its pros and cons as well. The flexibility is nice but there is little or no separation of work and personal time. When you work from home, your co-workers don't care if they interrupt lunch/dinner/math lessons or whatever.
While I love what I do professionally - I adore the minutiae that is required for contracts review and negotiation (especially in the area of internet-based apps as the law is woefully behind the technology) but I regret having to cram lessons in the morning so I can be available for work in the afternoons. I detest the crabbiness that comes from being pulled in multiple directions all day every day - by 5pm, I'm ready to duct tape my kids to the mailbox and/or tell my boss to shove it. Since I get to do neither, the pressure builds. This does wonders for your love life, too.
So - what's a girl to do? Yes, we can afford for me to quit. But since I only get paid for PT (20) hours a week and after we pay for a sitter, gas, dry cleaning, lunches, etc., it's not the money that keeps my attention. I fear never getting a break from the kids. I dread never having a real "reason" to wear things other than jeans or sweats or put on makeup. I fear becoming that "frumpy" mom you always see at Target. I dread totally losing touch with the legal and professional world. But - I hate that I work many, many more hours than I get paid for...dilemma.
Off to watch some Olympics and ponder this some more......
Monday, August 11, 2008
Foot update
Ok - went to the orthopedist - the Xrays don't show anything newly broken (never mind the 5 bones I smashed last May that will obviously never be the same), BUT - the doc thinks that I may have snapped the tendon that allows you to curl your toes under - sort of explains why the pinky toe seems to be pointing more & more towards the sky. So - the doc referred me to a podiatrist. Either it can be fixed by being "buddy-taped" (as it is right now) or it will need surgery......because I need more stuff on my plate right now - don't we all?
Busy week!
You ever have one of those days (weeks, months, lives?) when you just wish you could say "Stop the world! I want to get off!"?
OK - today I'm supposed to manage 3 kids, clean the kitchen, do home school for the 2 older kids, be available for work between 1-5pm, go get my left foot checked out (I think I broke something - again!), go do allergy shots for Zane, clean the house, do laundry, cook dinner and whatever else has slipped my mind...all with a smile on my face. Yeah, right.
My sweet grandmother just called - she is my dad's mom. She is also Meg - which can be confusing but is cool in that she is a pretty amazing lady. She invited us for lunch on Sunday - it's been too long since we've seen her so I'm glad we're going to go over there. I wish she lived closer - she's only about 20-30 min away but with Atlanta traffic and that pesky thing called life, we just don't see her as often as I wish. It would be really cool if she lived in the townhomes down the street- then we could just ride our bikes over (something else we don't get to do as often as we'd like).
So - I do a lot of downloading of digital freebies for digital scrapbooking. I use a lot of online file sharing sites....I've developed some faves and I thought I share my thoughts with you...here goes:
1. www.esnips.com - free; 5gb of space - no wait for downloads; can be a bit persnickety sometimes.
2. www.4shared.com - 5 gb of space; free; BUT you have to wait for download links unless you have a premium ($$) account; pretty reliable.
3. http://rapidshare.com/ - bigger - more space and bigger files; free - BUT you have to wait (sometimes 90 seconds) for link unless you have a premium account.
These are the main ones I see from the digi scrapping world - I know that there are many others...feel free to add your faves in the comments section.
BTW - www.woot.com has a killer deal on an 8gb USB thumb drive today...check it out.
OK - today I'm supposed to manage 3 kids, clean the kitchen, do home school for the 2 older kids, be available for work between 1-5pm, go get my left foot checked out (I think I broke something - again!), go do allergy shots for Zane, clean the house, do laundry, cook dinner and whatever else has slipped my mind...all with a smile on my face. Yeah, right.
My sweet grandmother just called - she is my dad's mom. She is also Meg - which can be confusing but is cool in that she is a pretty amazing lady. She invited us for lunch on Sunday - it's been too long since we've seen her so I'm glad we're going to go over there. I wish she lived closer - she's only about 20-30 min away but with Atlanta traffic and that pesky thing called life, we just don't see her as often as I wish. It would be really cool if she lived in the townhomes down the street- then we could just ride our bikes over (something else we don't get to do as often as we'd like).
So - I do a lot of downloading of digital freebies for digital scrapbooking. I use a lot of online file sharing sites....I've developed some faves and I thought I share my thoughts with you...here goes:
1. www.esnips.com - free; 5gb of space - no wait for downloads; can be a bit persnickety sometimes.
2. www.4shared.com - 5 gb of space; free; BUT you have to wait for download links unless you have a premium ($$) account; pretty reliable.
3. http://rapidshare.com/ - bigger - more space and bigger files; free - BUT you have to wait (sometimes 90 seconds) for link unless you have a premium account.
These are the main ones I see from the digi scrapping world - I know that there are many others...feel free to add your faves in the comments section.
BTW - www.woot.com has a killer deal on an 8gb USB thumb drive today...check it out.
I have a blog!!
Check me out - I have a blog - now everybody else can spend the hours they should be working/sleeping/playing with the kids reading all about my life!
Just kidding - I guess it's sort of the natural progression of things. I'm married to a techie-type and we currently have 4 laptops in the den alone (at least that I know of...haven't checked under the couch lately....) and who knows how many PCs and Macs floating around the house.
It's 4:28am ET (damn insomnia) and I really should be sleeping - long day tomorrow...instead I'm creating a blog, organizing my digi stash (more on that later) and trying to coordinate the two home school group calendars with my family calendar and not forget anything important....since I'm basically in charge of the free world these days, that is about as easy as brokering world peace.....pray for my sanity!
OK- I'm going to post this - whee- and then get back to organizing.....have a fab day!
Just kidding - I guess it's sort of the natural progression of things. I'm married to a techie-type and we currently have 4 laptops in the den alone (at least that I know of...haven't checked under the couch lately....) and who knows how many PCs and Macs floating around the house.
It's 4:28am ET (damn insomnia) and I really should be sleeping - long day tomorrow...instead I'm creating a blog, organizing my digi stash (more on that later) and trying to coordinate the two home school group calendars with my family calendar and not forget anything important....since I'm basically in charge of the free world these days, that is about as easy as brokering world peace.....pray for my sanity!
OK- I'm going to post this - whee- and then get back to organizing.....have a fab day!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
