the pure interest

This is an old picture I took of cherry trees a few years ago (surprise, right?). It’s peaceful to me.

In June, I actually have some “profit” from freelancing, and I was deciding between a Wacom tablet or the new Microsoft Office 2008 for the Mac. After reading some not-very-good reviews on Office 08, I decided on the tablet. I ordered from Amazon one that had decent reviews, was medium sized, and not ridiculously costly - so I am excited to work with it. It’s supposed to be here today! I hope I can do some new types of illustration and it gives me some more freedom I’ve been looking for.

I went roller blading by myself last night, and it was ok. The only things I hate about blading/walking at the penninsula are the clouds of gnats. I had to have breathed some in because I would notice I was plowing into them way too late! I did 6 miles in 45 minutes, which meant I was going relatively fast. When I sat down in the car I wasn’t sure if I could get my blades off I was so exhausted . . . but somehow managed to. Then, I went home, had some veggies for dinner, and did “3T - Totally Tubular Turbo” . . . yeah, sounds cheesy but it’s a great workout using resistance tubing for weight/strength training. About 30 minutes after being done, I noticed I was having trouble lifting my limbs and walking up the stairs. I guess it can truly be said that I beat myself with working out yesterday! But I needed it so I am glad!!

This was mainly to make up for the fact I went to Olive Garden yesterday with my sis and my hubs and had the new Chicken Milanese. I did give about half to Bri and Amy, so that was good. But it was unbelievable. Worth every calorie, bite, and bloated feeling afterwards.

Also LOST last night? Wow. Some questions got answered, which was crazy, but somehow I have a really hard time putting it all together still. I depend on the short reviews for stupid people so I can sort of get a handle on what I saw!

Tonight we have small group which is always a pleasure, and I think some new folks will be joining, so I am excited about that! Brian and I also need to find an air conditioner this weekend, which needs to be a priority, and I am searching flyers for the best deals.

Oh and update: I have no accent, because Erie is awesome:

Have a happy Friday everyone!

We’re all excited for another Meta Cafe! The last one was a a great time of just hanging out, gaming competitions, coffee, goodies and conversation.

Thank you so much for all your compliments yesterday everyone. They really mean a lot - when I post these things it’s not necessarily to get a bunch of praise, but feedback either way, and of course the positive stuff is always appreciated!

So I’ve decided to start a .mac trial (60 days - I like that they give you a full two months) mainly for the “Back to My Mac” feature, where you can connect and control two (or more) of your mac computers remotely. I’ve had this need for the last few months especially when sometimes I’ll end up needing to work on agency work from home, and I don’t have all the files, so I end up emailing them to myself, etc. It’s just not efficient. In theory, .mac allows me to have not only storage space online (which I can’t say I’ve been too thrilled with - a friend of mine and I use it to transfer sermon mp3s and it often crashes my computer if I try to copy too much at once), but remote management of both macs depending on where are at. You can do screen sharing, but I’d probably avoid this since on Mondays and Tuesday there is another designer sitting at this computer and I don’t think she’s appreciate her mouse and folders being taken over by me Anyway, for $100 a year, if this works, I think it will be super helpful and very worth it!

Anyone else have experience with .mac that they could weigh in on?

Thanks - and have a wonderful Wednesday! GE Shareowners meeting is today, (big deal in our town) so I hope to go down to the convention center later and get a look at all my agency and some other vendor’s in towns hard work in helping GE put it together!!

Do you remember when I posted when I first started this blog how much I wanted one of these?  Well it only took 8+ months, but I finally picked one up from IKEA today! So far I really like it. The mechanism for putting it at a downward angle is a little annoying, because it’s either straight or down so much my mouse falls down. But other than that its really great and I love how I can raise and lower it so if I want to lay down on the couch I can put it at the right level, or if I’m sitting striaght up I can raise it to keep my back and a good posture.

• I’m also enjoying the new WordPress interface
• Saturday Night Live is actually quite amusing tonight
   

Next week I’m going to post about my kitchen renovation! It was only one wall but its been quite a project and so far I’m really excited about it.

but swamped with a project i am basically working on now for no money - which is ok because it is for a friend, but it is difficult. I’m trying to finish it up as efficiently as possible but for some reason I decided to make a design that is like…… 600 layers in photoshop, so every file takes a while to work with (despite my new compy) (business expense for next month is more RAM).

 I am so sorry all… in that I had to hit a “mark all as read” in google reader this morning. I just couldn’t do it… over 300+ unread items. But I love you all… and I hope you still have it in your heart to read here.

Danielle made her hubby Dave and I dinner last night, and it was so good… like an Asian ginger beef & noodle stir fry with sugar snap peas. The beef was organic so I didn’t feel totally flipped about eating it after the big beef recall. I mean, what is happening in our country??? Well all over the world really there are food scares. It is… frightening.

In other good news other than crazy work-ness, I have lost a few pounds…. so I am happy about that. But I’m not totally overjoyed yet because I’ve been fluctuating with those 3 lbs for a few weeks now. It’s amazing, if I just eat light, smaller portions and keep my cals in a good healthy range, my body responds almost immediately - more so then to exercise… 

That’s all I got for today —- thanks for reading if you did :) 

This weekend was really great and I have lots of cute Tycho and friend picks to post this week. As for the links following, I can’t take credit for finding any of these with any hard work, but I wanted to list the ones that interested me even so I have a chance to remember to check them out!

photoshop brush viewer
I think this one will be a necessity for me as my big photoshop brush collection sometimes takes 20-30 seconds to load.

a really funky form builder
I’ll have to check this out to see if it really is as good as it seems to be. Aren’t the different colors so cute??

electrifying beams in photoshop
seriously? someone can teach me how to do the beams thing from the sprint commercials??

a similar light beams tutorial
from PSDTuts

really beautiful website design
nothing except to look at it for inspiration…

a logo design handbook
is it possible to have a handbook on how to design a logo? you’ll have to read it (as will i) to form your opinion

aaaight font!
Looks like a sharpie marker, handwritten kind

vintage photo effect
this is really cool, and i think could come in handy.

another beautiful light effect
in a cute coffeecup….

desktop wallpaper method
maybe i can try this on my next offering …

this logo design is so awesome
I guess it was “unchosen” which sort of sucks, but it was inspirational nonetheless.

Have a great rest of your Monday everyone Only another hour left to go… (for local readers)

I’ve searched far and wide for the laptop bag of my dreams. I think I finally found it with this Trixy Laptop bag in brown and pink from Acme Made. You can purchase it at a few different places online, but I chose Kolo Bags because at the time the stock was running low in some other places. It was a bit more then I wanted to spend on a bag, but I think it was worth it to house and protect such an important piece of equipment.

The pros:

• It’s adorable
• It has that leather smell (because parts of the trim are leather)
• It is roomy
• The laptop sleeve is so nice and protective
• The matching accessory bag is great to house pens/notepads or even your mouse and some cords
• The pockets inside are roomy and hold tons

The cons:

• No shoulder strap to wear it like a messenger bag. This has already caused me to pull a muscle in my shoulder once
• No pen/pencil type sized inserts inside to tightly hold writing utensils.

But the cons are small in comparison. I’m very happy with it. *love*