24.07.06
    So you're in a boat, and the boat springs a leak. Water comes in through a hole, and the boat starts to fill with water. You may need some time to think of what to do, sure. But whatever you do, don't stick your finger in the hole to stop the water, because that's not a permanent solution. This lesson in survival brought to you courtesy of US Foreign Policy.

21.07.06
    Yes, it's been a month... that seems like a standard turnaround time. It's officially at a state than can be presented, not 100% complete, but hey it's been a month. Go see Greece and Toronto.

14.07.06
    This might not make sense, but anyway: I’m working on the Greece pictures, and it’s taking longer than I thought (surprise), so I’m almost done finishing five pages last night around midnight. Since the layouts are complex, I’m using Photoshop to generate the raw HTML code, then using Word’s search and replace to change the addresses in the image links, formatting the page layout, adding the text, then editing the text to fit the page. Usually I create a new file to do this, but since the majority of the code is the Photoshop HTML, I just modified the file it gave me.
    So I notice an error on two of my pages. My numbering is off on the images, meaning I’ll have to change the Photoshop master image and re-generate the web images. Fine. I do this and save under the old file name, and it says “do you want to replace the existing images?’. Since the old images are the same, except for the now-corrected error, I say “Yes”, forgetting that it also re-generates the HTML code and saves over the edited file for my webpage. Twice. AAARGH. This basically put me back to square one for two of the pages. I gave up and went to bed and only fixed them right now. So here you go: five more pages, the Greece part is done, now on to Toronto.

10.07.06
    I cannot paint with my parents. Some of you know we’re moving my grandmother and uncle to a new apartment, better access, better facilities, same neighborhood. Some of you also know I painted houses for a couple summers. Both events have conspired to put me in the new apartment with a paintbrush in my hand, alongside one of my parents.
    The first time, I was painting with my Dad; my Mom was off sterilizing one kitchen appliance or another. I was cutting around the edges of a wall with the brush, when my Dad decided to roll the middle. We were left a partially filled industrial sized bucket of leftover paint that matched the existing wall colour. The paint is years old and had little dried-up bits floating in it and I lacked the equipment to strain them out. Roll with the paint, and you get little dried up bits on the wall. My Dad commented on this, and I said I noticed it too, and that I picked out the bits as they were left on the wall. Only later did I notice that when he rolled the paint, he only removed the really big bits, leaving the little bits embedded in the now-dry paint. Fine, whatever, they could be sanded down. More difficult to remove were the areas where the paint had gone on really thickly, leaving a slight ridge at the edge of the roller path. My Dad likes to roll paint in a random fashion, none of my overlapping vertical strokes, far too predictable. Because of this, and because we were painting with the same colour, there were some places that hadn’t received any new paint at all. I could have said something, but I chose not to complain that nothing on this planet meets with my standards, because the world only needs one version of my Mother. Instead, I borrowed the roller and went over bits he had already done, ostensibly to blend it in with my freshly-cut edge, but perhaps this excuse wore thin when I started going over the whole wall.
    A couple days later I was painting with my Mom, my father had, probably gratefully, returned to work. I had bought a new can of colour-matched paint to supplement the leftovers, but I was completing a wall that had already been partially painted with the old stuff, so I continued to use the older paint until I reached the corner. Again, I was using a brush to get the edges, and my Mom was rolling. She too noticed the dried up bits, and I told her to pick them out. She did a fine job of this, I’m sure no bits were missed, but I also got to hear how difficult it was to pick them out, again and again as every new bit was encountered. Just doing the job would be impossible if we didn’t also analyze exactly what I should have done to avoid this situation, and for me to explain thoroughly why we had to use this paint.
    With time, her frustration only grew: “This is crazy. Crazy!”
    Me: “This is mildly inconvenient.”
    I suggested we switch jobs; she could brush while I rolled. It didn’t make the paint bits go away, it just meant she didn’t have to deal with them, which also meant I didn’t have to hear about it. Eventually we finished the room, but I couldn’t shake the suspicion that it would have gone faster if I just did it all myself.
    The old paint was all used up, and we switched to a lovely particulate-free new can. At the end of the day I took the old empty bucket down to the dumpster and heaved it in with a resolute and deeply satisfying clang.