I am sooooo excited! I even designed another banner to go in between the two I have already done. Here's how it will go:

First, my firecracker banner will come up:

Then, the new banner - called "match strike"- will come up:

And, finally, a burst of color in my Tiedyefor banner!

Isn't that cool? Of course, I also spent a lot of time trying to construct the "match strike" banner, as it involved finding the graphics, changing their background colors, then encouraging them to work together.

Then, my husband informed me about this thing called "anti-aliasing" in Adobe Photoshop. I had no idea about this! Now, I realized that my graphics banners look like CRAP, so I had to redo them and restore them on my image storage page. Then I had to send another e-mail to Mommy Martin, the animated banner designer, to explain all of this. She probably thinks I am a stalker!!

Meanwhile, the sun is out again, and I am going to actually leave the house and do other things - things that do not involve sitting at a computer!!!!

But this morning has been very productive. I have found more insight into the Indonesian dish I am preparing tonight, called Sambal Goreng Ati Ampela. It is basically chicken livers with this cool little spice package I found at the Buford Highway Farmers Market. I need to go out and try to find galangal root and petai, which is a kind of bean. If not, I will substitute. It's supposed to be served on fried potatoes, so I might go by McDonald's and pick up some fries...

I'm only sort of joking.... Ahhh! Adventures in cuisine! Check out AsiaRecipe.com for recipes from Mongolia to Laos to Sri Lanka! I found a cool recipe that includes beef tongue, cream of mushroom soup, lemon and olives from the Phillipines! But my husband would only like one bizarro recipe per week, please...

I also found some relevant research and projects on the two books I ordered for classroom reading groups. I may or may not get to them this year. I purchased a set of 10 books and 1 book on cassette of Shadow of a Bull by Maia Wojciechowska for my boys to read, and it comes with an activity book. I ordered the same for Esperanza Rising for my girls to read, but it has no neat and easy exercise book. But I have found some super journal, art, and poetry exercises for them to do. The only down side is that it will involve a lot of work and planning, and I am not sure I have the energy - what with there being only 5 weeks of school left.

My mom and I went over to Norcross and looked at choices 2 and 3, and she thought that the third one looked like the best deal. If you don't know what I am talking about, please see my entry called House Hunt. We are going to make an offer on the third choice today or tonight! I am still a little concerned about the traffic through "Spaghetti Junction," but love the international neighborhood. Stopping by the Chevron station before getting on the highway, I had a nice conversation in French with the employee there from Cameroon!

Here's my new banner!

Is it too speedy?