Wait, It's February Already?

Things have been busy. 

BUSY, I TELL YOU.

But don't you worry, all is well. (We just don't have time to write about it.)  

This should help.

By the way, Happy Bill Murray Day!

Improve Your Handwriting Or We're All Gonna Die

Just kidding. Or am I?
You should probably read this.

Yesterday morning my boss thoughtfully sent me a link to an article about typography-lovers, thinking I'd be interested. Naturally, I was all over it. The piece got me thinking about things...I mean, aside from, "Oh, that's like our apartment!" and "I love typographica.org too."  While the article is interesting, it also brings to light the annoying commercial popularity that type and text are enjoying right now. I attribute the recent hipster fascinations with type (in large part) to quality handwriting and printing going the way of the bald eagle – highly sought after and getting increasingly harder to find. The fact is that well-executed, handwritten signs or well, anything, is a rarity these days.

I didn't say "dodo bird" on purpose. Bald Eagle.

I Know What New Yorkers Are Complaining About

Last week Wired magazine posted an infographic that visualizes a week's worth of calls to New York City's 311 complaint line and segments them by time of day.  They made use of Lee Byron's streamgraph method to create a visually arresting image, but the results were a letdown (if you ask me). Take a look for yourself here; these complaints are a borefest. I'm not judging, I'm just saying I thought New Yorkers would come up with some more interesting things to complain about. I mean, they're in NEW YORK for crying out loud. Chlorofluorocarbon recovery? Puh-leeeze. You can do better than that, guys.

This is not real.

Community Helpers Are Your Friends

Today we helped out in Kindergarten for Community Helper Day, impressing all 65 of them with our verbose humor and musical prowess. They came to our station in sets of five, for five minutes at a time. You don't understand how much time that really is until you try to keep a bunch of five year olds focused for that long. They were fascinated by us for 30 seconds before wanting "crazy music" or to touch the guitar/mandolin or to inform us of what their Halloween costumes were. With the four and half minutes eternity we had left we quickly started a game of musical chairs each time, while vowing to respect the hell out of Kindergarten teachers for the rest of our lives. 

Sassy Is Mad At Ingrid For No Real Good Reason

You might have noticed we've been listening to Ingrid Michaelson lately. (By which I mostly mean "I've been listening" far more.) It was accidental, she popped up on my Pandora one day. I noticed her song You and I and liked it because it had a great line about wanting to do what bunnies do (with you-know-who). Awwww.

Corporate Ramblings And Photoshop Phun

I learned the more involved facets of graphic design, print prep and typography in mid-2005, just after the kiddo was born. In mid-2006, I needed to find a new job because life was moving in a divorced direction, and my graphic design job with the soon-to-be-ex-in-laws was getting a little awkward for us all. 

I Can't Decide, Please Help Me.

In my "free" time I'm setting up my long-overdue portfolio website. It's a process I've been spreading out over the past year, building the site, deleting the site when I thought it was stupid, rebuilding it again, and creating/collecting content in the meantime.  

It's a lot of work. I'm constantly surprised by this, but I'm attempting to create a portfolio site that's not going to be a pain in the ass to maintain. Let me be super clear about this: I. HATE. ADMIN-WORK. I've just realized this recently, in fact; I always thought I liked it because I'm fairly good at it. It turns out:

 Not having admin-work to do  >  Having admin-work to do

I Am Awesome.

I can't help it.

I just am.

The Beard Alphabet is Awesome

The past decade has brought huge advances in the field of typography.  
In other news, now there is a beard alphabet.

Super Cheesy Parked Car Photo Booth Action Time

Kid treated himself to a final cigar last night - which I congratulate him for doing, since he's basically quit cold-turkey, amidst extreme pain, during the past week. While he chose his prize, the kiddo and I goofed off in the car (as we are known to do at times).

Something shady's going on here...

I have a sunny disposition

Pseudo Goals

I feel like a blog should have goals, or at least pretend like it does. You might be surprised to know that in spite of being atypically absurd even on my best days, I still prefer to have goals attached to most things.  It's the follow-through I struggle with.  So, in light of us finally starting this blog we've been talking about for six months, I present you with MY set of pseudo-goals.   

 1.  Be better at follow-through. 

The hope is that I'll see goals I've written about, and hold myself to them.  Or something like that.  I'll get back to this later.

 2.  Choose your words carefully, think about what you mean to say/write. 

Self-editing is good.  Needing to do it ALL the time, not so good. 

 3.  Stop apologizing for yourself all the damn time. 

It was annoying when the girl on Next Food Network Star did it, so it's a habit you're going to break.  I mean, if I choose my words more carefully, I won't need to apologize so much, will I?  Right. 

 4.  Don't get hung up on the formatting. 

I've started blogs/websites several times, but never launch because I can't settle on the format.  It's what I do for a living, but this isn't supposed to be work, you know?  For example, I hate the default font for this thing.  Within 5 minutes of setting up the blog, I was looking for ways to change it.  Help!  STOP ME, PLEASE. 

 5.  Type longer sentences.  

Re-reading this stuff is going to eventually give you a seizure, or people will think you are incapable of forming complex thoughts. I know, right?  But it's not true. That's just how I think. I mean, if you put a few of the short sentences together in a meaningful way, sometimes that shit makes sense.  I'm just saying. 

 6.  It's my blog, I can talk to myself if I want to. 

I do it all the time, I exist in my head.  Are there people who don't do this?  I want to meet them. Actually, scratch that.  They're probably boring.

I'm sure we'll add more rules/goals/etc as time goes on, I think of crap like this in the shower.