Well, I either am just flat-out incapable of baking anything, need a bread machine, or have a bad recipe. Who knows, but my second loaf of bread turned out only marginally better than the first, which means it still is far short of my goals. It actually tastes fantastic, but it's far from the big-fluffy sandwich-type bread I'm looking for. It's more like a zucchini bread or something. I could give it another go, but I feel like I'm just wasting food with these failed attempts. If anyone out there knows good recipes for making bread using spent grains from beer brewing, let me know.

I had a indoor soccer game earlier tonight, we won 9-6, and would have blown them out if they didn't have just an awesome goalie. He certainly stymied me on a couple of great saves (and one or two "chokes" on my part -- great goalies get you to do that, you overthink the shot and either put it right to him or miss entirely). I did have two, one from an impossible angle -- and one of the best shots I've ever had on a soccer field -- indoor or outdoor -- in my life. From where I was, the only real opportunity I had was to bang it off the far post and in, so I pulled my foot back, drove it, and BANG! You know you've made the "highlight reel" when guys on the other team are saying out loud -- not muttering -- "nice shot." My second goal was a one-timer off of a beautiful feed, just beating the goalie to the ball and calmly tapping it past him. Damn, it was a nice pass, I did one of those NBA things, where the guy goes up for the alley-oop and makes a highlight-reel dunk, and he doesn't even get fired up, he just calmly turns and points to the guy who set him up. It was beautiful. I was on tonight, and despite the fact it lead to a handful of lost balls and bad touches, I was making some moves with my ball-handling I usually don't even try, and on a couple occasions even did what I rarely, if ever, do: create my own shot. Sure, I missed the shot (see "choking" above) but it's good to know you can do that sometimes.

So, I'm teaching myself Photoshop, and at the risk of being drowned out by the scoffing from people I know who know the program well, I'm just getting frustrated right now. You can just do such a dizzying amount of things with it, that sometimes you either a) don't know which of those things to use, b) can't seem to find the "simple stuff" or c) do everything the "complicated way" because you haven't found/don't know about the function or more efficient method yet. And yes, if you're wondering, I'm one of those people who just dives in and eschews any sort of manual or tutorial (in most cases, I actually found myself using the tutorial for Dreamweaver recently!). These things always follow the same tried and true pattern:
1) Excitement -- "boy, I can't wait to start doin' stuff"
2) Frustration -- "dammit, this seems easy... why isn't this easy"
3) Enlightenment -- "oh yeah, okay, yeah, this is cool, okay, I'm getting it now"
repeat ad nauseam for days, weeks, months, years, or until I just give up and find something else to do, thus leaving my website untended for months at a time.