NEWS FLASH !!

I am rid of one half of the "brain trust" until Oct. 11th. The other half of the trust leaves Saturday and won't return until Oct. 17th. I might actually be able to concentrate and get some work done. Just thought I'd share.

From a Design Perspective

I am a graphic designer by day (the jewelry thing is one of many side projects). For those of you that are not graphic designers, you may not be aware of a long-standing design software rivalry between Adobe InDesign and Quark Xpress. A little over a year ago I made the jump after 15 years of using Quark Xpress to using Adobe's InDesign. I have not once looked back on the decision.

Quark's customer service has been notoriously awful. I was once solicited with two different upgrade offers for their software that had two different prices with a difference of $50. I own two registered copies of the software, one at work and one for my computer at home, which is why I got two offers. It took major amounts of negotiations to get the lower price. If that wasn't bad enough, about two weeks after I bought the upgrades at the negotiated price, I received another offer to upgrade for $100 less than the price I paid. I did everything but write the president of Quark a letter. Note to Quark: if you solicit for upgrades and someone buys said upgrade, do not slap your customers in the face by sending them another e-mail two weeks later offering the same upgrade at a lower cost. Delete said customer from the secondary list. Morons.

Anywho, I'll spare you the rest of the reasons why a year ago I switched to InDesign. I only use Xpress when I need to open my legacy documents to convert them to InDesign. Recently, Quark unveiled a highly publicized new logo. Personally, I'm not impressed with the design and, given my history and dismay with the company, I haven't been "moved" by the new logo. Today, I received an electronic newsletter to which I subscribe that had the following article about Quark's new logo. Hilarious!

"Sometimes a Logo Is Just a Logo" by Gene Gable (Creativepro.com)

Quark's new logo is strikingly similar to several others. Is it theft? A global conspiracy? Or a failure to follow basic design principles? Gene Gable gives you the dirt, including ways you can sidestep the same type of predicament.

"You might think that if observant designers around the world can post several similar logos within hours of Quark's public debut of the new logo, it should have been just as easy for Quark to have identified the same conflicts. Not necessarily so."

Here's a link to the complete story: http://www.creativepro.com/story/feature/23415.html?cprose=6-39

Something Easy to Do

On October 1, 2004 my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. She is 75 and had never had a mammogram until last year when she found her lump. She's stubborn that way. This website helps to fund mammograms. All that you need to do to help is click on a link from the homepage. So, in anticipation of October, which is Breast Cancer Awareness month, please click the link and share it with others. Maybe some day, there will be a cure. Thanks.

Just a Quick Post to Let You Know I'm Still Here

I have been pretty busy at work this week and haven't had time to play. Here is a picture of some more fused glass pendants. A friend from the studio says that they look like barnacles. The pieces were made with millefiore.

I'm keeping the folks in the path of Hurricane Rita in my thoughts. Hopefully she'll weaken before making landfall.

Tomorrow I am off work to attend Bridezilla's wedding. I found out that my brother is not invited to the wedding even though everyone else in our group of friends is invited. They briefly dated, but everyone including the groom has all hung out together and is cool with each other so I'm not sure what that is all about. My brother does not seem to care that he wasn't invited. Anyway, the wedding is tomorrow (that's right...Friday) at 6 p.m. in downtown Baltimore. Now won't that be fun during rush hour?

Feeling Adventurous Today

As it turns out, I woke up feeling adventurous today, so I packed up the boys and made it to the free showing of Madagascar at 9:15 AM. They had a great time. The movie thing went so well that I felt adventurous enough to take them to lunch afterwards. We had pizza at California Pizza Kitchen then did some shopping at the mall. They both fell asleep in the car on the way home, which presented its own problem. How to get both of them out of the car and into the house calmly enough for them to continue napping? Obviously, this is easily accomplished when the hub is here to help, but I'm flying solo today. When I turned off the car the youngest woke up and the oldest was still asleep. Had it been the other way around it would have been easy enough for the oldest to walk while I carried the sleeping youngest in the house to his crib. No such luck.

OK, so leaving one in the car while carrying the other into the house just doesn't seem like a good option. Even if I lock the car, I don't like the idea of having one of them in the car while I'm in the house even for just a few seconds. I'm paranoid like that. So, I bite the bullet. Get the youngest out of his carseat and walk around to the other side of the car and wake the oldest up so that we can all go into the house together. I get everyone inside, get the youngest to lie down on the couch with the premise of watching Dora all the while hoping that he'd fall back to sleep. Again, no such luck.

I take the baby in to his room, get his sandals off and hope that he'll go back to sleep in his crib without a fuss. Jackpot! Three times a charm. He lies right down and goes back to sleep.

The oldest is happy to watch Dora on TiVo and I have time to post. I LOVE TiVo.

Above is a necklace strung with five lampworked beads (I did not make the beads), black seed beads and Swarovski glass pearls.

Happy Friday

Today, I will hopefully get a MAJOR project off to the printer. Nothing exciting to say, just thought I send out a quick hello before the weekend.

Tomorrow the hub and the brother are off to State College for the Penn State game. If I'm feeling adventurous, I'll take the boys to a free showing of Madagascar tomorrow, sponsored by our friendly realtor. Other than that, not much else going on for the weekend.

I have more jewelry pieces to show you, so I'll try to get something posted soon. Sorry for the boring post today.

Disturbing News Today

I know this is going to be kind of a weird post. We picked up our new Subaru B9 Tribeca at our dealership Friday. The car is great. The kids have lots of room and are excited to be able to watch movies in the car. The hubby is having too much fun with the navigation system.

To get the new car we traded in my perfectly good Outback. At the beginning of the summer I began to have some problems with the Outback. I had it in to the dealership several times for a week or so at a time. They were having trouble replicating the problem and asked if I could come in and take the mechanic for a drive and see if I could get the car to replicate the problem since they couldn't. The mechanic was really nice and we talked casually while I drove him all over Northern Virginia in my car. He talked about surviving a bout with cancer and he talked about his kids. Finally we talked more about my car and determined a possible solution to the problem. I took him back to the dealership and thanked him for his attention to my car. It was nice talking to him. I did what he told me to do and the problem was resolved. A week later he called me on the phone to make sure the car was still running fine--it was.

Today as I was driving my swell new car I got a warning message on the navigation screen. I couldn't find a solution in the manual so I called the service department. My service guy, which I got to know pretty well during the problems with the Outback, didn't know the answer, so I happened to sort of jokingly ask if he thought my trusty mechanic might be able to answer the question. It was then that he said the mechanic was no longer there. I said you're kidding...he was great. The service guy said yes that he was great, but that he had died. He committed suicide two weeks ago. I only spent an hour or so with him, but feel sad about the news of his death.

Suicide makes you wonder if there is something, some sort of signal that you missed. Something that you should have noticed to make you help the person. I talked with the service guy about this. He agreed. He said that the mechanic had his good days and bad days like everyone does. He said that there were no indicators to make them think hmm...we need to keep an eye on him. They were just as shocked to hear the news.

My thoughts and prayers are with his family even though I didn't really know him.

Blog Homework

Well, I guess I have arrived in the blog world as I have been "tagged" for the first time by Jaded.

7 things I plan to do before I die:
1. Raise my sons to be wonderful young men
2. Own a Mercedes convertible
3. Visit the Louvre in Paris
4. Get organized
5. Build our dream house
6. Grow old with my husband
7. Cuddle my grand babies

7 things I can do:
1. Draw
2. Cook
3. Beat anyone at 80s music trivia
4. Graphic Design
5. Measure without a ruler
6. Help a friend in need
7. Calligraphy

7 things I cannot do:
1. Math
2. Lie to save my life
3. Tolerate stupidity
4. Web Design
5. Gymnastics
6. Shut my mouth when I really should (But, I’m working on this)
7. Ski

7 things that attract me to the opposite sex:
1. Sense of humor
2. Intelligence
3. Honesty
4. Smile
5. Legs
6. Eyes
7. Warmth

7 things that I say most often:
1. No!
2. Stop that!
3. Ajax! Stop licking the floor
4. I went to Art school so I didn’t have to take Math
5. Be nice to your brother.
6. Did you flush the potty and wash your hands?
7. Are you kidding me?

7 celebrity crushes:
1. Christian Slater
2. Keanu Reeves
3. Patrick Dempsey
4. Campbell Scott
5. Bono
6. Matthew Perry
7. Brad Pitt (Cheater! I tried to put a strike through his name, but it didn't work. I just saw part of Troy and he is HOT in this film, but still a cheater.)

Here are People That are Helping

http://www.displaceddesigner.com/offer-a-desk/

More on Katrina

Here is a link to a blog by a local reporter who rode out Katrina in Mississippi. He has a post responding to a letter to Bush written and posted by Michael Moore on his website. Personally I can't stand Moore and NO that does not make me a big fan of Bush either. Anyway, check out the link, in addition to his Moore post, he has a ton of first-hand photos and information right from ground zero in Mississippi.

I posted this comment on the blog:

"It is easy to sit in a dry, clean, safe home/office and lay blame. It is much more difficult to leave that dry, clean, safe place and do something about the disaster on the Gulf coast. There are too many people sitting on their asses doing nothing more than bitching. Get off your ass, stop bitching about who is to blame, and do something to help. Moore vs. Bush is not what this is about. It is about Americans helping Americans. Not Democrats and Republicans. Not liberals and conservatives. Thousands of HUMAN BEINGS have lost everything they had. Yet, they are the "lucky" ones. They are ALIVE. How many have died? Countless, so far. STOP BICKERING and do something to HELP the people of the Gulf Coast."

Tomorrow I will Wear My Contacts

OK, so this post is going to be short. Today I wore glasses to give my eyes a rest from the contacts. Unfortunately, the combination of glasses and my headphones that I wear to drown out the "brain trust" have given me a headache. I know, boo hoo.

Anyway, our weekend was good. We trekked up to PA again, this time for the hubby's 20-year high school reunion. The festivities kicked off at a bar on Friday night, then a nice dinner on Saturday night and ended with a pool party with everyone's kids on Sunday. I had a nice time meeting more of my husband's classmates. They were all very nice and friendly and welcoming. I have to say that it is interesting to be the spouse at these events. Everyone looks around at each other trying to figure out who is who. People were looking at me and I stood there thinking "No I'm a spouse, you don't know me." The hubby has decided that it would be great fun to go to my reunion in November and mess with people. You know, walk up to them introduce himself and say "Hey, how have you been? Great to see you. Remember the time that we [insert random event]?" We'll see how that goes.