bad

Bad day. I am thinking of how I sort of don't have any taste. Photo adjusting-- you look at the pictures as they're processed and make sure they're not too dark, too bright, too washed-out, too cyan or magenta or yellow, too contrasty, etc. You fix all those things, and then send them to print.
I understand what all the settings mean, and have no trouble using them, but...
I can't tell the difference.
The woman training me was getting very annoyed with me, and snapped at me several times, seeing the prints that were coming out. I kept not noticing things like, for example, it's a photo of a person. Instead of balancing the overall photo so that the whole thing is the proper brightness, shouldn't I make sure that the person's face, which was half in shadow, was bright enough to make out?
Oh.
Duh.
Repeat umpty-zillion times in a bunch of different ways.
Worst is the fact that half the time, it looks just as good uncorrected. So it's a picture of a stone wall, and it's very blue. It's atmospheric. I un-cyan it, and add a yellow, and now it's a neutral-colored stone wall. It doesn't look any better to me. It just looks less blue. I kind of like blue. I don't see what the big deal is.

So it's a bummer, and I'm feeling rather down on myself in general. I don't have any taste. I generally just sort of like things the way they are, whatever that way is. Or I don't. I was looking at some interior design website and thinking, like, how do people know how to decorate? I do stuff and like doing it, but then most people react with a polite Um that's nice once they realize it's intentional. (Sometimes they ask first if it was intentional or not. Sometimes they just assume it wasn't.)
I was looking at my old photos and was totally dismayed by the interior design of previous apartments where I've lived. That's why, five years after moving in and two years after repainting (with colors Z chose) I have absolutely 0 pictures or paintings or anything on my walls. Because I have either no taste, or absolutely terrible taste. I have no idea what's the 'right' thing to put on a wall. It is lovely to go in someone's house and see pretty photos or paintings or hangings on their walls, but it seems absurd to me to buy such a thing, and even more absurd to make. I have no idea what to put up on my walls.
I just don't have any taste. It's not that I can't see a difference, I just can't make a judgment as to whether something is better or worse than some other thing.

I don't know, but whatever it is, it has me pretty depressed at the moment. I just had an overall bad day at work today-- a lot of things I didn't know I was doing wrong, or things I'd just sort of picked up without being trained or told that it turns out I'd assumed incorrectly. So I am feeling very down on myself and don't really know what to do about it.
I also came home with a crushing headache, probably tension or dehydration. Despite the fact that I have practice, I went ahead and had a vodka and cranberry juice, because I thought it might help. And it did, but now I feel extremely sleepy and don't really want to contemplate attending practice.
Bah.
I may attempt a nap.
Then someone tell me something pleasant and I will think about that for a little while.

bourbon fairy

Z and I both enjoy bourbon-- Woodford Reserve in particular. My brother-in-law, the Southern one, drinks the stuff and we became fond of it while on a visit to Georgia.
It's not cheap but it's not inordinately expensive either.

We finished our bottle on Election Day after McCain conceded, and while Obama was making his victory speech.
Times have been fairly tight, and so we haven't replaced the bottle. I have glanced with regret at the bourbon shelf every time we've gone to the Mega Liquor Store Of Awesome since then, but each time have sighed and told myself that it's not really a spring/summer drink anyway; we'll replace it some other time. We'll be drinking white rum and gin and mass quantities of tequila in the meantime, right? Who needs bourbon?

Just now, my headache had come back and I was moping around the kitchen thinking that I am in no mood or fit state to skate. And I happened to look over on the sideboard, and noticed the distinctive silhouette... of a full Woodford Reserve bottle. With paper seal intact and elasticated band with tag around the neck.
WTF?

WE HAVE A BOURBON FAIRY.

This is the best thing ever.
I am going to drink bourbon and sew tonight. That's what I've been wanting to do, and that's what I'm going to do.

Also the land agent for my Pennsic camp just got back to me and said that it was perfectly fine in his book to let Liesl and her Dave camp with us this year-- my word is good enough for them, though we might be a bit crowded. And that would be totally awesome. I could happily spend a week drunk with Liesl. That's the only thing that would make Pennsic more awesome than it already is.
The only thing that would make Pennsic yet MORE awesome would be if redstapler could make it too. But that would kind of be almost Too awesome.

OK, I feel better about life now.