(no subject)

It's raining and we hates it. WE HATES IT! Yes precious, we hates it, hates it...


So, as a Californian I have a philosophy. It doesn't apply every year, but it works often enough that I've kept with it. It goes as so:

Rain should come to my piece of the Bay Area once or twice each season for a period and strength just enough that I can remember exactly what rain is, and then it should go away again.

End of story.

phone etiquette - relatives

Had a really weird phone conversation with my aunt's husband today. Let me clarify this relation tangle for you first: my uncle on my mother's side died when I was a child, and his wife, my aunt by marriage and through blood of my cousins, remarried. Her husband's name is John.

So John calls the house today, and I pick up and say hello. He says "This is John Xxxxx." I blink for a minute in confusion--- I only know one person by that name, the guy who is married to my aunt, but the WAY that he says it is so formal, as if he expects me not to know who he is and that he needs to give his full name, that I am thrown for a moment and begin to wonder if it IS someone other than my step-uncle. Because wouldn't he talk to me like a relative, not a stranger? I would think so. So I ask him again to make sure.

"You said John Xxxxx right?"

And then the weirdest part: he says "Yes, Darren's step-dad."

That throws me for a good 12 seconds. You see, Darren is not my cousin (though we call each other Cuz). Darren is married to my cousin, Tracie. And John is not really Darren's step-dad, he's his step-dad-in-law. Why didn't he say he was Tracie's step-dad? Or my other cousin Jim's step-dad?

For that matter, why didn't he say he was Diane's John, or my uncle or something? I mean, I've never called him my uncle, but he kind of is, and at least if he had said that we wouldn't have had to had this confusing conversation.

I'm totally bewildered by this. Granted I don't know him very well, but I've hugged this guy and chatted with him multiple times at family gatherings, and known him for about 10 years at the least, and why the heck is he talking to me like a person I met a few days ago at a work-place?

Why are some people always so weird on the phone? It was bizarre, and uncomfortable, ya know? You expect your relatives, even those by marriage, to behave to you on the phone the way they do with you in person. His acting like a stranger was almost hurtful.

Icon tutorials... is there an animator in the house?

I seem to have acquired Adobe ImageReady 3.0 with my pirated Photoshop 6 stuff.

You can use ImageReady to make animated .gif icons, yes?

I'd like to know how. If anyone has done a step by step tutorial of how to use ImageReady, I'd love to see it. I was totally confused by it.