Photoshop: Stop the madness!

Now appearing in a fashion magazine near you – the “Photoshop diet”.

Faith Hill doctored cover photo (left) and original photo (right):

America Ferrera on Glamour cover (left) and a ‘real life’ unretouched photo (right):

  

Allure Magazine February 2007 cover with 47-year old actress Julianne Moore (does she not look 30 years younger than that?):

  

And although this isn’t a fashion magazine, it’s just as alarming: Katie Couric’s photo issued by CBS for PR purposes on right (original on left):

It’s one thing to remove a few wrinkles here or there, but this practice is being taken to the extreme. These ‘real’ women are beautiful without the doctoring. I ask, what kind of message is this sending our young people - female and male?

WordPress: Awesome or archaic?

You may have heard that those born under the sign of Aquarius – like me – seek change. If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you’ve seen it go from something simple and plain, to something very pink, to something desert-like. I guess maybe I haven’t found its true “identity” yet. I really like the header photo and how it matches the title of the blog, but I don’t like the plain and simple look that WordPress forces me to use with it.

I’ve spent a lot of time surfing, looking for ways to spice up the blog’s look, but haven’t really found a template that I like. It doesn’t help that WordPress – the free edition anyway – forces you to use one of their templates, some of which don’t allow for much personalization.

And don’t even get me going on how they don’t allow anything other than plain HTML widgets for the sidebar. I found a really cool polling site that I couldn’t even use because WordPress blocks the code! They say it’s for “safety”, blocking code that might allow hackers to penetrate the system. Well, if it’s really that much of a concern, why not put something else in place? Do the other blogging services really have such a tough time? Why punish people like me -  literally a kid in an Internet candy store, full of all kinds of gadgets, graphics and  goodies that would make my site a more fun place to visit.

What I do like about WordPress is the ease of use. I like how easy it is to navigate and manage your pages. There is somewhat of a community, though it’s a little hard to get to.

I don’t really want to move my blog again, but I sure wish I had more options here. If you have any ideas for me, please post in the comments – I’d really appreciate it!

List-mania for today

People I hate today:

• The a-hole driver in the double-load rock-moving truck who cut me off, then proceeded to shower stones onto my vehicle
• Catty women at work (this girl is too fat, that girl is too thin, the other girl is always at the office, the next girl is never around…. you get the picture)
• People who, on a speaker phone/conference call, talk and talk ad nauseum, not realizing that I might easily be able to provide the answer to their question or solve their problem if they’d just SHUT UP for five seconds.
• People who, on a speaker phone/conference call, ignore the common etiquette of putting their phone on “mute” when not speaking to avoid the overpowering background noise of a vehicle, barking dog or television. Usually these are the same people who commit the previously-listed annoyance.

People I love today (not in any particular order):

• My 9 year old who always greets me with a “Hi Mom”, a warm smile and a huge hug when I get home from work.
• My 15 year old who regularly and effortlessly entertains us at dinnertime with comedic episodes.
• My husband who commented on my culinary mastery, even though dinner was just a throw-together dish (but it was pretty good, I must admit)
• My chiropractor who eradicated 99% of the excruciating pain caused by today’s back to back migraine episode. (Likely caused by the conference call I had earlier in the day)

Today’s mysteries:

• How can the 5′7″, 127 lb. body of my teenage son exude such a large volume of gas?
• What makes John Travolta think he can really carry the role of a woman?

Results of today’s experiments with the dog:

• She attacks my 9 year old if he is beating on my husband
• She attacks me if I am beating on my husband
• She attacks me and bites my hair if my husband is beating on me
• The dog will no longer get any treats, leftovers or counter-droppings from me

Tuesday drivel

Argh – work frustrations have got me going today! Just when we thought we would be all set to have our meeting in Las Vegas we get an email from them saying, “Hey, let’s go to Puerto Rico instead.” Not I have nothing against PR but this is a perfect example of people who just don’t understand the work involved.

Suppose I can forget that I spent a grueling 18 hours on my feet looking at 7 different Vegas properties only 13 days ago. Countless emails, spreadsheets, proposal organizing and negotiations. Now I need to forget all that and look at the vast expanse of an island with a gazillion hotels to find out which ones have which dates available, and at what rate. Each property has its own sales force, so there’s at least a dozen new people who we have to explain our agenda, meeting audience and special needs to. Oh and did I mention they want an answer by tomorrow? HA!

Knowing how these things go, I will spin my wheels for another two weeks or more, gather all the info they want, then they will ultimately decide “OK, let’s just do Vegas then.” Which, doesn’t seem so bad, right? Guess again! The Vegas hotels will not hold our space for much longer since there are plenty of people just waiting to hold their own meetings there.

Okay I need to move on and leave this “vent” behind me. Serenity now.

Tonight I go back to the chiropractor for an adjustment. It’s crazy the sorts of noises that come out of your joints when you’re adjusted. Terry has been going too, and his back is adjusting very well to the procedure. I wish I could say the same – I’m better, but there’s still a long road ahead. At the advice of Dr. Miller, I’ve trained myself to sleep on my side instead of my stomach which I think is helping a lot.

Over the weekend I added some new plantings to our house to give it a little more curb appeal. The only real area left to concentrate on is our side yard, which I hope to get done next week. It’s supposed to be 109 over the next few days though so we’ll see how ambitious that goal really is.

Hey! Remember in a recent Austin post I mentioned going to an Italian restaurant that had Strawberry Balsamic Gelato? Well I stumbled across a recipe for Strawberry Balsamic Sorbet. Sounds like a good summertime refreshment, no?