I was overwhelmed laying out two issues of our district news magazine. Without realizing how much work it would be, I offered to do one issue in full color to post online, and one in black and white to send to the printers. The print images had to be high quality so I could not do a simple 'convert document to black and white'. Every image had to be converted individually within Photoshop. What a bear that was, but it is finally done.

I painted the above as a gift our outgoing District Commander. He sent me a photograph of this place several times, and while he never came right out and asked me to paint it for him, I know that is what he would like. I painted whenever I had to give my wrist and arms a break. Even though I use wrist supports on both my mouse pad and keyboard, my arms start to hurt after many hours and I need a break. Painting is a good way to relax my arms.

It seems I have become my division's "print shop". We have a Change of Watch ceremony coming up (change of command)and I am doing all of the certificates for both the outgoing and incoming commanders. For some reason I have also become the person who writes and submits awards for our members to the Coast Guard. It is a sad state of affairs when one is asked to write their own award because they really don't know if anyone else in our division knows how to write them. Military/ Coast Guard awards use a specific format and language. It is really weird writing an award for oneself (when asked) in third person!

By the way- I tried several times to sign on the MyBloggers and was redirected to a link of some kind. It took a lot of effort to get here today. I have a link on my desktop, but that is what kept redirecting me. I guess we are now "mybloggers.com" and "mybloggers.com" is something else- don't know exactly what else. At any rate, that was frustrating too!