I’m writing this Sunday evening, August 8th, but am serializing an otherwise overly long journal entry and back-dating those portions which happened earlier in the week. Hopefully this will make writing (and reading) these pieces more "manageable." In any event, the last four days have been incredibly busy ones, every one of which has included a fair amount of physical exertion. I'm downright pooped.

Saturday was a long day, spent almost entirely in helping other folks out -- everything kicking into gear around 11 am. One of my Kitch ‘n Bitch pals needed some assistance in moving into a new apartment, so Steffi and I pitched in. Luckily, the move took place within Carrboro and involved no more than 3 trips from Fidelity Court to Oak Street. Kyle’s found a really chic, affordable flat on the second floor of a bungalow-style house, where he’ll be sharing space with another tenant (on the same floor) and the landlord and his wife, who live downstairs. Apparently the owner has soundproofed the floors separating the two stories, so our weekly Wednesday “Bad Film Night” meetings shouldn’t get Kyle kicked out of his new abode. The move, apart from one mild scare, went without a hitch or broken goods. (At one point, while climbing the frighteningly narrow staircase with Kyle’s big TV, I caught myself leaning backwards and, honestly, just barely managed to right myself and push my momentum upwards.)

Later in the afternoon Andreas and Luna dropped by after doing some book browsing and getting lost attempting to find Davie Road in Chapel Hill rather than in Carrboro. They met Steffi, we chatted a bit, and then I gave our guests an overview of how I approach a cover art project (or any digital work, for that matter) in Photoshop. I’d like to think that Andreas went home with some useful knowledge and that I didn’t overwhelm him with too many of Photoshop’s bells and whistles.

Photoshop’s an intimidating program, to be sure, and as a result, I spent a great deal of time avoiding it, using a host of other applications which were infinitely inferior. (In fact, Brighten to Incandescence was my first major project with Photoshop, and because I forced myself to complete the work using the software, I was able to attain a decent level of competency in surprisingly little time.) My short-list of advice to the beginner would be to 1) use the program as often as possible, 2) develop projects that challenge you to learn more about Photoshop’s toolsets, masks, filters, etc., 3) learn as many keyboard shortcuts as possible, and 4) take advantage of all the free tutorials on the web (many of these can be found at Adobe’s website and by doing simple Google searches.)

Finally, at 5:30 I drove over to a UNC faculty member’s home to install her wireless network router and laptop card. My original intent was to do the work gratis, but on my way out the door - just over an hour after arriving, - she shoved a ludicrously sizeable check (made out prior to the job) into my hands and waved aside all of my attempts to refuse it. At this point, I’m thinking that if I fail to find a new job immediately after Steffi and I settle in to new surroundings when she gets her professorship next year, I might consider trying to parlay these (frighteningly basic) technical skills into a lucrative part-time project.