AAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!!
There. Primal scream is done with.
I have spent way, way, WAY too many of the last 24 hours working on this ridiculous slide show. I'm trying to come up with a nice way to present proofs to clients and I thought a slideshow might be nice. I could find a beautiful song to play for the soundtrack and display all my photos in a nice cohesive way. And maybe get some emotions flowing which will hopefully lead to a larger order! But I have had a heck of a time actually MAKING this slideshow. I stupidly thought powerpoint would be the way to go, but powerpoint really is not geared towards photography slide shows. And you can't save a musical soundtrack as part of the file. Actually you can sort of link a piece of music to the slideshow, but it isn't saved as part of the actual presentation. And the version of ppt on my computer is faulty and doesn't even allow this feature. It works on Ben's computer, but I couldn't figure out how to burn a cd (I was doing this at 2 AM and didn't think he'd appreciate me waking him up to ask him about it) on his computer, or even if you can.
So I downloaded some trial versions of a couple of different slideshow programs and experienced much, much, MUCH frustration with those (computer freezing up, trial versions just generally being really annoying), and finally at 3:30 AM gave up and went to bed. This morning a note I had posted on my photography website had been responded to and I found out that you can make slideshows with Photoshop, so I messed with that for about 3 hours and figured it out, only to realize that you cannot save it as an exe file. Only as a pdf file (which won't play music), or a wmv file which requires the user have windows media player installed. And I really wanted a stand-alone slideshow, one in which you just insert the cd and it plays-- no having to open up various windows and have the slideshow play inside the window. Supposedly Photoshop allows you to burn it as a vcd, but when I did this my dvd player didn't recognize it and even when I tried to play it back on my computer, my computer said it didn't recognize the file!! Arghhh!! So finally I just gave in and ordered PicturesToExe which is the program most other photographers are using. It was only $30 so not too bad. The place I ordered it from said the download info would be sent to my email account. However, it has been 9 hours and still nothing in my email. This is very annoying because I just wanted to finish this tonight!!!!!! I told Monday's client I would bring by the proofs tomorrow morning, so I really needed to have this done. Oh well. Once I figure this out, all future slideshows will be a snap, but this has been pretty torturous, all in all. When I eventually figure out how to save it as an .exe file I'll post it on my website and you can all see it.
Anyway, due to my being up obscenely late last night, I had a pretty tired day. As a result my kitchen table is covered with honey (ok, not COVERED, but pretty messy still) from the boys making snacks, there is crayon all over part of my kitchen wall (artistic impulse courtesy of Mosey), and the boys ate pretty much only popsicles all day. Bad mommy. I will be much better tomorrow. I'm going to go to bed real soon here and I will pay attention to my kids tomorrow and take them somewhere fun in the afternoon.
I have a funny story from the other day at Sam's club. We went there after school on Tuesday to get new tires on our van, and so we had some time to kill wandering around Sam's while they worked on the car. I was just chatting and joking with the boys, talking about kites and stuff. We got a new kite since our old kite was irretrievably lost up in Palm Beach when it got caught first in a mangrove forest and then in a palm tree. Joseph and Brigham were speculating on how high the kite would go, if it could go all the way up in outer space and then to heaven. Joseph than said, "What if we could build something so tall that it went all the way to heaven?" I said something like, "Wow, that would be pretty tall!" But Brigham immediately replied, "I think Jesus would be pretty surprised to see us!" Ha ha ha!! Yeah, and then we probably would never be able to understand each other again, to boot.
Joseph and Brigham have, over the past several weeks, developed this really frustrating competition over who gets to open the van door. It is always this scrambling race to see who gets there first, and then lots of protests and tears on the part of the slower brother. So we came up with a compromise that has actually been working pretty well-- Brigham opens the van door from the inside and Joseph opens it from the outside. I'm amazed, but it is working! Before, we had gotten to the point that even before we reached the gate to our neighborhood, Brigham and Joseph were climbing out of their carseats and scrambling over the back of the seat in front of them to try and be "ready" to open the door the instant we pulled into the driveway. I knew that had to stop and so I had put the child lock on, so neither of them could open it from the inside. But that just made the competition for opening the door from the outside even more intense. Anyway, I'm glad to have found a resolution (for now) to this problem.
My friend Rena is pregnant (have I told you before?), she actually found out here at my house when she and Janette were over to help me paint the upstairs hall about a month ago. And 2 weeks ago she found out she is having twins! Isn't that amazing? Her two best friends here (me and Janette) both have twins, and now she's having twins! She has a 9 year old son and a 3 year old daughter and wasn't really planning on having any more-- in fact she wondered if she even could since it took more than 4 years to get pregnant with her daughter. But here she is, having 2 more! She gets really sick like I do and has had a very rough time so far. She's lost 10 pounds and she's only 8 weeks. So I've been trying to have Emma (her daughter) over, and bring her over food and movies and stuff. I think I'll have Emma come over tomorrow afternoon and entertain my boys for a couple of hours. :-) She is really a good girl and my boys like playing with her. I have to say, though, it is pretty cool to sort of be able to relive my twin pregnancy through Rena, but not actually have to be pregnant!! They live in a small 2 bedroom condo, though, and her husband has put in for a transfer to Dallas so they're not sure how long they'll be here. He works for the government so it could be a while. I hope it is at least long enough for her to have her babies and get through the first few weeks. I would love to go over there and be a night-time nanny for the babies once a week or so. And I keep thinking how fun it will be to photograph twins!
All right, that's it for tonight. Gotta get to bed and catch up on some zzzz's. Have a fabulous Fridy everyone.