Happy Birthday

Celi turned 25 this week. Sunday we celebrated with lunch. We narrowly missed having to explain to management why Robin had killed our waitress. It's just possible that the lack of rasberry syrup in her tea might not have seemed like a good enough reason for homocide.

We kept losing party goers, so Robin and I decided to continue the birthdaying on Tuesday with some cake, awesome presents and Taco Bell.

Angel Ressurected

This is the colorized version of the "dear" angel drawing. Since I had to photograph, rather than scan this sketch, the colors ended up being a lot more muted and gained some interesting variations. I like it a lot.

absent-minded

Last weekend I made the mistake of taking a three mile walk in a pare of high heels.
Well, I couldn't find my other shoes.

My feet are mostly healed, but I've been having problems with my right knee and ankle lately so I haven't done much walking this week. Which is why I decided to drive to the coffee shop rather than walk tonight.

Coffee was lovely and so was the weather. Indiana can be dreary but today was gorgeous. I decided I could go for a little walk around town and take some photos. The weather really was beautiful and the sun was giving everything this great lighting...I couldn't resist.

So I walked around a bit, much longer than I meant to actually but I felt alright. Then I headed back to my car. Except that around the time I got to my car I wasn't thinking about my car at all. I walked right past it and was almost all the way to my house when I realized I'd driven to the coffee shop.

plastic

I was reading some random person's blog today and they were talking about how they're always being so lovely to people and inviting them to open up their beautiful wounded souls to them so that they could love them.

I stopped after that.
I really hate it when people tell you how nice they are. I really hate it when people tell you how much they care and how they're always there for their friends.

It might be real, but it always feels fake. In highschool if I wanted to know about someone I would tell them that I'm just nosey. Even if it wasn't true true. Fake noseyness seemed more real than actual concern.

Dear

I was sitting in a coffee shop doodling and finding myself completely unable to put what I wanted on the paper.

Usually I tuck myself away at at a corner table. That night I was on a couch, annoying all the large groups of people who wanted to sit and talk loudly there and leaving myself open to comments on my artwork.

One girl leaned over and cooed, "I love it, it's so dear!"

I flinched visibly, but I can't really argue with her choice of adjective. It's exactly what the drawing is...but so not what I was going for.

It's a Party!

I don't normally write about graphic design sites on here, but PhotoShopStar is having a sweet give away to celebrate it's second birthday. Posting a comment gives you a chance at winning some minor goodies, but linking back to the site and the sponsors lets you win some much cooler stuff.

The prize I'm drooling over most is the free 1 page design by psd2html. Basically I would design my web page and they would make it work. For someone, like me, who consistantly fails to understand web coding, this would be amazing.

Ok, so that's the only prize I want.

The Blubs Wordpress theme liscence might be amazing - but I don't Wordpress.

And I don't have actually have anything I want to advertise on PhotoShopStar (though freelancers are probably getting giddy at the very thought).

Even so, it's pretty cool.

Field Trip

Today the office went on a field trip to the printers. My boss thought it would be cool for us to see how our publications get put together. So we spent most of our morning on a tour.

I've been on a lot of newspaper field trips, but watching the web-press never gets old. Even so, the best part of the field trip was seeing the offices. They were dingy and cramped and their computers were old enough to remind you why Macs took such a long time to gain popularity.
The workers looked like sad little gerbils.

We came away loving our jobs, thinking our office wasn't so squished after all, and being incredibly greatful for our office's frequent equipment updates.

Repent!

It fascinates me to live in a country where the most hated sub groups are non-environmentalists, the Bush family, and street preachers. Seriously, ethnic minorities can complain all they want, but the only racist remarks I have ever heard, were said on television...by the bad character. But just try admitting that the only reason you want to "go green" - is because the merchandise is cute...or that you don't actually think Bush committed as many atrocities as Hitler, Stalin or Kim Jong-il.

Now, there are probably some conservatives who would rally behind me on those last two, but everyone loves to hate street preachers...they're loud, angry and usually carry a sign encouraging the viewer to "Turn or burn!" or some such variation...what's not to hate?

Plus, there's the added bonus that no one will ever think you are bad for hating a street preacher. Most likely you'll be hailed as some kind of Gandhi-like figure, because you love people so much you just can't stand to see someone hold a sign at them.

In the town where I work we have our very own street preacher. I've never had the pleasure of seeing him work, but office gossip has me informed that he shows up at public events with the usual signage and catchy slogans.

Well, a few days ago I was helping a nice lady figure out how to design her ad.

I hate helping people design their ads. What I always, always, always want for my customers to do is to tell me what they want, leave the verbage, and come back when it's done. Always. I can't be creative with some nervous Nelly peering over my shoulder and whispering, "Wha-what if you moved it a little to the left? No, not there, not there, yes, no, no, no-" It can't be done.

But, like I said, this lady was nice. I was feeling pretty good about the episode when my boss walked in and said, "I see Random-Name's wife was here." This elicited a, "Oh my goodness, that was his wife?" from everyone else, but mere raised eyebrows from myself.

Turns out she's the wife of the fellow who harasses people about eternity in his spare time. So I joined in the gaping - because how could this lovely person be married to someone who makes people wish stoning had never been outlawed?

"Yeah," my boss continued, "didn't you see the big 'REPENT!' painting on the side of the van?"

No, I had not. So then I just had to wonder how this lady felt about it all. Does she wish she had a normal van or maybe even a smart looking four door? Is she embarrassed when her husband starts every conversation with, "You're going to hell," ?

They left their name off the advertisement. My coworkers suggested that it was so potentially buyers wouldn't be scared off at the thought of buying the street preacher's house. I think it's so people won't see where they live and decide to egg it - or worse. I have to wonder if it bothers her that either possibility is even something they have to consider.

On the other hand, is it possible that she's proud of what her husband does? It seems mildly unfathomable, but what if she really thinks he's...what, winning souls? Does it hurt her that other people don't see him the same way?

I know, these are random things to be thinking about, I guess I'd just never thought about street preachers having wives and children and the whole thing set me wondering.

On my way to the dentist yesterday I passed a house that said, "Adulters will be judged!" My first thought was, "That would make them different from...?" my second was, "Could that be the street preacher's house?"

-

Very little is less exciting than having a short work day. Even the fact that I was leaving to go to the dentist, really didn't bother me.

Even better was going down to see Kiran. It was muggy out, but we walked one of the trails and then we ran through the sprinklers at Grace.

Pretty good for a Tuesday.

Backstory

For the past two Saturdays I've gone shopping at the mall. The selection was pretty sad, especially in the shoe department.

I've never understood why anyone would want a Coach purse, but I understand these boots even less. To me they just seem like large, rubber mistakes.

Last Saturday after shopping Robin showed me Ox Bow park. The park gives me the feeling that I'm walking through a King's Quest game. It seemed as if it were divided up into screens that should be accompanied by descriptions like, "You have entered a sunny meadow, a rabbit watches youm," or "You have stumbled upon a picnic area, a group of Mexicans are singing in the distance." And then of course you would have to try different actions like, "Feed rabbit" or "Sing with Mexicans" until they produced something good or killed you.

Some parts of the park reminded me of the 1985 Alice in Wonderland. When I saw this lane, I felt as if I would see Alice arguing with Carol Channing over yesterday and today at any second.

Probably this lane is not so very like the movie, but it felt that way.

Mostly the park is very, very large. I can't wait to have a day when I can just go and get lost there.

Today Jon had a open house of sorts, to raise money for the VBS Sara Frantz is helping out with. I saw a lot of people that I haven't seen in quite a while, which was nice. I wish I'd been able to talk to some of them more, but I'm bad at dealing with big groups like that. It seems silly to say, because when you're talking to one person it shouldn't make a difference than there are twenty other people around doing something else...but it does.

Tommorow, back to work - my first day to start handing out assignments to my intern! Also exciting is that with our re-organization of the office everyone seems to have less space - except me. Somehow I came out of this with more. I get giddy just thinking about it!