'Twas not spleen that kept me away from the diary this week, but rather the end of the semester. I've got one week left to finish my two page website "final" for my Photoshop class and I'm terribly frustrated with it. We've got to demonstrate all these fancy new tricks we supposedly learned in class, and frankly I haven't really learned them. I had a mere week off for Spring Break and promptly forgot how to do slices. Slices are easy, really they are, but I forgot the critical part: you do them in Image Ready, not Photoshop. Don't even consider talking to me about Quick Mask or Channels or Actions, though. Argh.
So no writing, no working out, no socializing, no finishing the redesign for Jessie's page, just bashing through ideas and discarding them, discovering how agonizingly slow it is to do a complex page without an HTML editor (and it's far too late to learn one now, the thing's due next week), and generally giving up and playing with the Sims until one in the morning. I've done a lovely logo and sliced my main menu. Big deal. I have a huge blank space looking at me and I've got to fill it. There's only one answer.
Steal someone else's HTML.
I'm only borrowing the design for this class, I'm not changing my own pages. Nor am I using anyone else's images -- that would cross a huge line for me, not to mention I'm more than capable of generating my own images. But I'm not above nicking a nice little layout at this point because lord knows I don't have a clue on how to get the tables and columns and rows to line up properly. I need my final to look like a commercial website. I'll be trolling for simple designs tomorrow night, plugging in my own images and text on Saturday and Sunday, and obsessively tweaking until Wednesday.
It'll be a relief when this class is done. I'm sorry to say it, but it's true. I'm so burned out on school. It doesn't even matter that this was a fun, short course. I'm sick to death of homework, tired of trying to weasel into a parking spot closer than a half mile walk to class, weary of the extra deadlines in my life. I don't thrive on an overscheduled life. I have a passion for learning new things, but I am so totally fed up with academia right now that I have decided to take the summer off. It means not graduating this year, but screw it, I need the break or I'll give up altogether. Four months away from that little college on the faultline should provide the fortitude to tackle the History of Ethnic Peoples of California in the fall, mission project and all.
Anyway, that's all in the future. Right now I'm losing precious sleep just to get this entry out. I ought to have worked longer on my graphics but hey, at least I didn't allow myself to so much as open the Sims tonight. The weekend will be busy above and beyond homework, I'm afraid. I'm going into the city on Saturday for a Journalcon committee meeting and there is to be karaoke and public humiliation afterwards. I'm also taking Keiko to the vet and Natasha to the groomer's the same day. In fact, there is something going on every day and night until 10pm Wednesday. I'll write again when I'm safely on the vacation side of the semester.
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