What a PITA

And I don’t mean the bread!

Well, the case of the Maggie-imposter seems to have been handled with swift and iron-fisted justice; it’s now just another footnote in the adventures of being me.

But the experience of having my work plagiarized has woken me up to the need to watermark all my photos. Yeegads, do you know what a pain that is?

First off, I got it in my head to do it “right” — in Photoshop, with a professional watermark. The keen thing about Photoshop is that I can create an action that will automate the process, saving a LOT of time. I got the darn mark created, now the problem is getting it so that it will automatically resize and center for each photo regardless of the size of the file or the orientation of the photo — horizontal or vertical.

There are about a bazillion online tutorials for doing this and I have read them all. The problem is that Photoshop doesn’t want to open up the file that I created for the watermark. It keeps telling me something about non-parsley-able something or others. Maybe it's Parsnips? Parley? Can I request Parley?

The irony is that I originally intended to become a graphic artist. Maybe this is a sign from God? Like a little pat on the back to assure me that I was meant to be a nail tech.

Speaking of what I meant to become instead of a nail tech. You know, I did my first set of nails on myself when I was 15 years old. I once painted the entire Golden West High School colorguards’ nails with our school logo for a band review (yeah, I was a flag girl — go ahead, laugh). I actually looked into getting my license in ’87, but it would have meant going to school 40 hours a week through my entire summer vacation between my junior and senior years — yeah right! Like any self-respecting slacker 17-year-old is going to give up her summer vacation to be in school for 40 hours a week!

So it was that I didn’t actually get around to pursuing my career until 1992, when I enrolled in the Newberry School of Beauty in Woodland Hills, Calif., just before my 22nd birthday.

I was living in a two-bedroom apartment in Canoga Park with 4 1/2 roommates — yes 4 1/2 — and I had a job that was slowly choking my soul. I decided that I was finally going to get serious and go back to college and get my art degree and go into graphic arts, but first I would need a job that would give me the flexibility to work a college schedule AND bring in enough money to pay my bills. So I decided to finally get my manicuring license.

Well I start school and in our theory classroom there’s a poster for the WINBA show, with information about competitions, etc. Right about then was when the clouds parted and the angels sang. Who was I kidding? I was never going to go back to college! At least not to get another job. I was born to do nails.