I had a little time to kill this morning before heading off to the club. Monday mornings are my day to make sure it is unlocked on time, as well as making sure chores are done... correctly. In addition, I had wire pieces I'd shaped that needed to go into the vibrator to either have the metal hardened, get a shine, or both. It was about a week's worth of work needing 20 minutes of attention per set, not done last week at the club because of the holiday and Fall Festival. Besides some of those pieces were still getting formed last night in front of the TV.
I have to open at 9:00. It's a 7 minute drive. Of course I woke up at 2:11. Just 'cause. Well, actualy just 'cause the dog had to go out, and by the time I get done with that, I'm usually unable to go back to sleep. I hatched a little must-do plan to kill some of the time. It must have decided to retaliate instead. Upon reflection, (part of the process of continuing to get fully awake), I noted each year this chore gets a little more frustrating.
And yet I love to do it. The chore is making the annual Holiday Card. I'd call it the Christmas card, but we've pretty much gotten away from Santa and the religious aspect, so I tend to look for themes like "Peace" or "Happy Holidays". I also love to show off pictures - or even just one - from the previous year.
This year, however, we wanted to show off a little more of what the year had been like - our favorite shots from previous seasons, our grand vacation, or this year, even us on our grand vacation. Steve and I had some ideas. He even requested that I take a particular shot last year while the decorations were still up to go on this year's card. With those things in mind, I went through the 5,846 items in my photo library (yes, I winnowed it downthat far) and picked out 7. It wasn't as hard as it sounds, as I had a pretty good idea of where/when those pictures were. Once they were moved to my desktop, I still had an hour left before needing to get dressed and leave.
Time enough to go online and see what I liked. That usually means starting with Walmart. They let me sort by card size and theme, so that narrows things down a lot. I found one template I fell in love with. It took 6 photos, had a couple more vertical that fit what I wanted to put on and the rest more horizontal to adequately serve the rest. Those 6 made an outer border with "Happy Holidays" and "from the Smith family" showing on a black center with snowflakes patterns. It looked ideal.
As expected, every year the software changes. I fumbled my way through uploading my photos, found out I had to wait for the software to process them before they showed next to the card with instructions on placing them where wanted. I went through that three times before I had the pics in the locations I wanted, since I forgot to take into consideration a couple times that it wasn't ideal to place blue next to blue when it could have other colors in between. Once they were arranged to my satisfaction, there was one left over which immediately got discarded. The others were both more appropriate to the theme of the year and better photos.
Now it was time to replace "From the Smith Family" with "Steve and Heather". Eight tries later it still never happened. Three of them were before I had run out of time and left for the club. The other five were after I returned home and decided I must have missed something obvious, and hunted for some way, any possible way at all, to make the text replacement happen. First, the thing didn't offer me a choice of which text to replace. It decided to place our names - in 36 size font!!!! - immediately over the "Happy Holidays" and parts of the surrounding photos. It was placed toward the left so the pictures on the right of the card were untouched. But the Smiths, whoever they may be, still reigned supreme on the card. Moreover the letters were in black, matching most of the background no matter how many times I picked white, and in 36 font no matter how many times I brought it down to single digits.
Just before I ran out of time, it highlighted a little green box over the Smith's greeting, indicating that I could have selected there to put my text. EVERY SINGLE NEXT KEYSTROKE completely reset my attempt to put in sensible text in a rational size, color and location back to what it had decided to do.
When I returned from the club, somewhat more patient having gotten done everything I wanted, I started in again. Still failing, I explored other photo card sites. Nobody had what I liked or wanted to have to afford. it was time to hit up Walmart in person. Now I would have downloaded my chosen photos, including the reject just in case, on a thumb drive. However, I took my spare thumb drive and loaded it with video files of Anna from a pair of previous visits onto that didn't fit on the big one I loaded all the photos I was giving Jordan so she could keep them. The smaller drive with the overflow I asked her to return to me so I could do what I wanted to do today, load a few pictures on and take to the printer. It's never been returned. (Hint-hint Sweetie.)
Walmart is a several mile drive from the house, so I did the only seemingly sensible thing and threw my laptop in the car, in sleep mode but able to reopen to my desktop with those selected files on it. I decided I should also take along one of the little doggie blankets and cover it up while it was in the car when I wasn't. It kept the laptop from being seen/stolen, even during the long wait in line at the electronics department which was staffed by a single person at the time. I bought the cheapest thumbdrive, returned to the car, loaded the photos on it, returned to their photo kiosk, and ... Nothing. Oh sure they had a kiosk, but no place to sit, and upon a search, only 3 choices of cards that turned out to be no choice at all. So having no place to sit turned out to not be an impediment after all. I left for good in three minutes.
Back home again, thumbdrive loaded, I tried yet more photo card sites. Their prices were 6 times what I would have had to spend at Walmart. I might have considered it anyway if they had anything, anything at all to suit my needs. I could maybe get 4 square photos on a card, but no. I was determined it was going to be 5 or 6. I could get all kinds of Christmas themes, new baby themes, graduation themes, here's-the-whole-damn-family themes, but nothing in a non religious holiday theme that would take more than one or two photos Nope, not for me this year. Not now that the choices had been made.
I called CVS. I never go there, but I recall other drug stores that had photo kiosks in the past, and this was both fairly close and likely one of the least expensive around. Besides, I was going to need stamps for those cards, and it was already in the direction of the post office. I grabbed a couple bites of what was going to pass for lunch, and headed out with the thumb drive once their voicemail system finally provided me with a human who could confirm they did indeed have a photo kiosk.
Turns out it had a nice stool too. And hundreds of cards to pick from. I tried really hard to get the first card I'd fallen in love with out of my head. It wasn't going to be here! And it wasn't, but several others met my needs fairly well. Moreover, as I went through the process of dealing with the photos and text, everything was simple. After all those hours, once I selected a card my order was placed in about 5 minutes. After a quick run to the post office for stamps and McDonald's for an ice cream cone to soothe my soul, I was back to pick them up. I think they look better than I cold have hoped, almost as good as that first..... NO! NO! Don't do that Heather!
Deep breath.
They look just fine. Most of you who read this will be seeing yours in the mail... umm, this year. Depends on how badly DeJoy messes the mail up by then.
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