Thank you everyone for the encouraging responses to my web designing plight. Hagop, I would be happy to design yours first. Let me get mine underway and then I'm all yours. I do have dreamweaver, my friend is going to give me a quick lesson, then I'm taking a flash course and BOOM... web designer.

Of course, I realize the jobs out there are slim to none. But they are less when you don't have that skill. Every job posting I find for graphic designers requires some web knowledge. While I'd like to think that it isn't necessary to do good design, no company will hire me if I at least don't know how. Besides, it allows for more freelance work as well, which seems to be my only hope these days.

So the other day I was sitting in the ARS office designing their magazine, "Hai Sird," one of my many freelance jobs these days. They are having some sort of meeting and a group of people arrived from Armenia. One of them is a member of parliament, the others, don't know, but there's Hayastansis in the office. One guy starts dialing the phone and just listening to him talk made me misty eyed. I remember when I was in Armenia, I missed hearing Western-Armenian and Persian-Armenian dialects. Now it's Hayastansi. My God, I still miss it so much. Someone asked me yesterday how the transition was from Armenia to America and I told him that it sucks. I don't talk about it much anymore because I don't want to burden people with my misery, but wow it sucks. The guy on the phone asked me when I was there, where I worked and where I lived. I started throwing back my Hayastansi Armenian at him. I used words like "zangel" and "ashkhadoomem." Oh, the good ol' country!