Aia update: She’s doing well.

I was painting last night. After about 15 min during program mode on the recumbant bike I got really bad cramps. My endurance is way down. I’m going to try for 30 min program on Sunday. I’m doing the weight training now without weights…so I can have my forms down when the weight I ordered at Christmas time get here in a couple of weeks.

What? My gym renewal came up. I haven’t been since late October because with my new job I can’t make the hours. So instead of renewing I found a good deal on a weight bench with weights, a recumbant bike and a body ball. Plus I started to add pilates to my weekly yoga regieme. I feel strong, but I still feel fat. I’ve been bad with the diet, but I’ve kept my daily calorie intake to 1500 or less. Sigh.

Then everything hit the fan. Snow storms which meant delayed checks, short checks and such. Aia got sick, my car died. Blarg. I called the company to see if I could return the equiment. I could, if I shipped it back went it came on my dime…which meant several hundred dollars in shipping and insurance. It was cheaper to keep the equiment…and less regret too.

The recumbant bike finally showed up yesterday. The guys who delivered it stuck it in front of my garage then put my trash can on it’s side in front of it. It was a nice guesture but it took me and three neighbors to lift it. I doubt it would have been stolen.

It has some damage on the feet but it’s still stable and the computer works. Not bad. Treadmills and other cario equip was way too expensive. I began thinking about the recumbant bike when I saw one at Costco for 300$. A quick check online got me one for $100. It has six programs. I’m only making halfway through the easy one now. But watching TV, reading or playing video games while working out is a big plus for me. I put the thing on manual and turned my laptop around on the coffee table so I could play FFXI. Kept my heart rate above 100 for 30 min and gained two levels. Now that’s progress.

But I knew I had to get back on my five day a week schedule. So I looke for a bench. Bench, weights and the ball are costing me two hundred. I could get them all for one hundred however the weight range isn’t as good and niether was the bench. The guarantee on this was a lot better.

So tired, sore and crampy after exercising I sat down to paint. I use Corel Painter 8. I’m stubborn about it as I’ve had a hard time finding info on translating what I can do on paper to what I should be able to do on computer. In formation on the internet is sorely lacking due to NDA’s and a prevelant feeling of just play. Well it took two years of playing for me to narrow down a tool set for use in painting. Now that I finally have one and a saved palette of the tools I use, painting has been going well. Last night, though, I discovered I hated digital water color.

Which makes me glad I did not upgrade to XI Painter. They have digital oils. I love oils but if they work like digital water color they can hang.

I would like to upgrade, but I’ve spend a lot of money on books to help me translate RL painting to Painter painting. I would not want to have to get more books for a new software that while giving me the ability to use two monitors (I wish painter 8 could do this) and possibly digital oils…it isn’t really anything I need.

So anyway, I start laying down color for the sky of a tower piece I’m doing. I paint reds and blues, browns and purple. And is discover I can not dry the water color then translate it into another type of layer. I can’t blend it using any thing but other digital watercolor brushes. I’m going to try merging the layer with a normal later later…but if that doesn’t work there is NO way I’m ever touching digital water color or even digital ink layers ever again. The power in painter is being able to use all those mediums at once, without having to spend thousands of dollars to do so. Limiting that sucks.

Boy that was rambling.