when graphic designers get bored

yarr!

and i'm off!

in 12 hours i will well on my way to warmer weather & sandy beaches.

enjoy your weekend, everyone!

top ten tuesday!

top ten reasons i like my job:

- snowball fights in the parking lot
- foil balls
- bake sales & cook-ins
- working on the "party side" of the room
- singing the name game with olga
- lunch with the ladies
- rockin' artists
- noodle balls
- images of tigers hugging girafes
- having "too much fun"


why do you like your job?

26 reasons my birthday rocked

- peanutbutter pie... scrumdiddliumptious!
- new sketchbook... april rocks!
- new photo album & frame.
- happy birthday greetings from friends not close enough to actually hug today.
- the completed foil-house foil ball. 49" circumference. photos to come.
- feats of strength with that foil ball.
- way yummy goodies at work... raspberry coffee cake, oreo cheesecake & oreo ice cream cake.
- my new baby dinosaur :)
- multiplicity.
- school of rock.
- men and cartoons.
- the great big cookie book.
- my hector-signed birthday card.
- a paper pickle that came in the mail.
- my cousin alyssa singing happy birthday on my voice mail. too stinkin' cute, i wanna save it forever.
- the bennigan's birthday song.
- watching the trailer for tim burton's corpse bride, starring johnny depp.
- i noticed that i misspelled "birthday" in the title of this post *before* i posted it.
- happy birthday sung from colorado.
- confetti & balloons at my desk.
- fun new background for the page.
- posting from the new ibook.
- shoes that say "carlo sucks".
- no singing or hoopla at the restaurant at lunch.
- accomplishing as little as possible while in the office.
- the icicle of death - gutter to ground, gnarled & nobby.

and an early happy birthday to me

this post brought to you by my pretty new ibook. :) yay.

top ten tuesday returns

top ten quandaries of today:

- why did i have to look up "quandaries" at dictionary.com? where, oh where, have my spelling skills gone?
- why couldn't psa inform us they were changing the size of the magazines & therefore we needed to take note of the new sizes for all the ads we were building?
- how did nelly furtado come to equal happiness on a cd?
- why was there no glass of fresh squeezed orange juice on my desk this morning? this is national fresh squeezed orange juice week, folks. where's the love?
- why didn't i use my e-mail address when purchasing from uncommongoods.com? how am i to know when they ship my order?
- what does it say about us if the only way to keep a 5-person conversation going is to talk about jobs that we're not exactly happy about?
- why do i love to read, yet read so little?
- if i were to match my socks one day... how long would it take before i forgot that i had matched my socks?
- why must we say "the customer is always right"? we all know that's not true. even the customer knows that's not true.
- why are monkeys on unicycles smoking cigarettes so stinkin' funny?

c'mon... you've gotta have a quandary or two of your own...

ever have one of those days?

I came in to work early the other day and began hanging upside down from the ceiling. Just then one of my co-workers came in and asked me what I'm doing.

"Shh," I said, " I'm a light bulb -- I'm acting crazy to get a few days off, as there is an out of town wedding I need to go to until Tuesday."

A minute later the Boss walked by and asked me what I was doing.

"I'm a light bulb!" I exclaimed.

"You're going crazy," he said. "Take a few days off, and come back when you are de-stressed"

With that, I jumped down and started walking out. My co-worker started following me and the Boss asked where she was going.

"I can't work in the dark," she said.

top ten ... thursday?

alright, so i didn't hold up my end of the bargain on top ten tuesdays. but i'm here to make an effort. and here are the top ten reasons why today was a GOOD day. (for those of you who i've talked to today, you'll know that this is a challenge for me, but i'm determined to think positive. determined.)

- i'm wearing my new non-becca girly shirt with a pink bow. and i LIKE it. so there.
- we had a good time at monica's birthday lunch. and tossing a few slushballs in the parking lot afterwards.
- all of my magazine ads are FINISHED and UPLOADED.
- jeff didn't quit. that's always good.
- i shot three very nice dart balls at the end of the day.
- nelly furtado.
- black beans & rice.
- i kicked butt playing split tonight.
- e-mails to cheer me up during the day.
- a God who holds everything together on days like today when i feel like i'm falling apart.

why was your day a good day?

photo of the day

happy saturday!

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updates - done

i think everything's caught up now. hi. :)

today at work we took down the foil house. some outside folks that we're apparently concerned with impressing will be in next week, so everything needed to be cleaned up. after a good vacuuming by hector the cleaning guy, all of the evidence should be gone. well, except for the large stack of aluminum foil by jeff's desk. it will, in time, become a large foil ball. oh, the correct answer was 48. as in, it took 48 rolls of aluminum foil to make the room. next challenge: how much will the ball weigh? we did our best to keep everything, except for the miniature snowman, which is going in corlin's office.

i don't make new year's resolutions. i know there are some people with good reasons to not make any - but i just don't make any. i don't think i ever really have; it's just a set-up as far as i'm concerned. however, this year i am making two lists. A. things i want to do or embrace. and 2. things i want to let go of. these are not resolutions. just a couple of lists for me to add to & check things off of. lists to keep me doing new things & learning new things. learning's good. :)

if you're thinking of going to see the "series of unfortunate events" movie - i highly recommend it. and if you do go see it, i highly recommend staying for the credits. not because they're particularly fascinating to read... but because they have a fantastic sketchbook flavor to them that doesn't match the rest of the movie, but that is in & of itself satisfying to watch.

perhaps i should add "see one movie each month at the movie theater" to my list of things to do... for i do love the theater experience.

updates - part 3

Christmas was wonderful. lots of time with family. lots of talking & laughing & playing games. it was simply wonderful.

jonathan & laure were in town for a week and a half. wonderful. if you've never played the games "unexploded cow", "kill doctor lucky", "split", and "spite & malice" - you are indeed missing out.

new year's eve was also spent with family. laure's mom & sisters came by for more games & silliness. and what would new year's eve be without some fire? at midnight we lit off well over 100 sparklers that were left over from my aunt's wedding. fantastic.

photos are here. and if you're curious about the Christmas photo - yes, all of us kids match. my mom made us all pajamas for Christmas eve. :)

updates - part 2

so this Christmas i learned how to quilt. or, at least, i started learning. :) i'm quite sure there's still a LOT for me to learn.

for my first quilt though, i'm thinking it turned out pretty well. the finished size was about 4'x6'. the quilt top is pieced with all cottons; the backing is corderoy. larger photos are here.

i also made table runners out of the same materials for my siblings.

and i've got a quilt top finished for my mom - photos of that when it's finished!

updates - part 1

a group of 5 of us artists participated in the Christmas decorating contest at work. april, jeff, kathy, carlo & myself decided against the traditional approach and instead built an aluminum foil house in the back corner of the advertising department. it was excellent.

we didn't win, but it was excellent. we're artists, we don't expect people to understand us. :)

full set of photos here.

any guesses on how many rolls of foil we used?