Unexpected Destination: If I'm feeling a little stressed . . .

imagine how Joshua's feeling --- that's right, I"m waking up worrying about how and when he's going to get all of his end-of-quarter projects finished up while working on the music class production of Aladdin--in which he *is* Aladdin. Yep. When I type it here it sounds silly. He's been pressed all this year to work more and better and to manage things well, and now this week seems to be even more than before. And he's sick. And he's plugging away and it'll all be fine. Tonight he's a back-up singer/dancer to another team's performance and then tomorrow night is his performance and in between, he met over the weekend 2x with his science team to make a geological model of the earth (like straight out of an Arthur episode :) , and he's also working on a blog page about Ancient Egypt, a story about bullying, and constructing an archamedian solid (don't know if I spelled that right). I guess I'm thinking about this a lot because it's a turning point in his young years in which he's really becoming more responsible and more independent and I want it to go well and him to feel good about it, 'cause . . . . that's life!

And on my end, I've spent the last couple of weeks learning about html and cascading style sheets and squarespace and domains and forums and galleries and bridging software. And it's mostly fun and interesting (got to be glad for those years spent programming in my 20s) and I almost have everything working. You can check it all out at www.debbiehodge.com I'm going to teach my first class at the site starting April 29 - a redux of Scrap Your Events, but with new sketches and new designers and a little tweaking. Also in preparation for the release of my book (got the advance copy in my hands !) I'm going to be doing some giveaways that will require a little uploading of layouts into the gallery. I guess I want you to let me know if you see anything klunking over there and I'd love it if you'd get on my email list so I can tell you about book giveaways --- and class pass giveaways which I"ll do with Scrapscene.

Other news: I"m going to Florida with Elaine and Jill soon!!! Every group of friends needs that friend who makes things happens, who often functions as the oil and that's Elaine in this instance. She was so determined to go to Fl and she was calling us about dates and we said "sure, sure" not really understanding it was soon and for real and then Elaine told me to bring my laptop to coffee and she wanted us to all buy our flight tickets right then and there. Jill & I were immediately . . . ummmmm . . . not ready. And Bev said she was saving her $ and hours away from home for Uganda (thanks, Bev!) But over the course of the next week we came around to Elaine's side. And, yes, the ticket prices did go up a bit, but we just weren't ready! In this photo, I believe Elaine is saying something about us being the "biggest old stick-in-the-muds . . " And it was Jill's birthday :) And actually the funniest thing about this photo is that Elaine has only recently learned how to surf the net and use email ---- though she's already backing off of email --- and here she was taking charge :)

And I'll end with a page I did the another night while waiting for Joshua at play practice. All supplies are designer digitals and you can see links to them here.