'Ryanair' is the 'Spirit' of cheap flights

I guess some people have uses for ultra cheap airlines that charge for everything in dribs and drabs -- but personally it infuriates me and makes me feel somehow sub-human. 

I have only been on Ryanair for one round trip and everything about it pissed me off so much that when the plane tilted and swerved crazily as it landed -- half the plane screamed (has anyone ever heard a bunch of people in a plane scream?  I have, once and only once) but I just swore, it managed to piss me off even more!  The landing the other way was bad too, just not as bad.  I want to know how long their pilots have been flying.  (either period, or how long their shifts are...because they are either new at it, tired, or pissed off as well)

Twitter, bah humbug

 I have 2 twitter accounts, one for this blog which is 3 weeks old and has 3 tweets (so consider it stuffed in a back corner), and one that is about 8 months old that has 33 tweets, mostly used to rip on Arthur Kade's absurd tweets and to follow a few people who are really interesting or funny like Stephen[Colbert]AtHome.

Learning How to Drive Photoshop CS4

I have got to figure out how to use Photoshop CS4! I was desperate to get it after years of using Photoshop Elements mostly because I wanted to have control over shadows, bevels and to have a pen tool...but now that I have it, I realize that I have no clue how to make it go. ACK!

It was a Christmas present and has been sitting there for 3 months waiting for me to do something with it. Every time I try it refuses to do what I want. (so I simply pull up Elements instead) Relearning something that looks familiar but is totally different is beyond frustrating!!

Like learning to drive in Ireland after driving in the states for 14 years. It took me two months to get the nerve up to try to drive, and that resulted in the three other people in the car constantly yelling to watch out for the wall. Most roads in Ireland are lined with old stone walls which is pretty, but it leaves no room for error. The thing I discovered is that you drive with a subconscious space around you, knowing the width of the car, and when that is suddenly reversed your mind refuses to care. Shifting with a different hand is fine (and fortunately the pedals are in the same order), but relearning that 'personal space' is fuckaking hard. I finally did it though.

[It also wouldn't have been as hard if the roads were even a foot wider, and were clearly marked, and people stayed on their own side of the road, and drove like they were sane, and there weren't so many tractors to get around -- and when I least expected it -- going around a corner to find a flock of sheep/herd of cows, or people throwing a lead ball down the road at clumps of grass. ...I hold onto the steering wheel with a death grip in Ireland even though you don't see the cows or sheep so often anymore.]

That is what I have to do with CS4...relearn what I have been doing for years. I *really* don't want to go through feeling so lost (ie: where the hell is the paint bucket?), but on the bright side, unlike with driving, I don't have to take an absurdly hard test when I am done.*

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*Note to the Irish government...your driving test is ridiculous. It has almost nothing to do with driving in real life conditions, so as soon as the test is passed [over half fail the first time as you know, and I would guess a quarter fail the second test as well] people go back to driving any way they feel comfortable, as did I. Unfortunately "comfort" for many people in Ireland seems to mean things like driving 35 mph [when you can go 50 mph] in the middle of the road [why why WHY?].

You need some sort of formal driver's education here, in school, or for free some other way to be sure that people understand the basics. Having terrible drivers teach their children how to drive is absurd, yet that is the way it is done here, and it shows.

Jetlag and the Creative Mind

Luckily I don’t have a job because: 1) I have a problem with authority if it doesn’t make sense in what it is demanding. 2) I wouldn’t be able to keep saying “I am going off to the states for a month, again, see ya!” 3) It takes me over a month to regain any normal kind of sleep pattern when I get back to Ireland.

I have given up trying to force myself into Irish time and people simply ask me how lagged I still am no matter how long it has been since my trip to the states – they know me well enough by now here. (It doesn’t help that late-night TV is really good on the east side of the Atlantic Ocean either.)

When I go to the states I pretty much fall into regular hours immediately. (Meaning: awake during most of the day and asleep most of the night.) No effort needed. I have heatedly argued this with several people and had several others absolutely agree with me that going west is easy and going east screws you over severely. Who’s with me here? So I tend to be a night dweller in Ireland and a day dweller in the States.

When I am working on an art project, I get most creative after midnight no matter where I am. There is an interesting and cloistered energy working when it is dark and quiet outside and you know no one is going to interrupt. When you have a creative flow going there is nothing, absolutely nothing, worse than to have the flow broken. It can be so hard to get back. It is hard to start in the first place, for me anyway.

I have a few things that have happened in my life that have subconsciously enforced this work pattern. One was an architecture design class in college. It was more about design as a concept than architecture per se’, but during that semester, I found myself working feverishly in the a.m. more and more often. It was the most demanding class I have ever taken and the most interesting. I lost 14 lbs. Another student got a divorce, and several had to drop out because of the pressure. (tears in class happened on several occasions)

I only took the class as an elective but I got into the spirit of it, got an ‘A’, and an invitation to join the Architecture Department. (which I declined…one semester of that I could handle, but no more. There was a 24-hour restaurant near the college and if you went in after 1:00 a.m. basically the only people in there were architecture students and drunk students who were hungry.) No way! ‘Ambition’ is not my middle name. The woman who got a divorce did take them up on the offer but I don’t think she stayed in the department for more than a year. Who knew you had to live like a med student to design a building?

The other thing that happened was I set up a jewelry studio in my garage a few years later (I have training in several kinds of media but was a jewelry/metal-work student when I finally got my degree) and had a neighbor who didn’t understand boundaries. How many ways can you say “Leave me alone!”? A hundred ways. A thousand. When a person thinks they are more important than your ‘little hobby’, it is devastating. I ended up hiding in my own house. I stayed out of the garage, didn’t answer the phone or door after a month of constant interruptions.

That was actually scary looking back. It was quite a while ago, but it stays with me even today. I am fiercely territorial and my time is my own now. Many people think of me as a hermit for my lack of social interactions which is fine with me. I am actually very friendly and can talk to absolutely anyone about almost anything (except sports…don’t even bring sports up), but my extroversion is by choice.

I understand completely when artists become reclusive or writers cut-off contact. Creativity is a ‘job’ for some, but for most I think it is ephemeral. It doesn’t come easily to throw yourself into a project, even when it is in your blood, if you have to think and rethink and brood and consider before you know you will spend a lot of effort on something. Once you have made the decision, it takes over your life till the particular project is done. When you are in ‘the zone’, only the pizza delivery guy is welcome.

I have to have a little rant, then maybe a little 'lie-down'

I am an American who married an Irish person, and though I had no intentions of ending up in Ireland until retirement (or just perhaps a nice cottage somewhere for summer vacations), I ended up living in Ireland 18 years ago quite suddenly. It has been 'interesting' -- often not in a good way. At any rate, about 5 years ago when economic times were better for everyone, I extorted a small house in the states (in Portland Oregon) out of my husband.

I needed a part of the states I could call home before I completely lost my mind and just left to save my sanity. Portland is where my mom lives and I love that city! I spend about 4 months through-out the year in Portland, but the rest of the time I am in Ireland.

One thing that drives me up the wall more than anything about Ireland: broadband is rare, and as I live about 5 miles from the nearest town, (17 miles from the nearest city), I don't have it. I can't get it. I have fantasies about torturing what ever politician is keeping Ireland a second world country this way (all of them probably). I am on dial-up most of the time. (can you tell I am now throwing things and screaming?)

In Portland, I have the fastest broadband outside of a commercial line, the internet is always on and it is cheaper than what I pay for my dial-up time on the internet in Ireland. (sigh) In Ireland, I give up on any website that takes too long to load if I don't know that it will be worth the wait (any page where the words aren't showing after 2 minutes and doesn't promise to be really "interesting"...bye-bye.) A 1 minute video takes 10 minutes to show the whole way through! I know I am whining and I don't care. When I say Ireland sucks, take this into consideration.

When I put up pictures or artwork, understand this is why the size or resolution isn't the best. 200 kb takes 5 minutes to attach to blogspot for some reason. On the plus side, my blog loads really quickly.

For now, that's about it. If I continue I might pop a vein or start drinking (might do the latter anyway...)