I love the word "idle," and use it in the title "Idlings." It sounds peaceful and serene. I makes me want to take a nap.

I could do that but have far too many tasks to perform today. I was awake very early again and working on design jobs before the sun cracked up over the Atlantic.

I revised a tee-shirt design for a west coast company in the rock 'n roll show biz. It is a very cool client and I do their work via a small marketing firm which is my client.

That firm always gives me their difficult work. It is usually work based on previous jobs I have done for them or on jobs that their local graphic designers shake their heads at and say "impossible."

I love challenges in design, and almost every job they give me is one.

Then I got back to redesigning a brochure. I designed the original one back in June. It is for the same agency and a different client of theirs in the private security biz. They are advanced and don't just supply uniformed armed guards. They also have elaborate systems of camera-based electronic security. Beyond that, they use satellites and even cellular methods for maintaining security 24/7/365 for companies in Southern California.

The original brochure is a three-panel on both sides that folded down to 11 inches tall and about six inches wide. The client took five months to decide he wanted it smaller, so it would fold down to 8.5 inches high and 5.5 inches wide, so he could get it into a half-letter envelope for mailing. A half-letter envelope is six by nine inches.

So I had to shrink the type font size from 12 point down to ten point and squeeze the leading. Leading is the space between lines of type. I also had to shrink the size of all the photographic objects in the brochure, front side and inside. This requires going back to each photo in Photoshop and doing just that.

Now I am trying to fit all this on the smaller size brochure. I should be able to whip this puppy out by sometime this afternood.

So much for that.

Last night I taught my third of four classes in acrylic painting at the Art Guild. It is going fine but I am surprised that one of the students, an older lady, doesn't do any work at home. She brought her paints and brushes to class and worked periodically on her painting (which has sat all week in the classroom without being touched) and complained the entire time that she wasn't making much progress.

I told her she should take the painting home and work on it a little each day or two.

Her answer was, "I just can't work like this in the evening."

I replied that if she took it home she could work on it when she was less tire.

Her response was that she was taking the class to do the painting at the gallery and didn't want to do it at home.

Catch 22?

I always have a student like that. The class cost her $45. Her money could have been spent on something more fulfilling for her, but...

Two of the students' paintings are finished already.

The city put their Christmas lights on the bridges already. The stores are all decked out for the Holidays. I am getting so many ads in the mail and in the newspaper for spiral-sliced hams and frozen turkeys that I am tempted to buy some. This year I will only get something for the cats and my mother. I already have some hand-made art jewelry for my sis and two other ladies. I am not buying anything else. The year is a tough one with bills being stretched to the limit and other hardships.

I used to buy my parakeets a new wind-up water globe music box every season. This will be the first birdless year since the early 1980s. No more music boxes. Sad.