not yet dead
to quote Spamalot, which I saw in NYC during the long blog hiatus, "i am not yet dead." Busy, hell yes. Since April, the internet scoffs? Pretty much. An expurgated list of the things you missed, internet:
1. My birthday. (What? It's important.) May managed to cram every weekend with events in which people wanted to feed me, because apparently once you've left college, gift certificates as presents are against Miss Manners? Which coincided with...
2. ...the aforementioned viewing of the original cast of Spamalot (because my parents are cool like that) and...
3. ... my first trip to the Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. Restaurant on Times Square (because for all their coolness, my parents still can't help themselves). Nor could they help the guffawing and hysterical snorting laughter when the Very Sweet Yet Flaming Gay Waiter made me STAND ON MY CHAIR while he sang Happy Birthday, which was promptly followed by me half falling off the chair because age does nothing to diminish my clumsiness, which led to more laughter and my face color hovering near puce. I had to mention this, mostly because a friend just had a birthday at the Macaroni Grill, another restaurant that feels the need to embarass the birthday person as the waiter(s) carry on with the obligatory singing. When did this become a standard? WHY did this become a standard? I blame you, Olive Garden.
4. Spending half my time in Princeton and half my time traveling all the hell over Pennsylvania, for relatives and the job. Thankfully, now that I'm finally full time at the office (took me long enough), the traveling has much diminished and I no longer have to work on the weekends.
5. Working with roughly a dozen customers on their weddings/anniversary dinners/bar and bat mitzvah/rehearsal dinner invitations. Things I learned from the direct client experience? Bridezillas exist outside of reality television and really are E-vil. Bar Mitzvahs are more complicated and intense jobs than weddings, AND THAT IS SAYING SOMETHING. No one has any clue what fonts are, not even other designers, or women who've looked at so many invitations that they'll go blind. Center-justified invitation layouts will never die, no matter how much they should, because dammit, people love that look.
And I discovered that I have a talent for making neat looking placecards and table numbers. This revelation, coming close on the heels of way too many people asking me to make placecards and table numbers, was quickly followed by another: I HATE making placecards and table numbers.
6. Blew a tire and had it replaced. Insignificant, internet says, yawning. I waited how many months for this?! Well, first off, bite me, and secondly, you have no idea of the extreme paranoia I have concerning my tires. The roads to work are very ill paved, so it's a very jostling ride, even going at moderate speeds and avoiding the larger pot holes. As a result, I spend practically every minute I'm in the car worrying that any minute I will careen into the nearest ditch because one or all of my tires will finally succumb to the duress and explode dramatically.
It highlights my inexperience with having a car, which is something I've been dealing with. I still don't like driving, but now I don't get panic attacks every time I get behind the wheel. Marked improvement, let us say. I still haven't figured out how to fix the clock properly since Daylight Savings, and I still haven't located the manual to figure out how to fix said clock. (Not that I've been searching very assiduously. My solution to all car quirks is to call my dad, who breathes long-suffering sighs into the phone and mutters about how he can't imagine that his daughter who's always been so brainy when it comes to books can't figure out where the temperature gauge is on her dashboard.)
7. Planning a trip to Hawaii with a friend for January 2006. Harder than it sounds, since neither of us have done this sort of thing before. We have so far managed the flights and the hotel, so the big stuff has finally gotten out of the way. Now it's just the little things like tickets to the Polynesian Cultural Center and setting up girly appointments at the hotel spa. We're limiting ourselves to Oahu, mostly because of budget constraints, though neither of us has been to the islands and as we're going for only a week, it seems like there's plenty of things to keep us more than occupied there. Still open to suggestions, internet.
8. Attending the company meeting. A very long day of weirdness in Northern Jersey the likes of which I had never experienced before and don't especially want to experience again. Cheesy music, boring speeches, cutesy games... but oh, what a cool goody bag at the end. So much free stuff, it was like Christmas in August, all of which got distributed amongst friends and family.
9. My first business trip, which ended up being two days in Dalton, Massachusetts at the Crane & Co. factories learning about paper, and invitation design, and printing methods. Shut up, it rocked. (Yeah, I'm a design geek. Live with it.) Though I will admit the best part of the trip was an elaborate picnic they threw for us at Tanglewood, an outdoor music pavillion that reminded me a lot of Cleveland's Blossom Music Center where I saw John Williams and James Taylor. (Not at the same time, duh.) Anyway, feasting on all sorts of delicious gourmet things and thoroughly plied with wine, we were treated to a concert of Beethoven and Schubert. (Symphony #6 is now my favorite Beethoven symphony. And Movement #1 can bite me, it's #2 where the pretty happens.)
10. Learning the ins and outs of photo shoots and sometimes modeling for them. (Don't get too excited, internet. Mostly just my hands. Though I do get a thrill seeing the results-- there's excessive pointing and smug whispers of "that's my wrist!") My hands are going to be on a huge banner for the holiday season (clasping a mug) which is going in all of the stores. My hands shall be famous in the tri-state area! (At least they used the shot. I was melting that day in the indian summer heat, dressed up in a sweater with a wool hat and wool gloves with the art director fussing with my sleeves and the photographer blowing polyester fake snow in my face-- all for that one shot. Oh, the trials and tribulations of ART.)
11. Finally seeing my work in print. There are no words. It's just an amazing, amazing thing. After all the talking, and the beating the design to death, and the prepping of the files, and the quotes from the printer, and then poof! There it is, suddenly real and out there, public, in people's mailboxes. Trust me, it's cool.
12. Weeks of picking out just the right candy to distribute for my first Halloween at the apartment and then HAVING NO KIDS. None. Though I suppose this might be due in part to the apartment's freakish trick or treat hours, which were NOON to eight o'clock. What kid trick or treats at lunchtime?
13. Keeping up with the new television season, because suddenly there are people who NEED TO KNOW WHAT I THINK after episodes air. Yes, I'm talking about Lost. I'm corresponding with a woman whom I've never met who works with my mother about that show. It's weird, but it works. And since the Thursday Lost emails have been flying, my mother's started Wednesday House emails. Again, with the weird.
14. Helping to open three new stores and working on the fourth right now. Hence the crazy with the busy. The company's almost doubled since I started.... so that's good, right?
Anyway, lots more things happened as well, some more interesting and some less so, but that's all you're going to get, internet. I promise not to be a stranger anymore.
1. My birthday. (What? It's important.) May managed to cram every weekend with events in which people wanted to feed me, because apparently once you've left college, gift certificates as presents are against Miss Manners? Which coincided with...
2. ...the aforementioned viewing of the original cast of Spamalot (because my parents are cool like that) and...
3. ... my first trip to the Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. Restaurant on Times Square (because for all their coolness, my parents still can't help themselves). Nor could they help the guffawing and hysterical snorting laughter when the Very Sweet Yet Flaming Gay Waiter made me STAND ON MY CHAIR while he sang Happy Birthday, which was promptly followed by me half falling off the chair because age does nothing to diminish my clumsiness, which led to more laughter and my face color hovering near puce. I had to mention this, mostly because a friend just had a birthday at the Macaroni Grill, another restaurant that feels the need to embarass the birthday person as the waiter(s) carry on with the obligatory singing. When did this become a standard? WHY did this become a standard? I blame you, Olive Garden.
4. Spending half my time in Princeton and half my time traveling all the hell over Pennsylvania, for relatives and the job. Thankfully, now that I'm finally full time at the office (took me long enough), the traveling has much diminished and I no longer have to work on the weekends.
5. Working with roughly a dozen customers on their weddings/anniversary dinners/bar and bat mitzvah/rehearsal dinner invitations. Things I learned from the direct client experience? Bridezillas exist outside of reality television and really are E-vil. Bar Mitzvahs are more complicated and intense jobs than weddings, AND THAT IS SAYING SOMETHING. No one has any clue what fonts are, not even other designers, or women who've looked at so many invitations that they'll go blind. Center-justified invitation layouts will never die, no matter how much they should, because dammit, people love that look.
And I discovered that I have a talent for making neat looking placecards and table numbers. This revelation, coming close on the heels of way too many people asking me to make placecards and table numbers, was quickly followed by another: I HATE making placecards and table numbers.
6. Blew a tire and had it replaced. Insignificant, internet says, yawning. I waited how many months for this?! Well, first off, bite me, and secondly, you have no idea of the extreme paranoia I have concerning my tires. The roads to work are very ill paved, so it's a very jostling ride, even going at moderate speeds and avoiding the larger pot holes. As a result, I spend practically every minute I'm in the car worrying that any minute I will careen into the nearest ditch because one or all of my tires will finally succumb to the duress and explode dramatically.
It highlights my inexperience with having a car, which is something I've been dealing with. I still don't like driving, but now I don't get panic attacks every time I get behind the wheel. Marked improvement, let us say. I still haven't figured out how to fix the clock properly since Daylight Savings, and I still haven't located the manual to figure out how to fix said clock. (Not that I've been searching very assiduously. My solution to all car quirks is to call my dad, who breathes long-suffering sighs into the phone and mutters about how he can't imagine that his daughter who's always been so brainy when it comes to books can't figure out where the temperature gauge is on her dashboard.)
7. Planning a trip to Hawaii with a friend for January 2006. Harder than it sounds, since neither of us have done this sort of thing before. We have so far managed the flights and the hotel, so the big stuff has finally gotten out of the way. Now it's just the little things like tickets to the Polynesian Cultural Center and setting up girly appointments at the hotel spa. We're limiting ourselves to Oahu, mostly because of budget constraints, though neither of us has been to the islands and as we're going for only a week, it seems like there's plenty of things to keep us more than occupied there. Still open to suggestions, internet.
8. Attending the company meeting. A very long day of weirdness in Northern Jersey the likes of which I had never experienced before and don't especially want to experience again. Cheesy music, boring speeches, cutesy games... but oh, what a cool goody bag at the end. So much free stuff, it was like Christmas in August, all of which got distributed amongst friends and family.
9. My first business trip, which ended up being two days in Dalton, Massachusetts at the Crane & Co. factories learning about paper, and invitation design, and printing methods. Shut up, it rocked. (Yeah, I'm a design geek. Live with it.) Though I will admit the best part of the trip was an elaborate picnic they threw for us at Tanglewood, an outdoor music pavillion that reminded me a lot of Cleveland's Blossom Music Center where I saw John Williams and James Taylor. (Not at the same time, duh.) Anyway, feasting on all sorts of delicious gourmet things and thoroughly plied with wine, we were treated to a concert of Beethoven and Schubert. (Symphony #6 is now my favorite Beethoven symphony. And Movement #1 can bite me, it's #2 where the pretty happens.)
10. Learning the ins and outs of photo shoots and sometimes modeling for them. (Don't get too excited, internet. Mostly just my hands. Though I do get a thrill seeing the results-- there's excessive pointing and smug whispers of "that's my wrist!") My hands are going to be on a huge banner for the holiday season (clasping a mug) which is going in all of the stores. My hands shall be famous in the tri-state area! (At least they used the shot. I was melting that day in the indian summer heat, dressed up in a sweater with a wool hat and wool gloves with the art director fussing with my sleeves and the photographer blowing polyester fake snow in my face-- all for that one shot. Oh, the trials and tribulations of ART.)
11. Finally seeing my work in print. There are no words. It's just an amazing, amazing thing. After all the talking, and the beating the design to death, and the prepping of the files, and the quotes from the printer, and then poof! There it is, suddenly real and out there, public, in people's mailboxes. Trust me, it's cool.
12. Weeks of picking out just the right candy to distribute for my first Halloween at the apartment and then HAVING NO KIDS. None. Though I suppose this might be due in part to the apartment's freakish trick or treat hours, which were NOON to eight o'clock. What kid trick or treats at lunchtime?
13. Keeping up with the new television season, because suddenly there are people who NEED TO KNOW WHAT I THINK after episodes air. Yes, I'm talking about Lost. I'm corresponding with a woman whom I've never met who works with my mother about that show. It's weird, but it works. And since the Thursday Lost emails have been flying, my mother's started Wednesday House emails. Again, with the weird.
14. Helping to open three new stores and working on the fourth right now. Hence the crazy with the busy. The company's almost doubled since I started.... so that's good, right?
Anyway, lots more things happened as well, some more interesting and some less so, but that's all you're going to get, internet. I promise not to be a stranger anymore.
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