I can’t say I always was aware of my creative side. Back when I was younger, constructing entire Lego towns in the basement of my parent’s house, I was only concerned with finding “this one brick” or getting everything looking just so.

Once I moved on from Legos (it took me awhile…and now I’m back again) there was a bit of a lapse in creativity. I was too busy being a teenager and I didn’t really have a creative avenue at the time.

In the summer of 2002, I had plans to work part-time but nothing really came about. I felt it was time I dove into the world of Photoshop as I had the app, but was really not very good with it. I joined DeviantArt in September of 2002 and created a slew of things from UI designs, poetry to pixel art. Pixel art isn’t easy to explain. Essentially, it is the creation of an image which has a “pixelated” look to it.

I lost interest in DeviantArt somewhere between 2004 and 2005. I wasn’t as much a part of the community and I moved more into photography as a point & shoot I bought in 2004 had full manual controls (albeit it was a couple steps below SLR quality). I threw some photos up on DeviantartArt but slowly moved over to the beloved flickr.

Photography became (and is still) my main outlet for my creativity. I’ve enjoyed it immensely but felt that after our trip to Japan in November 2007, my interest waned slightly. I decided on January 1st 2008 that I would do a 365 project for myself. The idea is to take a photo everyday for a year. This may sound easy, but it has proven challenging. It has also been very rewarding as well and has helped me have a more enjoyable approach to photography.

All this while, graphic design has been sitting on the back burner. Recently, it has come to the forefront of my brain and I’m finding myself very driven to find all the tutorials I can and learn all I can. The problem I am faced with is that I want to do everything at once. I want to learn it all right now.

I find I have a fairly good grasp on the basics of CSS, Photoshop, HTML and the basics of web design. What I want to do is take my working knowledge and turn into more of an expert. As we design is not my primary profession, it is difficult to learn as quickly as I would like.

I’ve toyed around with the idea of a second Bachelor’s in Graphic Design, but I would at least wait until my wife and I were settled in a place as signing up for a 4yr degree here would not be ideal as we are set on moving next year.

I hope this was a nice change from the typical “here’s what we did this weekend” post. It’s not easy coming up with things to put on this blog sometimes.

First week at new job went very well. I threw together a standards doc, messed with the software we’ll be using and threw around ideas in my head about how we are going to structure the script library we’ll eventually create.

Gatsby came home last week and he’s doing better. I’m still not thrilled with the idea that he’s on anti-seizure meds, but really, I’d take that over him having seizures (which were 100% not fun to witness). Molly’s not fond of his scent now due to his scent from the vet and/or his scent while on the medication.

I would be blogging during my lunch break right now if it were not due to the cold I caught from my wife. I avoided a few she had before, but it’s time to pay up I guess. The cold isn’t bad, just highly annoying. Unless my cold gets worse, I’ll be in work tomorrow. I really hate being home from work due to a cold (I’m my father’s son), but I didn’t want to share this cold and I didn’t see myself getting much done as I’m a snotty mess.

We had plans Friday to watch a movie C got from NetFlix. Well, that went down the drain when we found the DVD was cracked. We of course just told Steve and Sara over at New Ming (new Friday dinning spot) that we hardly ever get damaged DVDs.

A broken DVD was the least of our concerns, however. Around 1am, Gatsby (our older cat) had a seizure again. I say again because he had one in December of last year. We did the emergency vet thing, weren’t terribly impressed by the service we got and Gatsby recovered, never to have on again. Well, Friday he had one, then another - off to the vet we went. They wanted to keep him until Sunday. As it was 5am Saturday when he told us this, that meant a day. We weren’t thrilled with the idea because we just wanted him home.

Saturday he had 2 more seizures. We visited him and were told they’d start him on anti-seisure medication. Medication that he’d likely be on the rest of his life. We were also told of a Neurologist for pets in Fairport - we were never given this information last time. Visiting him was hard, we both cried a good amount. We tried to keep ourselves busy the rest of Saturday as we were both pretty upset and now wanted Gatsby home more than ever. We understood he was being cared for, but it wasn’t the same - we wanted to be the ones to care for him (alas, we didn’t have a full staff of vets and nurses at home)

Sunday was a better day. We were missing him, but we caught up on sleep. We headed to Geneva to go to a wedding which turned out to be a very nice time and a very good distraction.

Currently Gatsby hasn’t had a seizure since 4pm Saturday and he rested a lot yesterday. They started him on the medication and we plan on getting an appointment with the Nuero-doc today.

New job starts today and I’m excited, though very distracted with what is going on with Gatsby.

We headed out to San Francisco for a trip to see my wife’s family. We had a great time. I kept track of the trip on twitter (Aug 6-10).

Wednesday and Sunday were travel days, but Thursday we went to Point Reyes (which was awesome). Friday we went shopping and dining. Saturday we headed to a public market in Oakland and then had a BBQ at my sister-in-law’s house. All in all, a great trip!

Tomorrow we leave for a 5 day trip to California. With travel, it’ll be more like 4 days but it’ll still be an awesome trip. Really, not much more to say on the subject as I’m a bit tired. We are indeed excited, minus the flight. I’ve come to expect the worst when flying, that way I’m almost always pleasantly surprised!

In totally unrelated news, I’ve been looking again at LCD monitors. C jokes that if she needs something researched, I’m the guy to go to as I’ll research the HELL out of something - she’s absolutely correct. I now know a lot more about LCD monitors. This is good and bad. Bad because I now know that the kind I want is rather expensive as I really want accurate colors and a wide color gamut. Basically, if you see a 24″ LCD monitor that is less than $500, good chance it has what is called a ‘TN panel’. TN panels (from what I’ve read thus far) don’t have the most accurate color, but have great response times for gamers.

Beyond that, nothing terribly exciting. Getting more excited about new job as it is something new. Not thrilled to leave my current company as it has been great to here.