1.30.2006

GOOD MORNING!

good morning and happy monday.
let's start the day off right.
i've been tagged by steve, the coolest kid in town, and must tag others as a result of it.
everything on this list will be linked over my lunch hour :)

here are my 4s:
Four jobs I've had:
- Wedding Photographer
- Security Guard
- Stage Manager
- Drug Counselor

Four Movies I can watch over and over:
- The Big Lebowski
- Pi: Faith In Chaos
- Metropolis
- On The Waterfront

Four Places I've Lived:
- Chicago
- Boston
- Iowa
- the SS Universe

Four TV shows I love:
- The Simpsons
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer
- Six Feet Under
- Arrested Devleopment

Four places I've vacationed:
- Florence, Italy
- Havana, Cuba
- Capetown, South Africa
- Osaka, Japan

Four of my favorite dishes:
- salsa
- cornbread
- grilled veggies
- frosted mini-wheats

Four sites I visit daily:
- Threadless
- BBC News
- Speak Up
- Newstoday

Four places I would rather be right now:
- up a tree
- on a mountain
- on a surfboard
- walking around the chicago loop

Four bloggers I am tagging to fill out this meme and do something productive with their life:
Joe, Cassie, Jon, Allison

1.27.2006

you start with a bottle...

one elegant answer to the Champagne Challenge, brought to us by Design Within Reach. i watch for this contest every year because really; what better reason to crack open some bubbly? these chairs are so cool.

1.25.2006

pushing it

i'm getting more comfortable with editing the HTML in blogger. i added lists today (what i'm reading & listening to) down the sidebar. those links will be updated often and link right to amazon so you can check stuff out :) recommendations always welcome!

this is like, not something to write home about to any web designer, but i'm kind of excited i didn't break the whole thing...

pre-valentine


peatree
Originally uploaded by faithful nomad.

this "holiday" sometimes requires preparation, that's all i'm saying.
and i've only had one valentine ever, so maybe it's time to try something different? or i could just pick up some glitter and have fun that way.

this cartoon is from peatree, and it's very cool.
they have free e-cards too.

1.24.2006

where to?


feet at the summer palace
Originally uploaded by faithful nomad.

some very excellent stuff going on.
Wunderman is offering me a job friday.
and i'll know by then when i'm flying up for my final Target interview.
(today i recieved the confirmation call that i do indeed get to go.)

in other work:
still working on bike jerseys for the architect bike team
starting a website for a painter
starting a multimedia press kit for elias fund
AND GET THIS
got a call last night from someone i haven't talked to in a year, who might be opening a bar and needs someone to do the comprehensive design. and my career having been what it is, i was able to list off the top of my head the people i would bring in to do the environmental design, the print collateral, the identity management, and the web site.

i'm starting to wonder if i should daydream about putting together a design team. i even have a business manager, unless my dear friend decides to move to austin TX, which looks pretty likely right now.

anyway. still not believing anything unless it's in front of me on paper. but things are really moving along nicely... like, wherever i will be a month from now is completely unpredictable. i literally do not know what next week will bring, but it will define everything after it.
(wish me luck)

1.22.2006

alana


alana
Originally uploaded by faithful nomad.

this is what she looks like when she's less bored
and more indulgent of me taking her picture.

my cousins megan and alana


my cousins megan and alana
Originally uploaded by faithful nomad.

meg, alana, uncle kevin and auntie di were in town this weekend from michigan - these are the cousins i was talking about the weekend i was at the ohio / michigan border and my camera was broken... now you see why i wanted to take their pictures, these girls are amazing looking even when they're BORED (alana, on the right).

new setting


new setting
Originally uploaded by faithful nomad.

our church outgrew our building so we now meet in a local school auditorium. which we're outgrowing quickly. it's all very hermit-crab-like but with fewer crabs and more Jesus freaks :)

jon, our worship leader, decided to bring us back to our chicago roots and teach us some blues this morning, which is a great way to start the day.

1.21.2006

giving the sake the jazz fingers


giving the sake the jazz fingers
Originally uploaded by faithful nomad.

apparently this makes the whole process more, shall we say, magical. for those that don't know, sake bombs are when you balance sake on chopsticks over a glass of beer, then pound the table to make the sake fall into the beer. then you down the whole thing in a couple swallows and try to ignore the taste it leaves behind in your mouth... thankfully i'd had a martini and a half by this point and was excused from the saki :)

dinner at chen's


jenna and scott at chen's
Originally uploaded by faithful nomad.

chen's on clark is this classy chinese restaurant where we had dinner. brad set up a reservation for sixteen of us and we had a feast underneath the sweet blue lights pictured here.

1.20.2006

plan S

grad school.

learn flash.
reemerge and make band websites for all eternity.
slowly climb out of grad school debt for rest. of. life.
which would still be so much better
than flailing around for months like i've been doing.

hurry up and wait

just talked to miss Target. she asked me about my interview. apparently mister Target was worried that i am too oriented to the NFP side of things - she said "we want to be clear that we are a for-profit" and i was like, "yes, i'm not going to sell all my possesions and live in the mountains, i want to work. i'm a city girl. i miss things the NFP world doesn't offer, like budgets."

i feel like this hold i have there is precarious. like they know i seem pretty good but they want to make sure they can't get something better. like they're looking for someone more marketing oriented, maybe more agressively bottom-line and less relentlessly cheerful. but little do they know, I'M RIGHT HERE. DESIGNER OF YOUR DREAMS.

i'm still scared.
between Wunderman and Target, sometime in the near future i will end up somewhere in the spectrum of [unemployed entirely] and [dueling job offers, one being significantly better than the other].

miss Target told me to call tuesday and that's when i'll finally find out if i'm actually getting on a plane or if i need to work on my plan B. which by now, this many plan B's into the job hunt, is like my plan R.

1.18.2006

little victories

fixed the picture missing on "no woman, no cry" post. see me at my most high school-est. wait, i'll save you the scrolling: it's not pretty. i look at pictures like that, condemn myself as frumpy, and thank God for all the plucking my eyebrows get these days.

enough about that.

more on target when i can pry my heart out of my mouth. a million thanks to everyone today who listened to me pick apart the minute details of the twenty minute interview that left me with no understanding of where i am in this process.

but i'm very sure they want to fly me in.
not sure enough, though, to say so positively.
but mister Target loves my work? that much i can say with confidence....
the worst part of interviews, for me, is my "chance to ask questions." cause i am TERRIBLE at it. i'm such a snotty optomist that i don't anticipate things i'll need to know, and then i ask stupid questions because if i don't ask anything they'll think i don't think ahead or something. which, let's be honest, i don't. i throw life's ribbons in the air and watch them flutter while they land, and then i read the patterns.

c'est la vie, non?

1.17.2006

how do these things happen?

i definitely have the super mario brothers theme song in my head, complete with the sound of the coin count rolling down when the level is completed.

seriously. i wasn't allowed to play nintendo, ever.
eh?

1.16.2006

prounounced schte-fann book-er

link to a great design presentation.
Stefan Bucher, who i've seen give this presentation twice, has now made his words of wisdom available to the general public.

also, the picture that should display below (in the no woman, no cry post) isn't displaying. i'll have to fix that after work tonight... sorry.

no woman no cry


i had the most interesting conversation last night about regrets and what we do to each other that seems to make sort-of-sense at the time but later on becomes this festering bruise you can do nothing about. this picture was taken in 1998, these are the people I hung out in high school. i can name each one for you, i can tell you grade school back stories. but to be depressingly honest, i can't tell you much about their lives now, and more to the point, what i might have loved or hated about them eight years ago. i don't remember all the little parts of our whole.

i do have some regrets, it's impossible not to, but mostly i'm the type to realize that if we meditate on who we were when we made the decision, it made sense at the time. in other words, "if i could only go back..." i'd still be that person i was then, and i'd probably pull the same shit with the same consequences.

if i could give out one healing comment, one thing to say to people i've let down, it would be that i can see now the ways i was immature. i understand now what i didn't have the capacity to say, where i should have said please, where i should have said no, where i should have said if you tell me you love me i won't leave. where i could have confronted instead of backing off. where i could have kept my mouth shut and didn't. one time where i did keep my mouth shut and the next night, he died. i've gained and lost a lot over the years.

i'm only now in my life starting to realize how my mistakes shape me differently than my successes. how, as it was put in Vanilla Sky, without the bitter the sweet won't ever be so sweet. i've always felt the weight of decisions, the decision to leave iowa, to go to boston, the decisions towards money, towards posessions, towards travel, towards building a life i never thought i'd have.

and now with the upcoming possibility of minneapolis, and the upcoming birthday – 25 next month – last night's conversation was well-timed. i feel like all my baggage is in a garbage truck and i'm poised over the big red button to unburden it. where will it go? what will stick to the sides, unyielding? i am almost healed.

1.12.2006

being sneaky

there's been movement on Target.
talked to Target Lady today
we're going to schedule the interview
tomorrow or monday.

(i'm whispering)
(so i don't freak out too badly)

i love che and all, but...

i'd like a new quote for the headline of this blog.
any suggestions?

bad, bad, bad



i looked. i tried not to, but i looked and i drooled and i try so hard to stay above this consumer BS but if i won the lottery today this is the first thing i'd go nuts over. i would LOVE a total upgrade. my Powerbook G4 is my little child - i call him Napoleon (not dynamite) - but poor little Napoleon buzzes loudly in a way he didn't a year ago. and all this iChat, Tiger, widgets, FileMakerPro Trial, all this and more are enough to make me think about how if salaries work out, maybe in a year i can go nuts. i think i can hold out that long. maybe if i enroll in some kind of program i can hold off on the temptation of widgets.

also not helping: how cool the movies / projects are that come out of Madhouse. corporate world is hard sometimes, especially when i might be moving over to the account side of things for a while. i wish i could have a DESIGN studio... i wish i could do anything as quickly as i can think it... i hate that it takes me hours to do a website, or to get that logo just right, or whatever. i love that as soon as i hear something, my mind's rolodex starts spinning and building and then visual expression starts pouring out from the subconscious to the frontal lobes.

i love graphic design.


1.09.2006

YOU WON'T BELIEVE WHO CALLED

it's been quite a while, and i think it's in part due to my lack of a camera... this year for no clear reason i can think of, i had no desire to take pictures on christmas OR at the new year. i was pretty bummed about missing a camera when we went to try on bridesmaid's dresses for mandy's wedding, but what's a person to do. other than get a new camera. it's the American way.

but things have been going pretty steady for a while now. i'm still living at home and still itching to not be doing that, through no one's fault but my own sense of independence. last weekend was good, some girls and i hit the MCA and then House of Blues for Bottle of Justus. but the work, oh, the work. some crazy things are happening:

last thursday i was called into HR woman's office. she had a tone in her voice that had me worried, but turns out it was her excitement about the possibility of a position for me at Wunderman that would be the interactive coordinator, a person who works with account execs and creative types to make the big picture run smoothly.

MEANWHILE
target called.
the same day i talked to Wunderman HR woman, my other friend at target called, the one who i thought i would never talk to again. she was chipper as usual, and told me i'm being considered for a more senior position in the same community relations group... hopefully this week i'll have a phone interview with a Target Man... and then if that goes well, i'd be flying up next week for the in-person face-to-face interview. if THAT goes well, then i'll start packing.

MEANWHILE, this week
just finished a logo for Nebogroup
going to design jerseys for my dad's bike group
going to do a website for a painter we know
working on an Elias Fund press kit
still whittling away on my own website

MEANWHILE
i have a cold and am seriously hopped up on ricola.
and must be stopped.
:)

1.02.2006

HAIR. GONE.


IMG_2741
Originally uploaded by faithful nomad.

fourteen inches sent to locks of love, which is a win-win deal: some child somewhere gets a wig, and i get hair that isn't a perpetual ponytail.