Esoterica

So I look at the clock now and I think back that a week ago, this was the morning I was in here gathering stuff to work from home to keep an eye on Max, who was clearly hurting, at least from time to time, and waiting for the results of his biopsy. I also notice that it was three weeks ago this morning I opened a can of tuna for him and was pleased to see him chow down. That was the last time, I think, I really had the luxury of telling myself his recent picky appetite wasn't anything major. When he wouldn't eat tuna the next day, I really couldn't pretend anymore. That blog post is on here, a few back, if you're interested.

Anyway, on another subject, it also occurs to me to comment on how long there can be an unplugged hole in your knowledge of something you thought you knew well. I've been using Adobe Illustrator, at least semi-regularly, since 1996, and yet it's only this week that found the answer to a long-standing complaint of mine... how to close a path in Illustrator without affecting the initial curve you drew starting out (the answer is to hold the ALT key—Option key on the Mac, I expect—down when you click on the starting anchor point to close the path). The down side of this is that it unlinks the control handles of the point so that they swivel independently instead of being locked so they control the shape of the curve on either side of the anchor as a unit. But I guess you can't have everything, and I'd rather be able to preserve the initial path. The practical solution, I suppose, is simply to make sure you start any path on a corner point, wherever possible; in which case, you'd naturally want the anchor's handles to be independent of each other. It's one of those things that seems obviously, once it's been shown to you.