lunchtime fun

i promised a friend that i would start updating my blog before lunch so he would have something fun to read. so here i go. i enjoy the lunchtime blog reads. i get disappointed when my favorites have not been updated. so i am going to try to do better, all for my good friend hepp.

today however, i have a lunch meeting, so i don't get to have lunchtime blog fun. i get free pizza and company meeting time. my boss came in yesterday and asked if i could think of anything cool that we had done for him to present today. i drew a blank. which worries me because i feel like i should have a bunch of stuff to tell him. i should be doing tons of cool stuff to make him happy and follow the agency's goals. but i don't. i have a nintendo game that we used as an invite for a party. and a whole bunch of sell sheets and tech brochures. not exactly forward thinking. but i can't exactly do inventive things when the only projects i get are sell sheets and tech brochures. so that is that. what can ya do?

tonight the object and i head for ohio to visit his family. another long weekend away from home. i am tired of the travelling. excited to go. but tired. i feel like i haven't gotten anything done and that i am a visitor to my own life right now. i am neglecting work and home. then comes the big move and lots of projects. i just need a day off to lay and be. then i will be ready to tackle the excitment of the home-making. only two weeks away. then official grown-up-ness.

easter

it is easter. but yet it is just a normal sunday. we spent all morning in bed reading, i justified it, thinking "it's easter... we can have a lazy sunday morning..." or "it's easter, i don't need to go to yoga." so we stayed in bed, until noon, when we got up to dye easter eggs. a blast from the past.

yesterday, he asked if we should go to church. for easter. i was surprised. like we were trying to go back to being little on easter. "what is with you?" i asked... "you want to dye eggs and go to church? are you going traditional on me?" and he responded: "you bought ham." which i had. they keep advertising glazed ham on tv. i was craving ham sandwiches. think cut ham on crusty bread with yellow mustard. so we bought ham. and eggs. which are now all pretty colors, one with poka dots. and we are going to make deviled eggs to go with the ham sandwiches.

we also bought reeces peanut butter eggs. my favorite. so much better than cups, because there is a bigger peanut butter to chocolate ratio.

so it's not a traditional easter, but it has whispers of easters from the past.

headin' south

last week i was down south, in beautiful and sunny texas, shooting photos of farmers in their natural habitat. this translates to me sitting in the middle of a corn field of 14 hours and day and having to pee with no toilet in sight. i did, however, meet some fun texas people. only one wore a cowboy hat. but they all wore their jeans very high, which caused them all to have more of a beer gut than they would in normal jeans.

barbeque was on my mind the whole weekend and when we got to taylor, texas we were able to have some official texas barbeque. screen doors, parchment paper, spicy sauce and yummy potato salad. the place was awesome, old yellowed business cards on the walls, bare bulbs hanging from the ceiling. it was great. but my camera lost all my photos so i have nothing to show. sad.

we did also get to spend some time in austin, which i found to be a fabulous town. i was able to get some awesome fish tacos and the magnolia cafe. they had an awesome garlic cream sauce and lots of avacados. yum. then we headed down to the river and had coffee and treats (an amazing brownie). it seems like a nice low key town. and after reading stephanie klein's blog and hearing about how she moved their and she loves it, it makes me want to go there too. but i also get overly obbessed with that blog. that is a whole other subjet.

that time of day

it is that time again. i am tired. i don't want to drink more caffeine because then i will be awake for forever tonight. caffeine is a tricky, tricky thing. it is great in the morning, and great tasting, but damn it if it doesn't keep me awake when i should be asleep. so now, when i should be thinking of great things about dogs and cats and pigs (i am not kidding) i am drowsy and i just want a little snappy nap. i think that daylight savings time has messed with my head. i can't get up in the morning anymore. or at least it is much more difficult than it was last week. the days are nice and long and i love the sunlight, but i want it to make me more chipper, not less productive. damn sun. do your magic.

i stole a chair from the lounge in our office. no one ever sat in it and i really love it. so now it resides in my office for others to enjoy. and, on days like this, for me to sit in and be comfy and concept. or almost fall asleep.

i wish i had some magic way to wake myself up. i feel like i can't concentrate when i am like this.

blah.

i am going to sit in my chair now.

letterpress

so, i stole all of the good letterpress links from the side of my friend kelly's blog. kel? i hope that is okay. it is just that i love letterpress, too. and this way i have all those great links at my disposal all the time.

letterpress is good shit.

chip kidd

i need to take a moment to gush about chip kidd. i was lucky enough to be able to see him speak last week and i was totaly awe-struck by his brilliance, his personality and his work. i can't say enough good things about him. he was funny, inspiring and has designed so many book covers that you wouldn't even believe it. watching him speak and flail about made me happy. and modivated me to do great things.

some great thoughts from his lecture (which, by the way, was named: "there is a style gland that turns malignant in nevada.")

- separation of type and state: type and images stay in different countries and never go to war.

- take a word and make it look like it's in denial. (re: dry by augusten burroughs)

- it's not what you show, it's what you imply.

- create, learn and perfect an impression. (his was the wicked witch of the west reciting a psalm.)

- live everyday of your life as if you are dying of a contageous disease that turns people into zombies when you bite them.

the hour he spoke went by so quickly. i felt like i learned so much in such a short amount of time. good stuff.

i suggest everyone read his book, "cheese monkeys." i was so mad that i forgot to bring it for him to sign. but i bought his retrospective, and he signed that for me. that made me happy.

freedom

i just recieved an e-mail from an old college friend who dropped the bomb on me that he had just picked up and moved to spain. no plans, no job, no nothing. just packed and left.

to be honest, i was floored. not because i was surprised that he did this, which i wasn't because i think that it was an awesome move for him. but more because i can't even fathom having even the possibility of doing that.

let me set you straight now: i am not complaining about my life sucking in any way, shape or form. my life is great. but damn, to have the open-ness in life to just do that. drop everything and move. amazing.

i would never give up the things i have in my life to do it, but sometimes that freedom is something that i long for. the freedom to meove to a new city, to travel and see amazing sites, to be engrossed in a new culture.

when i was in mexico a met a woman who really amazed me because she had this ability to be totally free in her life. she was the planner for my friend's wedding down there, and we sat and had coffee with her and just asked about how she ended up in playa. (she is originally from italy). her story and her attitude was great. she had been travelling for two years, playa was her last stop, it seemed right, she opened a coffee shop and that was that. now she is married to an american who lives there too, and she goes back to europe and takes her daughter travelling for a few months every year.

sometimes i feel very traditional. life has always seemed very set in how it is supposed to be. college, job, marriage. the end. i want all that. but sometimes i get the inkling for an adventure. i have adventures here. the house is an adventure. but in a different way.

someday, maybe dave and i will adventure together. leave work for a month and just do something amazing. until then, i will have to find mini adventures in my everyday life. those have the possibility of being just as good.