Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep

I promised to keep this blog updated and I certainly have the time to do it. Weekends are nice now, because I don't have to work Sundays, so Steve and I have two days together each week. This is a treat for us.

This past week I've been dealing with insomnia, getting to bed around 2 or 3 a.m. (one night I was up until 4 a.m.). I was fully expecting this symptom, though, since it was what happened the last time I was unemployed. And I also learned last time that having a couple drinks before bedtime doesn't really resolve the problem, it just makes me sleep for an hour or two, and then I wake up unable to get back to sleep.

And what did we do this weekend? Clean the carpets? Spruce up the patio? No, we went shopping. And what did we get? A new desk for me. Since I lived in Hollywood, my computer has been on a tiny cart not much wider than the monitor itself. Needless to say, it was very difficult to get any kind of work done without having an auxiliary table or surface upon which to put all my stuff. Well, since my departure from The Reporter, due to my incipient redundancy, I have thought about getting up to speed on Web design, since that's the skill everyone seems to be clamoring for these days. But it was going to be hard to do on that little cart.

So we went shopping, and I found this great new desk for $60. It came in an incredibly small box (about the size of the desktop itself), all folded up with instructions.

It's an amazing design and the directions for assembly were also amazingly complete and clear. It only took about four hours, but now I have this lovely desk with enough room to spread out and take notes and such on the two programs that I am learning at present: Flash and Dreamweaver.

Flash is the program that provides all those nifty animated elements on the Web, and Dreamweaver is a page layout program for the Internet. Between the two, it's possible to mount anything from a small and personal Web site up to one with thousands of pages, like a retail site. And I had presence of mind enough to purchase them in the Adobe Design Suite. It was a whopping $1200, but it includes these programs as well as Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator and Acrobat; just about everything a graphic designer needs, this side of 3-D imaging.

So now I have to make good and put the nose to the grindstone: At least an hour a day for both Flash and Dreamweaver. I figure at that pace, I should have salable skills within two to three months. The final outcome will be a Web site of my own, touting my past design experience and showing off my new knowledge about design for the Web.

Sounds pretty good, eh? And all from my spiffy new desk with the incredible price tag.

It's late. Steve's already asleep in bed. I'd better join him, even though I'm really not too sleepy at all. And if I end up getting back up and unable to sleep, at least I'll have this entry to look at...from my new desk!