Despite best efforts, sometimes a drawing is a dud.  Had some hope that the pencil drawing I was working on would come out okay but finally admitted that there was no saving it.  Unfortunate and a bit sad but there you go.  I'm my own best fan too so it's saying something when I don't like something I make.  I try to create work that I like, that I like to look at, that I like to have around me.  Not this one. 
     The weather has been severe (climate change nay sayers take not!).  This summer has been the hottest on record.   Not a dry heat but a humid heat which is enervating in the extreme.   I have done one ink sketch and started  a pastel of aerial view of clouds over red sands which I'm excited about.

The above was written a few days ago.  Thought I'd download a couple of photos to show what I'd done, especially the pastel.  But I couldn't.  I've downloaded before, not without trepidation for the exact reason as what happened, or more precisely, what didn't happen. 
       Why, when I've transferred, rather imported, photos from the camera on to the computer wouldn't it do so then?  I searched everywhere, pounded every button.  I even downloaded Picasa again.  I could find photos, all the photos I have reluctantly taken over the years but I couldn't get the camera and the computer to talk to one another.  Finally, after madly pushing buttons like the thousand monkeys trying to rewrite Shakespeare through eternity, I hit the correct one.  The computer had decided it wouldn't talk to Picasa anymore and had somehow reverted to Windows - which hadn't lifted a kilobyte finger except to point the middle one at me.
       I loathe digital cameras.  I don't like looking at photos on a monitor.  I don't like the pain in the ass process of trying to organize them.  I don't like anything about the digital photograph.  My old 1978 Olympus OM 10 suits me just fine.  I'd rather hand a roll of film to some pimply faced clerk in the supermarket and get an envelope, fat with possibilities, returned a few days or a week later.  I like waiting to see the results.  I like finding a photo that exceeds expectations and I am content with the duds.
      Tried to explain this to a keen photographer friend.  She didn't understand.  At all.  Why walk when you can drive?  Why cling to the stone age when the digital age is so much better?
      Stress.