I'm finally trying "actions" in PSE (5.0). This is a freebie called "sheris_sketch_elem_two" which I found at http://www.atncentral.com/download.htm. The 'two' indicates that both black/white and color options are included. The result is a much faster sketch than I've been able to create using Convert to Black and White and then Filters, Sketch and finally trial-and-error to get the look I want. For a couple of test photos, I've liked the action better, others I like my (much-slower-to-produce) result better. Using the action produces a good sketch when starting with a sharp initial photo. It will certainly be easy to try the action first. I've now downloaded several PSE actions, and watching them function step-by-step in PSE has been a great learning tool.

Food for thought from The Writing Class by Jincy Willett:

Her house was small and cluttered and took only a few minutes to inspect. Amy wondered, as she yanked open the coat closet door, how she could be so full, simultaneously, of dread and boredom. (see similar quote in The Darkest Evening of the Year)

Amy Gallup was a loner who was afraid to be alone.

Amy was not at the moment worried about the cactus, or even the poisonous letter. It was morning, and nothing frightened Amy in the morning, because her will to live never kicked in until after lunch.

It couldn't have been more than ten minutes since she'd sent the e-mail. Carla must have been hovering like a yellow jacket over her virtual mailbox, must have phoned Harry B., who must instantly have read his copy, and together they had managed a miraculous tandem phone call, and for what? The day was new, there was tons of time, and then would do just as well as now. "Do you ever worry," asked Amy, "that within the next twenty years, the noun anticipation, and all its synonyms, will join the ranks of archaic words, like nonce and eftsoons?"

Food for thought from "The Darkest Evening of the Year" by Dean Koontz:

Because God is never cruel, there is a reason for all things. We must know the pain of loss; because if we never knew it, we would have no compassion for others, and we would become monsters of self-regard, creatures of unalloyed self-interest. The terrible pain of loss teaches humility to our prideful kind, has the power to soften uncaring hearts, to make a better person of a good one.

To her way of thinking, intuition was a word for perceptions that were received on a level far below the subconscious. Intuition was seeing with the soul.

Boredom is a state of mind akin to an emotion. Perhaps the emotion to which boredom most often leads is despair.

Billy knew the power of ideas. "You are what you eat," the nutritionists endlessly hector fast-food addicts, and you are also what ideas you have consumed.

"Put any three human beings together," she said, "and three of them are going to have psychological problems. So we just cope with one another."

The geometry of judgment is a circle. Hate is a snake that turns to consume itself from the tail, a circle that diminishes to a point, then to nothing. Pride is such a snake, and envy, and greed. Love, however, is a hoop, a wheel, that rolls on forever. We are rescued by those whom we have rescued. The saved become the saviors of their saviors.

Merry Christmas 2008

Food for thought from "Jesus, CEO" by Laurie Beth Jones:

Sandra Marleen Harrison says her only goal in life is simply "To be a blessing." This used to frustrate me . . . how do you develop an action plan and benchmarks for that kind of goal?
And yet, as I have grown, I find that her goal is becoming more and more my own.

. . . from Proverbs 3:18, talking about Wisdom, and it reads, "She is a tree of life to all who lay hold of her branches. Happy are all who retaineth her." And then I realized that was what I wanted more than anything else: to be a blessing . . .