TX Dragon Texas, Dragons [Video Games], Electronics & More

My daughter, the Texas Realtor (who passed her test with flying colors the very first time she took the test – yes I AM VERY PROUD of her), has not gotten an answer yet from the bank on the offer I made for a house a couple weeks ago. It is a short sale and the bank does not get in a hurry to process them and I just get to wait … and wait … and wait some more to find out if the offer is accepted or rejected. I can tell you that it gives you time to rethink whether you really want to do this or not … it is not a quick process and it has certainly given me the time to get really frozen tootsies about whether to actually buy a house or not.

Part of me says it is a bad idea with the cost of gasoline going up and up and no idea where it might stop in the near future … while part of me says it would be a great thing to have a home of our own even if I do need to get the spending to match my budget instead of not being overly concerned as long as the bills are paid on time each month … the cost of gasoline and groceries are only going to get more expensive … and it is time to once again live well underneath my means instead of right at them.

In getting my spending well under the budget … I have a mental list of things that I can do without for months if needed:

First on my list to maybe go away when I buy a house is cable TV – I only got it when I moved into this apt so I would have it for when my grandson comes over …. it can go away again easily … I do not use it much … my grandson uses it when he comes over but he only comes over maybe once or twice a month … he could do without it again at Grandma’s house … after all … I have video games for him to play and he can start painting again if bored and not wanting to play games or watch movies – he has lots of DVD movies at home he could bring to watch and I have several he likes too already.

I have plenty of video games so not planning on buying any more of those for quite awhile …. I still have not finished Final Fantasy XII … and I have several others I have not even started yet for the Playstation 2, Playstation 3 and PSP.

Posted under Games / Gaming, Texas

Books are an enormous aid to me … I even read the software manuals packed with new software IF they send any … Adobe Creative Suite CS3 Design [Standard] {PhotoShop, Illustrator, InDesign and Acrobat} did not come with any printed manuals [manuals are for sale at Adobe] … it came with an entire DVD though with movies for the various programs – it is quite helpful, though sometimes for me … I need to read it in print and watch how they are doing it.

Playing with the program is a good thing to do as well. These particular programs are powerful but complex and have steep learning curves. I haven’t used either PhotoShop or Illustrator for the last 3 or 4 versions so they have changed them a lot … I’ve never used InDesign before so that is going a bit slowly.

I am building my template grids and basic stuff … character styles, paragraph styles, creating a library with repeating elements, headers and footers …. the preset text variables work great but I am not getting my text variables to work – I need the chapter name in the header and though I followed the directions {I think}, that variable is not updating from the first use of the heading. I will be working on this more next week though I also have other new projects to work on … never a dull moment … always lots to do and a short time to do it in.

I’ve also been playing my PSP Final Fantasy Tactics game a bit too for a change of pace … about an hour or so every couple days or so. The old saying that all work and no play makes ya a dull person is quite true! {I updated my post about that with my reactions to the game.}

Posted under Computers / Electronics, Games / Gaming