Sorry I’m late to the party with the pics - but that’s how I roll.

Even tho I have a whole “T day” post ready to go, I figure I’ll tell my tweet up story while I’m here.

When I was 18 (for those of you counting that was 13 years ago) I met this really cool chick named Amy.  I was going to OSU and working at The Cooker on Lane Ave.  Amy and I, along with two other friends Jessica and Courtney, were a 4 pack of awesomeness - they also spawned my affection for alcohol and taught me that wine with a screw off cap was probably not very good (but we drank it anyway).

Over the years, I had lost touch with all of the 4 pack until one day when I was reading the Cincinnati Womens Bloggers site and as I scrolled down the page I saw a post for the blogger of the month, and there she was AMY!!

Long story short - we tried and failed to meet up a couple of times over the next couple of months and when I saw she was planning on attending the tweetup (along with one other person I knew) I figured what the hell.  I didn’t know any of the Cincy Tweeters, but I <3 meeting new people.

Sure enough, they were all awesome peeps, we had a great time and I got to see Amy and meet her husband.

The End.

Fall quarter is finally over.  I now only have 3 quarters of school left!  Or at least that’s what I keep telling myself to get me through.

I am quite proud of the work I did this quarter and not entirely because I think it’s good - but because when I look at it, I can see how much I have learned.  I most definitely learned more this quarter than I have over the past two years (and yes, it has been two years come January).  The reasons?

The Internship - I started my internship back in June, but this was my first quarter of full time school doing both (since I took the summer off).  I’m just now starting to feel like I’m “getting it” at work, but I still feel like a tard most days.  What can I say, I aspire to be the least knowledgeable person in the room. (I are succeed)

The Mentors - I can’t even begin to tell you how lucky I am to have seriously seasoned professionals at a moments beck and call during my work/school day.  John, David and Anthony have all been a tremendous help and a wealth of knowledge (and entertainment).

The Cool People - At school I surround myself with people that are 100x more talented than I am, and thanks to them I am halfway decent by association.  I wish any of them were savvy on the internets like I am (because then I could give them the linkage), but I am one of the very few that aspire to be digital designers in my class.  The truly talented people I know are more into the graphic designer scheme of things.

So for those of you who want to know why you hardly get to talk to me anymore, you can click the links below to see (some of) what keeps me so busy.  Keep in mind, we don’t just design these projects - we conceptualize, research, design, critique, proof, print, critique, proof, print again, hate it and start all over, cut down with knives and t-squares, mount and turn in.

Only better.

I <3 learning new things - especially when they make my life so much easier.

I have this inherent problem of having many tools at my disposal with no clue as to how to use them properly. Ignorance is bliss they say, but I beg to differ.

One in particular is the firebug extension for firefox. I’ve been teaching myself the proper way to use this awesome tool for a few months now, but I still have a lot to learn. Just today I realized how to make the extension pop up in the bottom of my browser window like all the cool developers do when I’m asking them for help. You just click the little firebug icon down in the bottom right hand corner of your browser.

While I was down there (that’s what he said –lolz @ me) I noticed the firefox icon and thought to myself, “I wonder what a firefox icon is doing down there?”. So like any

good web designer (I say that with much sarcasm) I decided to hover over it and see…

Orly now? Switch rendering engines with one click?! You don’t say?! For those of you who might not think this is a big deal - when a web site is created we have to make sure it works, and we usually make sure it works in both firefox and IE (well for work anyway, I could give a you know what). I usually take a longer route to do the same thing when testing so I was rather please when I saw this little feature.

And to all of you who know more than me and feel like scoffing (no not zerb) – you know I could give a you know what about that too… so quit scoffing and tell me more tips!

IE sucks

I didn’t think it could ever happen, I thought my heart had hardened even to the THOUGHT of it

and then I googled “ie sucks”

and voila! - true love at first sight.

And for all of you retards challenged people STILL using IE - would you download Firefox already and make a whole lotta geeks lives so much happier.

kthxbai.

We all know I <3 Obama.  He is smart, funny, revolutionary, idealistic and let’s face it ladies - the guy is completely cute.  But I will try to stay on topic here.  I think Obama supporters could be his biggest critics throughout his presidency.  He has promised us a lot and I believe we are looking forward to the changes.  I know I’ll be keeping close track of how he follows through.

I began to pay attention to Obama when I heard him talk about three things:

• Education for everyone
• Health care for all

and most importantly

• the federal budget

Really those three things go hand in hand for me.  I’ve thought to myself for many years, even when I was much younger and wasn’t so politically inclined, that our President needed a normal person to go through the budget line by line and start to cut out the ridiculous things our country spends billions of dollars on every year.  It seemed like such a simple solution to a complicated problem.

I’ve also thought to myself many times (SW- because I am obviously a genius) that OUR government should have some type feedback system for the people.  After all, they are here to represent US, why is it so difficult to give input?

It only took my man a few days http://change.gov

I was wondering if he had the follow-through.  Keep it up B.

One of my favorite quotes is from George Carlin

…if there is a god it has to be a man, no woman could or would fuck things up like this…

It always makes me giggle.  This morning I was reminded of two other reasons there is no way god could be a woman:

1.  periods

2.  cellulite

These are the types of things my brain wanders to early in the mornings - scary, I know.

My week has been completely fucked. I apologize for my use of language (that is a lie, because I really don’t care) but the universe is clearly trying to tell me something – so I would like to tell the universe

I AM LISTENING DAMN IT – GET ON WITH IT.

In some senses it has been a great week. After all, America has our first black president – big step America, good on ya. I had almost lost hope for us and I promise I won’t move to Canada yet.

As for the rest of my week, I’ll just use this morning as an example:

I woke up at my boyfriend’s house with my phone beeping because my battery was low. Keep in mind that this is a new phone, so I didn’t realize one evening without a charge would cause the battery to die. I’m definitely not complaining about the phone, as it is awesome in so many other ways (and was free), I’m just pointing out that I didn’t realize it would be dead. But no worries, I have a car charger. I’ll charge that puppy on my way to work.

I get in my car to head to work and charge my phone and my phone won’t charge – I was upset with myself for not calling that. It’s like the 2 outer on the river – sfobv.

When I was about five minutes away from work, I decided to take another swig out of my coffee cup (this wasn’t my first swig) and for some reason my mug had decided to spontaneously dislodge the lid from the top of the cup and my entire coffee spilled straight into my lap. Not a drip folks, the entire cup.

It was clear I was going to have to keep driving and head home to change, but alas, my phone was dead and I couldn’t call my work to let them know. Of course this all happens the same week that my boss sends out an email to our group reminding us that if we are going to be more than 20 minutes late he wants to be notified. My brain immediately starts thinking of ways to let my co-workers know I’ll be late, I could call David and he can email them for me etc… but it evidently hadn’t settled in that my phone was not an option and that while in a car my telepathy powers aren’t as strong.

I get home and change my pants and undergarments (that were also soaked), grab my phone charger and shoot my work an email:

I wanted to let you all know that I’ll be in a bit late today.  My coffee mug decided to accost my jeans in the car this morning and I had to turn around and change.

I’ll be in in a few.

Thanks

I realize me emailing might make it look like a bad lie, but at this point I really don’t care. My whole week has been a series of unfortunate events – I’m still waiting for the lachrymose leeches to attack.

Update: I just reached in my purse to get out a piece of gum – it’s my last piece and I work a 10 hour day. Those of you who know me know this is a big deal – almost worse than leeches.

This past weekend I was in Boston.  It was my first trip to Boston and we had a fabulous time for the short

go vote sign in newton mass

time we were able to get around (outside of work conferences).  It was quite interesting to be in a non-swing state, the general atmosphere was so different.  We actually saw a sandwich sign on one of our morning walks reminding people of what time the polls were open on Nov. 4th.  I suppose a lot of people wouldn’t even notice the sign or find it strange if they did… but it really stuck out to us.

No early voting, no political ads, no robo calls, no campaign visits to their towns - can you even imagine??

Saturday night we had the most wonderful hosts and they asked what it was like having the opposite here.  I told them that earlier in the day and older white man, probably in his 80’s had looked at my walking partner’s Obama shirt and said  in an ecstatic voice “I hope he makes it!!” and how in Ohio (or at least my town) you would be hard pressed to find a white man over 50 that was an Obama supporter (or at least willing to admit it).

What really struck me about the people in Massachusetts is that even though their state is sewn up and may not matter on the grand stage of the media politic game - THEY VOTE - and they do it with pride.

Tomorrow I will vote outside of Dayton for the first time… and it is a completely different feeling.  Every day I drive home through the suburbs and the sea of Palin/McCain signs - every day I get the same feeling of excitement knowing that my vote will be cast against the odds.

I have my blue outfit picked out that hides my Obama ‘08 shirt underneath - fired up and ready to go.

You betcha!

See you there - and don’t forget to get your free Starbucks.  No more Bush and free Starbucks??  Nuff said.

I wrote this post once already this morning, saved, previewed and all - but my fingers + my keyboard = post gone.

Anyhow - it went a little something like this…

I stole this from David, it’s a must watch (hence the stealing)

I’m excited to see what Barack is going to say tonight - I hope it’s good, he is spending an awful lot of our money to get this message through.  It has been rumored that it is the same speech he delivered in Canton, OH on Monday.  Unfortunately, I’ll be on an airplane and won’t be able to share in the excitement - but that is what youtube is good for!

I just finished a big push to get some major projects done for school - I had to have worked for 30 hours or so this weekend trying to get it all done.  Thanks to Bette and Scott for helping with the kids, and the rest of you that gave me input and advice.  Here is a little sample of my finished products…

Diagonal grid using pictograms and tag line for Design Applications class

Logo I designed for Design Principles class

I read a pretty good story today from the Huffington Post - but mostly I just liked this quote.

$150,000 for clothes and they apparently didn’t buy her a raincoat.

Oh. Snap.