Guinness Extra Stout is the lesser known relative of Guinness. You know, if Guinness were a tall, fit, handsome movie star, Extra Stout would be his short, stocky, non-famous overlooked brother. Most grocery stores around here have it. It’ll be the dark-glassed, yellow bottle-capped six pack next to the Guinness. It is a short beer – the bottles are smaller. It doesn’t have that fancy doohicky in the bottle to create the head, either. But it packs a punch.

It tastes just like Guinness (really, big surprise, that), but there is more of that taste in each sip. As if its flavor is denser. It’s a bit stoutier, with a tang. I can’t access the stupid Guinness website without getting cookies, so I haven’t checked, but I think it has more alcohol than regular Guinness. A good beer to go with a meal, especially pizza. Mmmmm, pizza.

M: 6
N: 7.5

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After my in-your-face experience with pastels last week, I was ready for a break. Pastels are a very hands-on medium. After each session, I had beautifully colored dust on my hands, arms, elbows, fingers, face, and under my fingernails. I wore the same sweatshirt each time, and it’ll never be the same. My nose-blowing was multicolored. There was dust all over my art table, supplies, lamps, and floor. I’m not sure if it bothered me or not; the jury’s still out on whether I like using pastels. But it was enough for one week.

So, I got out my trusty tablet with intent to work on the winoctopus. Then I remembered that I promised to do new stationery for my dad’s business for Christmas, which, you’ll notice, was a month ago. So I began working on that. The biggest thing I’ve learned from it (painfully, I’ll add): the GIMP is not a good tool for drawing straight lines.

I’m not sure whether Photoshop or some other non-open-source program for Mac or Windows could do it better; no experience with those. I’m a Linux girl all the way. But oy, this project had me wishing for the days when I had access to AutoCAD and Unigraphics. I would have had it done in 1/10th the time.

I could press shift to make the paintbrush tool do a straight line, but there were no detents and the line was faint, more pixels wide than the brush, and would change thickness halfway through. It was so annoying. If I didn’t have my tablet, I would have given up long ago to go find new wrists, since mine would have fallen off.

Lesson: Anything with geometry will be done with good old-fashioned pencil, paper, and ruler, then scanned. My wrists will thank me.