I’m trying very hard to keep myself motivated enough to get some job-preparation stuff done. I was able to come up with a rough draft of my resume for people to pick apart (Will did an excellent job of *that*) and I’m working on a design for my new website annfoxart.com. After much debate, I decided I would separate my professional content from my regular things since freshlydead has *so* much content on it and organization is becoming a problem. Even thinking about trying to find a clean and logical way to organize all my content made me absolutely exhausted every time I tried, so that was a good indication I needed to find some other way of approaching this. I have decided to keep annfoxart as clean and uncluttered as possible, with *only* completed art on it, and use freshlydead as more of a casual, personal webspace (which it seems to have turned into anyhow.) At any rate, I think for now I won’t upload anything to the new site until the design is finalized simply because I really would like it to stay as professional as possible.

In other creative news, I’m still working quite hard on my Prince of All Cosmos blanket. (I’m now about 1/4 of the way done.) I’ve never crocheted this quickly before, so it’s astounding to me to watch it progress! Amusingly, I’ve had several people comment that they’re interested in that design for themselves so in the end I may end up giving it to someone else. But not until after winter is over, or I’ve made a replacement for myself, since the whole reason I’m making this one in the first place is because I’m cold! XD

I also began a new painting this week of some hobo. Okay, not really, it’s Chris. I got my paints on Monday so I was really excited to get going on it, but because I was having such trouble motivating myself to work on job stuff, I decided to make painting a reward for getting something accomplished. I felt pretty bad after I saw what horrible shape my resume was in so I caved in and worked on the painting for an hour or so. It felt good to do something I was actually motivated to do.

Also, on Monday, my new monitor arrived! :D I’ve been taking advantage of its size to work on my graphics applications (my 12″ Powerbook screen is pitifully small for that sort of thing) and I must say I’m very pleased. It’s a Dell UltraSharp 2005FPW 20.1″ Wide Flat Panel LCD. Basically, that’s the Apple cinema display in a Dell housing. OH MY GOD THE COLORS! :O~~~ I’ve never worked on a monitor that looks this nice! And since it’s DV, I can do dual display with my Powerbook, which gives me *that* much more room to work with. Because I got it off eBay I was able to get it for a fantastic price. I’m very very pleased with the purchase. :D

The scanner I bought, on the other hand…I scanned one thing just fine and any attempts after that produced a 1px magenta line down the length of it (always in the same place.) It wasn’t a driver issue as Will and I both tried different drivers on both our computers and it produced the same results. *sigh* I think this weekend we’re going to try to take it to an Epson service center.

In other news, Will and I went to get our Washington driver’s licenses on Saturday. I was going to get an emissions test done for my car but they said my car “couldn’t be tested” (I guess because it’s too new) so that’s one less thing to worry about now. That evening we went to his family reunion. He was a bit nervous about going alone because he didn’t know very many of them so he asked me to go with. It didn’t take much convincing and I was all dressed up in the clothes I’d purchased at Banana Republic earlier in the week. The shoes were an aquisition from earlier in the day, which Will helped me pick out at Payless. I had a lot of fun shopping for the shoes with Will because he has a weak spot for cute shoes and his tastes are similar enough to Jules’ that I could ask him “Would Jules like these?” and he’d be able to give me an accurate answer. (Same thing with clothes of any sort as well as…pantyhose.) Heh. I had a wonderful time; his family is all very nice, friendly, and outgoing. Many of them assumed we were a couple, so it was fun trying to convince them we were just friends/roommates of the opposite gender. :D The food was fantastic and there was free wine, so that just enhanced it. :3

In general I’ve felt pretty depressed this week. Jules has been really sick so he’s been home from work and on medication, and he hasn’t been himself at all, so that makes things difficult. I’m trying so hard to stay focused and positive but it takes all I can muster to do that…and often the melancholy wins. I feel a bit better today now that I’ve got a good start on my website and a little more polish on my resume so it feels like I have a direction to follow now.