So, I took a bunch of photos at the baseball game on Friday.  I really am trying to get them uploaded!  I’m fighting with script issues… but I will figure it out, and I’ll get the photos up here as soon as I can.  Just the ordinary chaos of my life.

I’ve been editing photos all day.

It’s been the down-and-dirty, pixel-by-pixel editing.

I think, if I see one more pixel, my eyeballs will explode.

I have GIMP on my computer.  I love GIMP.  It’s free and I can do lots of neat stuff with it.  And it’s free!!!

But it’s frustrating too.  See, I know how to use GIMP.  But I don’t KNOW how to really use GIMP.  I am positive that there are many more things that I can do with GIMP, but I just don’t know how.  Basically I don’t know how to use GIMP to its fullest potential.  That’s annoying- I mean, I want to do more but I just don’t know how.

Oh well.  I need to modify some photos tonight so this should be a big learning experience!

When I was in second grade, my art teacher led my entire class in creating a small flower pot.  She had kits that were similar to those color-your-own pot kits.  So I guess we didn’t actually “create” the pot, but we still colored it and stuff.

Anyway, the pots were gifts to our mothers for Mother’s Day.  We drew pictures on the pot, and the teachers gave us each a small photograph of ourselves (you remember those little school photos you traded with your friends?).  I made my pot and proudly presented it to my mother.  Today, the pot is kinda faded, but it’s still sitting on a windowsill.  My mom is awfully proud of that pot.

My pot was created in the early days of the internet.  Today, though, you have even more options.  You can get a photograph transferred onto a cake, a mug, or a mouse pad.  You can even get a Photo Blanket.  Moms, wouldn’t you love to fall asleep, wrapped in a soft and oversized version of your child’s photograph?

**Update: I did NOT take this photo!  I found it online tonight and just think it’s adorable!!**

This week, my mom and I are watching the “Civil War” documentary by Ken Burns. It’s long (11 hours) but it’s divided into 7 chapters, and it is absolutely fascinating. It’s incredible that our nation ever entered such a war, and even more incredible that we survived such a war. But it also proves the power of democracy - able to withstand such awfulness.

It’s also the first major war that gave us a photographic record. I’m sure we would be equally shocked if we had photographs from the Revolutionary war or the War of 1812. The photographs that we have from the Civil War are so incredible. At the time, cameras required a long exposure, too long to take any of the “action” shots such as any photographs DURING a battle. However, photographers were able to capture the carnage after a battle - the bodies littering the landscape and the stillness that covered the land. In a way, that’s appropriate - the Civil War was so filled with death that it seems appropriate that it is remembered by its death.

These are both Union and Confederate dead lying on the battlefield at Gettysburg, PA.

**Update: Sorry about the image sizing issues.  I think I have the problem fixed now.  If you continue to have problems, please comment and I can work on it some more.**