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Ready to update

I’m back! Again! LOL! My next short-term goal is to get our 2021 journey photos posted. This was a 6-month trip with 3 distinct parts: Pre-Pearland, Pearland, and Post-Pearland. Actually, I’ll probably be doing it by months, since that usually works pretty well. And this is done now – 3/3/22. Check it out!

Another goal is to compile pictures of Jodie’s 2nd year. Here’s her first year.

And I want to update our State Capitols pages. We got to visit 4 more this summer — Alabama, West Virginia, Ohio, and Wyoming. We had visited Wyoming’s capitol before, but that was just an exterior visit, because they were doing remodeling of the building. This time, we got to go inside, too! And now, 3/3/22, I have all of the capitols updated.

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Another Travel Tales Page Posted!

Yeah! I’ve posted another Travel Tales page! This one is our Alaska Mission trip from 2014. It was fun going through my pics and remembering that good time.

We’re getting closer to making more on-the-road memories. We’ve had the RV serviced and made road-ready. We got pleated shades to cover the front side windows, replacing the very ugly curtains that were there.

I’ve lined up our renters for the time we’ll be gone, and I’ve begun the spreadsheet!

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Playing Catch-up

Christmas. Yeah, I’ll blame Christmas for my not posting on here for 2 weeks! I’ve been engaged in other pursuits including puzzles, cleaning a bit, carving wood, Christmas cookie baking and delivering to neighbors, picking up and parking our RV, going for our daily walks, and just getting up in the morning. Yeah, it’s a depression thing.

Re: Relevance. Still searching. I’m beginning to think that the Photoshop tutorial realm is so oversaturated, that there just isn’t room for me to squeeze back in. I’m still investigating and searching my own soul at the same time.

I was reading a post of mine from 2013 where I was talking about wanting to make a password-protected arm of my site where people could upload their own photos anonymously and thus have a new Art Challenge.

Still haven’t found out how to do that. At that time, I was feeling frustrated with the mountain of work that was ahead of me in “converting” my site to WordPress. I didn’t know that the easiest way to do this was not to do it, but to start all over.


The RV!! It’s indeed back in our custody and it’s beautiful! We were concerned that, with its extra length, our storage spot wouldn’t be big enough, but they said, “No problem,” with regards to our extra length. Woot!

Jack’s been busily making new doors for the space under the dinette. It had cheesy panels that snapped on and off with difficulty. We will now have smoothly operating doors with hinges. He’s also making drawers for his closet.

We still have a few items on our punch list to complete before we can go on a trip: chassis air conditioning, TV functions, and …mmm… thought that there was another thing, but maybe that’s it.

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My Day Travel Tales

I’ll be home for Christmas

…and I hope you will be too! We are trying hard to keep away from this virus which has filled our hospitals to near capacity, ended too many lives, and wrecked so many more. We are so fortunate in that we don’t have to worry about where our next meal is coming from or whether we’ll be evicted for non-payment of rent.

I’ve been kinda blah. I guess it’s depression rearing its ugly wintertime head. I’ve decided to up my anti-depressant.

The TV cabinet is glorious. I have good storage for my puzzles and games. We have even played some games! And I’ve put together a few puzzles, some of which have eluded me till now. The TV now swivels brilliantly from being visible in the TV room to being visible from the kitchen/dining areas. Yeah, I know. Still no pictures.

And I’m still searching my soul for relevance. I know that I’m an unlit fuse just ready to be fired up so I can serve a great purpose. Well, ok, that was a bit dramatic.

Jack had his pacemaker replaced on Monday. It served him well for 8 years, and this one should last as long.

The RV is doing OK, though it’s still in the shop. It’s being painted now, so… I am thinking that it’s getting close to being in our custody once more.

“They” — the health officials in Arizona — are saying “spring” for us to have our vaccines for Covid. And then we have to have 2 of them, 3 weeks apart.

We had hoped for a get-away date around mid-April, but we will await our vaccinations before we travel out of the state. Even then, I’m thinking that we’ll still be observing all the same rules about masking and distancing. Sooo, we may be mailing you that graduation gift, Matthew.

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More Travel Tales Posted!

I’m finished with my Travel Tales postings for our two 40-day adventures in 2018. Again, my pictures are all backups from my phone because my camera was lost, carrying with it all of my photos from …. God knows how far back, but 2018 and 2019, for sure. Ugh. I keep searching, now and then, for the camera, just thinking, hoping, that there is someplace I’ve forgotten to look, but I know the truth.

Anyway, thankfully, I did take many, many pictures with my phone for these trips! Trip 2 is in 2 parts.

Travel Tales 2018 Trip 1

Travel Tales 2018 Trip 2


Jack finished the TV stand and storage display cabinet! It’s so perfect for us. Once I get some pictures taken, I’m going to update my Interiors page and I’ll post in this blog, too. This is a serious upgrade to our lives, though, and I can’t wait to show you!

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Travel Tales work, art, and interiors

Yeah! I’ve been a busy girl. I’ve done a bit of art, which you may review on my Text Effects page of my Gallery. I completed my Travel Tales pages for the 2019 epic journey eastward.

I’ve also made a beginning on my Interiors page. This takes you from the “before” pictures to the “after” pictures at some of the places for which I’ve done interior design work.

I still have not made any headway toward getting another Art Challenge going.


Work on the TV Stand is going great. I’m seeing completion on that within… a week, maybe? We are both horrible at estimating completion times.

I’m going to be posting pics of the new room and my new bedroom, too, after we have it all done, picked up, and cleaned up. You don’t want to see it now.

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Travel Tales 2019 coming close to completion!

I did a big thing today. I’d been working on my Travel Tales 2019 as a single page. Not sure why, but that’s what I was doing. I think that I believed I’d just do a short summary of our 5 months on the road. Eh.. not possible.

So today I divided the trip log into 5 parts, all linked to each other. And I posted a bunch more photos. Today, I took us from the Wisconsin Dells all the way to the Badlands.

Of course, each of the photos has to be edited — some a lot, and some just to save for the web. That’s lots of editing.

Sunflower photographed near Mitchell, SD

We got our new tv room rug in place, our lighting is done, and we’re starting to think about the TV cabinet. We bought an electric fireplace with a heater and colored lights to go under the TV. Should be the raddest living area in Sun Lakes when we’re done.

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More Travel Tales Uploaded

I’ve been working for a few days on updating Travel Tales, the travel section of my site. This section can always be found beginning either with myJanee.com or that menu at the top right > All Things Janee > Travel Tales.

What I’ve been working on is skeleton pages for 2014-20 and a start on 2019’s page. So far, none of my photos are attached to their bigger version, so content yourself with the thumbnails.

It’s been lots of fun to go through the photos and the accompanying memories. Here are just a few from the Travel Tales 2019:

at the North Dakota Capitol in Bismark
North Dakota
East College, DePauw University
Indiana
Falls of the Ohio State Park, Indiana
Indiana
Artichokes
Texas
Tower at the WWI Museum in Kansas City, MO
Missouri

In Photoshop news, I sent the “Feathers” triptych off to CanvasPop. We’ll see how they turn out, but they have good reviews, right out of the gate. Here’s my final result.


We are making real headway on our new TV room. I’m surprised at how much I like it, and how much more useful that space is, using it as our “family” room rather than a dining room.

What I did was to move the dining room to the middle section, the TV to the left section, and the living room to the right section of the great room. Great rooms are great, to be sure, but they do need to have sensible arranging. I’m learning new things!

Someday I want to compile pics of the various rooms I’ve designed and arranged and post them.

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Many miles traveled; Milestone Reached!

Yeah! I’ve gotten as far as I can get with the State Capitol project for now. All of the states for which I have photos are posted. There are still two states for which Jack has photos and I do not — Indiana and Wisconsin, since I accidentally formatted my card before getting the pix off. (Bad idea. Don’t do that.)

And there are still 8 states for which we have not been to the capitol. I hope you will go there and look at my pics and that you like one or two of them! I still can’t believe how much work I’ve gotten done through this spring and summer.

Now I can get into some less mundane work. I know, what could possibly be more exciting than editing 1500 or so pictures and getting them saved for the web and posted on each of these 42 pages, right?

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Some new states, goals and some adulting

Today I posted the pics for North Carolina and Oklahoma — pics I shot in 2010 and 2011. I’m so PROUD of myself for finally, after all of this time, getting these pics into the light of day.

This website revival has been such an epic task and I really didn’t know if I was ever going to be able to discipline myself enough to a) learn the technology and b) just knuckle down and do it all. So yay, me!

I still have goals, even after the States are all posted. I now have a web cam and a mic and headset, so I can set out to learn how to do video tutorials. So many people are vlogging; how hard can it be? I do know that I need to get a haircut before I put myself on camera.


I was trying to get caught up today, because I’ve been off doing adult stuff. Two check-up doctors’ appointments, the dentist, the dog groomer, laundry, yeah, adult stuff all!

Here’s Jodie after her drastic grooming. I’m really loving this cut! We’ll let her topknot grow out a bit, after her puppy hair is all gone, but yeah. Loving this.

Poodle Nose!
Jodie after the drastic grooming
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North Dakota and New Mexico added!

Our country is so beautiful and there’s so much art and architecture to see. Today I worked on New Mexico and North Dakota, getting their capitol pages both published. Go look at all of these. I have some nice pics in there.

Here are a couple. The white flowers are ones I spied in Santa Fe. The Great Seal is in Bismark, North Dakota.

It just occurs to me that I put New Mexico’s capital city as Albuquerque. I will go and change that.


So I mentioned that Jodie had a haircut. Here she is! The poodle people in my group all say that poodles shed their puppy coat about this age (10-11 months) and then it just mats.

So she’s happier now, and so am I! And her topknot will grow out. I’m going to keep it far shorter than the 3.5″ she had been sporting. Ugh.

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All of the M states are posted!

Well, with the exception of Maryland, whose capitol we have not visited yet. We should have done it last summer, but then my pictures would have not been here anyway, since they would be lost along with that camera. <sigh>

Anyway, today I posted Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, and Nevada. This leaves me with just 9 states for which I have photos to post. There are still 8 states in which we need to visit statehouses. Hawaii is one of them and I do not envision myself getting onto a plane anytime soon.

So I’m starting to look forward to the next project.


Jodie got groomed yesterday! This was a big deal, because she’s been losing puppy down and it mats like crazy. I opted for sanity over vanity for this groom, so she’s sort of stupidly short right now, but we are getting to know the new Jodie. I had been trying to keep the mats under control, but it was a losing battle.

The people at the grooming salon assured me that I was not a bad poodle mom, but that the puppy hair is just impossible to keep long, as her topknot was. So, after struggling with those topknot mats for over 8 weeks, I feel so relieved now. I love this dog so much!

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So Much Amazing Art!

That’s what I’m seeing when I review, edit, and post my State Capitol pictures!

This piece of carving was at the Capitol in Lansing, Michigan. Each of the capitols has interesting architecture, beautiful artwork, and sometimes quite over-the-top gilding. But it’s all fun to photograph. I do hope that someday someone will look at these.


We’re still pondering what to do with our lighting in our media room, which is actually just the part of our great room where we watch tv. My original shelf concept was nixed because it conflicts with the height of our arched doorway.

I know, why do we even HAVE an arched doorway? Historical value. I want the archaeologists of the future to have a time with it. They will certainly think that it has some religious significance.

So now I’m thinking about a shelf that stops short of the arched doorway enough that it doesn’t call attention to the doorway, but rather is an architectural feature in its own right.

Someday, when all of this industrial stuff is hopelessly out of style and only old people have it, well.. I’ll be old. And I’ll love it just like today’s old people like the rounded oak furniture of the 80’s.

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More State Capitols Uploaded! Crowds in Awe!

Yes! Check out my Our United States link to see all the progress I’ve made. AFAICT, I have just 18 more states for which I have pictures to post. My latest additions are Illinois, Tennessee, and Rhode Island.

Getting going on a bit of art. Some’s on the computer and some is still in my head.


We’re working more on ideas for our media room lighting. Every time I come up with an idea and bounce it off Jack, he thinks that I’m changing my mind. I have difficulty explaining that I’m developing a plan and formulating ideas, that it doesn’t always just pop out as a finished blueprint on the first lightbulb flash.

Of course, with every idea I mention, he’s talking about how to build it. I’m interested in how to build it, too, because I don’t want to fully develop an idea that’s not possible to execute, but I don’t want him to have the whole thing mentally built before I have my idea fully conceived.

If he read my blog, he’d know more about how my mind works.

I am thinking at this point about installing a wide cedar beam, running horizontally high along the wall. Then, from this beam, we’d have pendant lights hanging down, sort of above and behind us, to act as reading lights.

The individual fixtures would have on/off switches on them and the entire affair would be controlled by a wall switch. I also want some kind of up-lighting from the top of the beam.

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Kentucky is a Commonwealth, not a State!

Yes, I’ll bet you knew that. And so is Virginia. I will leave it to the curious among you to find out the differences between a Commonwealth and a State. Kentucky is now posted! And yesterday, I posted Jack’s pics of Georgia, Virginia, and Pennsylvania.

I’m making headway! As of today, I have 19 of the state capitol pages published. Yay, me! Here’s the link to this project.


I did some adulting yesterday! I had my teeth cleaned, which is, aside from a few trips to Walmart, the most dangerous thing I’ve done, with regards to Covid-19.

I also made an appointment to get Jodie groomed. She’s so tangled and matted that I’m feeling like a terrible dog mom. I don’t know why her topknot gets so matted. Drives me crazy and I just simply cannot comb the mats out without both of us crying.

I still have not gotten brave enough to get my own hair cut.

We’re working a little more on our new living room. I’m setting up a lighting system that I really hope is the answer to our lighting issues. I want lights we can read by, turn off when we are not needing them, and which look great. I want a bit of a repeat of the island lighting fixture with the gas pipe and lights hanging off of it.

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More thrilling happenings at myJanee.com!

Nebraska is posted along with all 29 of the photos that I chose! As with all of them, Nebraska’s is a very interesting Capitol building, but this one has some particular allure. I wrote a bit about it in my commentary following the pictures.

And I posted Iowa! Probably the hardest part of this project is culling through the dozens of photos to find what I deem worth posting here. While I do not claim to be a photographer, I do love taking pictures. Now and then, I come up with something that’s almost good!

Just posted Delaware and Florida. I’m on fire today!

I don’t do significant Photoshop editing for most of these — Perspective Crop on many, Levels Adjustment Layer for most, and Smart Sharpen on all. There are a few that I do some cloning to take away a car or an obvious flaw. And sometimes, I do something like remove scaffolding!

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Writing in my blog makes me smile!

Yes, writing in my blog makes me smile. That’s mostly because I think that I’m the only one who reads it, and I don’t go back and read it often. So it’s really just notes to God, I suppose.

So today, even though it’s Sunday, I’m working. I posted new pages for Arkansas and Colorado today. So now they join Washington, Oregon, Kansas, California, Arizona, and Alaska! Please go and have a look! These are linked from my Our United States page.


I’m loving our new furniture arrangement! I don’t love the rug in the new TV room, so no pics yet, but the space makes more sense to me. It’s a comfortable use of the space. Even though we actually have MORE furniture in there, it seems less crowded.

The only piece of furniture we are getting rid of at this point is the dining room hutch that housed all of my puzzles, glassware, napkins, and a few decorative pieces. All of those are on our kitchen island till I box them up.

They will ultimately go into the TV cabinet that Jack’s talking about building. This will also house my puzzle collection, which is frustratingly hidden in my bedroom in that corner cabinet with the curved glass door which we moved twice but now must go.

I know that I seem to always be moving, rearranging, refurnishing. But that’s just how I was made. I’ve been rearranging furniture since I was a child and Annette and I redid our room often.

I wonder if Annette remembers how we arranged it so that our furniture was all in the middle of the room, leaving a path around the wall. We had bunkbeds, but we often put them down side by side, so that our room would look more like a hotel room.

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Preventing Insomnia in Your Computer

I’ve found myself using the “How to Geek” site more often than I’d like to admit. I’m a woman, after all, and I’m not supposed to concern myself with such matters, right? I know. WRONG!

Of late, my computer has had some insomnia. It awakens in the middle of the night, lights flash, it makes noises, then it goes back to sleep. How to fix? I haven’t gotten to the bottom of it yet, but this site has diagnostic strategies that seem reasonable. This is for Windows 10.

I’ve been continuing work on my States project. Yesterday, I completed AZ and CA. Today I’ve added Oregon! You can access this project from THIS LINK.


In other news, we got our sectional today! It’s big and beautiful (pictures soon) and it should solve a few of our issues.

  • Jodie can sit with us while we are resting in the evening (though she has always preferred the floor).
  • If we are ever able to have guests again, it forms a sweet conversation area, which we were missing in our other arrangement. This area now will comfortably seat 7.
  • If we are ever able to have family visit again, we can all sit on the sectional and watch TV.
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Alaska Page Added: Alaskans are “frankly amazed” at the quality of the page

Yeah! I added Alaska! The capitol is … not very nice, but it’s there. I posted a few trail pix, too, just so the page would have some color.

In going through my Alaska pics, I found that I had many other non-Alaska pics in there. And I had a ton of extraneous non-whale pics. These are pics that one shoots when one is trying to get a pic of an actual whale, but then it dives under.

Today I’m working on photos for Kansas’ page. If I do “just” one state a day, I’ll be done in just 50 days!

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Another ALL NEW Post type!

The excitement never stops over here at myJanee.com! Pixels are a-flyin’ and I’m getting things done. Today I added another new post type to my site — States. I’m doing this with the Custom Post Type plugin, which has been handy for me.

This is where my state pages are housed. That’s right: I made new pages, one for each of the 50. They are all blocked and ready to be filled with wonderful pictures of all of our adventures. Well, those and the state capitol pix, too! The pages are not posted yet.


Other than arguing on the Photoshop Beginners group that one actually CAN do vector artwork in Photoshop, slowly recovering from this shingles shot, and grieving over the passing of one of our more esteemed Supreme Court Justices, life has been pretty quiet. I did edit some of my Washington State photos and posted them. Maybe it’s time for more art.