Today I came to school an hour and a half early to figure out a server problem, only to basically solve it in fifteen minutes. Now I have a few minor things to do, and then I’ll have time to look for Easter Egg kits.

(later)

While surfing I stumbled on a page of Chinese astrology. The page tells me that I’m an Earth Rooster, and that an appropriate gift for me is an egg decorating kit. How cool is that??

After class today I got rid of all the musty carpet in the upstairs bathroom. Tonight at Target I bought a large plastic under-bed box. I’m going to place it between the sinks upstairs, and use it to hold my dye cups. Then if a dye cup spills it will spill into the plastic and not onto the countertop. In an hour I’m going to move all the dyes into the bathroom, and start some serious egging.

IMAGE NOTES: I’m currently making my egg pictures 325x450 pixels, with plans to scale down for thumbnails. They’re being saved as 46% JPGS with .06 blur factor.

Spent part of the afternoon photographing all the eggs I have downstairs. I want to keep better track of what I’m doing. There are several eggs that I don’t remember much about. I think taking pictures, and annotating the pictures, might help me. Gee, sounds like it’s time for a new Access/UltraDev project.

So what do I want to record? OK, time for another list:

Table One, Eggs
--------------------
· ID
· Egg type
· Dye #1
· Dye #2
· Dye #3
· Technique #1
· Technique #2
· Technique #3
· Picture #1
· Picture #2
· Picture #3
· Notes
· Broken
· Sold
· Gift

Table Two, Techniques
-----------------------------
· Material A
· Material B
· Material C
· Material D
· Material E
· Material F
· Description

Table Three, Dyes
----------------------
· Manufacturer
· Form (tablet, powder, stick, etc.)
· Color

This evening I’m planning on cleaning the upstairs bathroom, and starting a dye station. Then I’ll re-organize the post-dye materials, so I can make a work area. I’m going to put a notebook in the dye area, so I have a place to write down my ideas for the eggs.


(later)

My pictures suck. The first batch wasn’t bad, but a few were blurred so I decided to re-shoot. I had used macro on the first batch, and it’s hard to find the right combination of closeness/away to keep the macro setting working.

On the next set I turned off macro and shot from a distance. They sucked worse than the first.

I’m thinking about buying a new digital camera. I have “buy technology” syndrome bad. I’ve been looking at TiVos, and Sony Viaos, but a new digital camera makes a lot of sense. I can donate my old one to Charlotte, and take hers up to school to use.

OK, the camera I want is about $650.00. I guess I need to take a look at my bank balance, and think about this long and hard.

(much, much, much later)

No camera for me. I’ve been very very bad lately, in a financial sense, and I forced myself to add it all up today. If I hadn’t bought any of the fun, frivolous stuff I could have bought a camera. Yes, I’ve bought almost $600 worth of art supplies, Mother’s Day presents, and books. It’s time to quit. I knew that this afternoon.

Somehow, though I forgot once I started surfing this evening. It started out innocently enough – a BloPens Easter egg kit, which I didn’t know they made. How cool!! I had to have one. Then I started thinking -- they were on sale at 33% off, and who knows when I’d ever find them again? So one kit became two. And there went another $30, by the time shipping was included.

Then I started surfing, since I didn’t want to go to bed, or read, or clean up the upstairs bathroom. I did a search for “egg decorating kit”, and on page six of my search I found a British site that sells European egg kits, and which ships internationally. I bought four of each kit, plus two egg blowing kits and two cute painting kits with wooden egg lathes. It’s excessive, but I wanted to get my shipping dollars’ worth. Plus, who knows when I’ll ever find these again? I spent an amazing $116.00 on egg kits. I think. That’s what the online currency converters showed, anyway.

(even later)

Its 2:00 am. I can’t stop thinking about how much money I’ve spent. To calm down I halfheartedly tried to take more egg pictures in the kitchen, convinced the glare and the ugly fluorescent lights would make the pictures awful. Naturally they’re the best pictures I’ve shot all day. I’m going to try to shoot more in the same spot tomorrow, when the sun is up to help offset the fluorescent glow some. A few of the images were bad, but most are pretty nice. I just have to crop the entire batch. Doesn’t work ever end???

I’ve emptied some more eggs to work with. I’m going to continue to play with the neon BloPens. Maybe I’ll go buy a blue BloPen, too. I have an egg I spoiled while scraping off the wax – my thumb went right through it – and I want to re-create it.

I also bought a small star hole punch at Target, and I want to try it out as a stencil.