chatter

Well I find it interesting that my new found emphasis on being more creative at work is for nothing.

The corporation is finally launching some branding guidelines. Everything is white, clean and crisp. No call for any original design, not really. The biggest challenge will be finding appropriate photography, crisp, clean and bright. After a 2.5 meeting on it, Adam the art director joked it was time to hit monster.com

In my case, I can use my creativity on personal projects. Right now I am working on a new logo for myself and kind of setting some branding guidelines for myself.

Can you believe I am catching a cold! After losing the whole month to sinusitis I don’t want to go there again.

I have a gazillion books to read. I shouldn’t be here on the web right now. On Saturday we went to the library where I checked out 8 books, then ordered 3 books for work and still have the 4 books I bought myself a couple weeks ago and I got a new magazine in the mail yesterday. Like I am going to read any of them. More than likely will catch up on my naps.

On Sunday, me and Hollace went to Sherry’s to meet her granddaughter. I know I should just say, meet Amy’s baby but it is more sensational said this way. First had to meet Sherry’s dust mop puppy and Nathan’s gangster puppy. Just what they need a nippy tsisu (I don’t know, how do you spell that?) and some sort of bull terrier and boxer mix. Both dogs are 3 months old.

Then we went to Amy’s. Little miss Jillian is too precious. She is a month old. Almost gave me baby lust. Funny how my sister’s boys didn’t do it but give a little girl and I am gaga.

I took plenty of pictures filling up my gig card. Unfortunately more than I wanted are blurry. I am always stretching the limits of low natural light shots. Oh well, I will just have to go back and take more.

You have heard my whoas before about the broken school over here. This is the reason I am paying $3000 for Hollace to go to a private kindergarten.

A little background:
The middle school here was only 8 years old when it was discovered that 53 out of 200 roof trusses were cracked and 10 were put in backwards. It has been later discovered that some other serious structural problem are going on with this school as well.

The school board got some emergency funding from the state and decided to tear down the school and start over instead of repairing the mess.

A parent community group (CURB) who it appears is on the side of the negligant builders is suing and therefore blocking any of the emergency funding, some of which would be paying rent to house the kids somewhere else until the school is rebuilt. They believe the school just needs a bandaid (can you tell whos side I am on?) I know if they just “repair” the building, there is no way Hollace would ever set foot in there. Rebuilding is the only option as far as I am concerned.

Anyway, next year the kids were going to be bussed far away to go to school. I didn’t like the idea but was starting to deal with it as opposed to finding another private school (school Hollace is in now only has kindergarten)

Well because of CURB’s lawsuit to block things, it is compromising the emergency funds so they might not be able to go to that far away school which means the 600 students without a school will have to cram in the only other school in the district. In order to do that they will have to have all the kids go split shift/half days next year.

That is totally unacceptable! My kid’s education is being majorily compromised. Raleigh will be hitting the street tomorrow to find a private school which are all Catholic (Raleigh is Catholic, me and Hollace are Lutheran). It is definately time to sell the house and get the hell out of here. Grrrrr

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I love office supply stores, it is like a candy store to me. That said I have never been in a Staples store, there was never one near me. Came close to going in while in Indiana but never made it.

They built a Staples 15 minutes away and on Sunday when I was driving around I thought it surely would be opened by now so I was going to go in. Well, the sign said opens on Tuesday.

Today Wednesday, RAW said hey lets go try that Staples store out tonight. Ok.

The trip out was my first in the new truck. Once we got into Staples, it became apparent that this was their grand opening celebration. I thought the store smelled odd. RAW said that is the smell of new, we found out shortely that was the smell of hordorves. They had these little steak bites wrapped around asparagus and some deep fried cabbage but mostly we ate the home made potato chips and some kind of dark red chips that were sweet, not sure what they were. Then we found the sweets table over by office furniture where they had what looked like a chocolate covered marshmellow but it was little cakes. Me and Hollace really liked the tiny carrot cakes best.

They had live music. These guys while in the store were fun to watch but they eventually were booted to outside the store cause here they are when we were leaving.

Boy is Hollace squeemish. She doesn’t want to see anyone else hurt. She use to pray that she didn’t see Haley until her broken arm healed. But Hollace panics when she has a boo boo which is funny cause this kid has teflon skin rarely ever needing a bandaid. One of the only times was Halloween 2 or 3 years ago. She still talks about this even though at the time she didn’t want us to talk about it.

Last week someone stepped on her hand. Every time I would ask her how this happened, she couldn’t remember. Anyway it looked like a small bruise but apparently it was a bonafide boo boo that warranted a bandaid.

Now it is scabbed and while she says it doesn’t hurt she freaks out big time because of it. She holds her arm up crying refusing to look at it. The kid has never had a scab before and it is freaking her out.

Sunday was a beautiful day. Our first glimpse of spring. We had a birthday party at ArtWorks to go to. I just dropped her off especially since I was there the day before and took to the road for a photo excursion. First I went to Target and picked up a carseat for RAW’s new truck (I got the Graco Turbo Booster, thats for you Kelly). I will probably just put the old one in his truck since the new seat has pink on it and you just can’t put a girly seat in such a manly truck.

After the party me and Hollace went to play in the car. She was so funny. She drove, had 2 babies belted in the backseat, I was in the passenger seat. Apparently we couldn’t find a hotel one night so we slept in the car. The next day Hollace went and found us a hotel. Me and the babies stayed in the car while she checked to see if they had any rooms.

She comes out (of the house) waving a piece of paper. She is excited, they have 2 rooms left. On her piece of paper it says 301 and 302. We have a choice of 2 rooms.

We gather up the babies and go in to check out the rooms. The first room I thought looked nice (my computer room) but Hollace prefered room 302 (her bedroom). We climbed up in her bed and I took a nap. The end

The concentration I have been putting on creativity is starting to work, more or less. I know have two personal art projects I want to do. I am ready to pick up the 3D stuff again. Now that I have a more competent computer I have no excuses. I am trying to figure out how to watch the LightWave movie tutorials without falling asleep. Not that they are dull, I am sleep deprived. I can fall asleep at the drop of a book. I have all these books I want to read and haven’t figure out how to do it yet. I also just got a hyponosis CD on unblocking creativity and gaining self confidence I am sure I will be zzzzzz-ing in no time flat.

Monday was a rough day. I was in a PMS funk big time. At work I had a design to do, it was my chance to show Adam and I fell flat. I couldn’t see good design if it bit me on the nose.

Today I felt tons better as far as creativity goes. I did find out I am NOT getting my Mac yet. They flagged the funds for 2nd quarter. They want to see if I can make due with the community Mac, ug.

After work we went and picked up RAW’s new 1 ton, dually, diesel big mo-fo truck.

That is all I have to say, I just ran out of steam with this stream of thought. Stay tuned for a Hollace post

I have been complaining here about feeling flat on the creativity front. One of the steps I took to fix that was to email Adam, the art director at work about my issues and wanted to pick his brain for ideas and inspiration.

We had our meeting today of which he started by saying he was shocked to get my email since I seem to have it together when it comes to creativity. Of all of the multimedia designers I am the only one who has a good design sense.

We had a nice talk and in the end he is going to try and get me more involved with the design. Right now he has Len in print design doing all the design and I make it work. This has bothered me for awhile now. He seemed real sincere in wanting to work with me and use me more for design so we will see how that goes and if I can pull it off.

I guess tomorrow the bosses talk about capital and whether or not I get my Mac gets determined. No one really wanted to deal with my Mac until a supervisor was hired but I put out there an immediate need. That was a month ago and quite honestly thought Paul was just blowing smoke telling me what I wanted to shut me up. Today he emails me to give him some quick facts on why I need a Mac for tomorrow’s meeting. I did. Then Adam comes over and tells me that Doreen (boss above Paul) was asking him if I need a Mac. He said yes. So we will see about that as well.

I got to come up with something to thank Deb for tooting my horn. Deb emailed everyone she knew to tell them to check out my photo blog. Wendy, who hired both me and Deb emailed back. It was nice to hear from her. Then yesterday afternoon was the Administrative Service’s ASE awards. I was nominated for an award in Initiative as I have been the last 3 ASE awards. Well, sweet ole Deb is the one who keeps nominating me. All right, what should I do to show my appreciation to her?

I am trying to get Hollace to try new foods, ones I know she would like if she would give it a chance. I have set up a rewards program if she adds food to her diet. I also told her she has to start eating lunch at school. We pay $45 a month for a hot lunch and she eats most of none of it.

On Friday she decided meatballs and mashed potatoes was good thing to try. Well with Hollace, mashed potatoes have no chance if a lump is discovered. Her powerful gag reflex with have her throwing up on her plate which is exactly what happened at school on Friday.

The Kids Club director immediately thought Hollace was sick and called RAW in to come get her. He explains her gag reflex but she still though maybe Hollace should go home sick. Friday afternoon was a big day with a dinosaur expert coming to talk to the kids. Hollace’s teacher came in and said that if she had something, she already gave it to everyone else then. If she feels fine then she should stay.

This weekend though Hollace has a cold, sore throat, runny eyes, stuff nose. She stayed home from school today. I am sure the Kids Club director probably thinks it was from Friday’s “stomach flu”. Tomorrow is Hollace’s first speech class. She can say her k sound so we will see how long she has to go.

At work since I don’t get the opportunity much lately to design anything, I feel very rusty when I have to.

I had a few things to design this week and felt totally inadequate to do anything nice. I have now made enhancing my creativity priority number one.

On Tuesday while at home sick, I focused on what I need to do. I doodled, I surfed the web for creativity, I tried to seek out inspiration. Then I turned on my DVD box set of Mad About You and that was that.

For lunch on Wednesday, instead of eating lunch at my desk and surfing my BBs as I usually do, I took a notebook upstairs and ate my lunch in the cafeteria.

I used the white noise of hundreds of people all talking at the same time and started a list of words that invoke creativity or inspiration for me. I ended up with over 40 words.

I then was now on a roll. Lets make a small little book with each word on its own page. Using Hollace as inspiration, I now call this little book “simple point” with a big period on it. This is what Hollace called a period at one point. She likes to put a period at the end of every word.

I felt the creative juices start to flow. I went back to work and designed what I needed to.

To take it further, I have ordered a creative inspirational book and a hyptnosis CD on unblocking creativity. What the heck.

To keep going, this weekend I am going to Barnes and Noble by myself and look for cool trick type books for Flash and Photoshop. I wanted so badly to do this last weekend but never got to it.

I was obsessed on trying to find a good haircut. Now my haircut is over, it is too short but that is my fault, I told her to do it. I am driving a cute Mazda 6 while my Subaru gets fixed. What I really need to do this weekend is hang out with my camera and shoot, shoot, shoot

When doing my state taxes I was thrilled to find that because we pay tution for Hollace’s kindergarten, we were eligible for an education credit. That meant $500 more for us.

Then I noticed my refund made it in my bank account minus that $500.

Upon further investigation, even though they include kindergarten expenses in the credit, it isn’t mandatory that you have to have your kid in kindergarten. They won’t credit it if the school doesn’t offer other grades. So since kindergarten is the only grade they have, we don’t get the credit. If we had her in a private school that had at least first grade, we would be good to go.

Oh whatever. That $500 would of come in handy for all the deductables we have to come up with.