Fear of Sidewalks

P. 90  11/10/09

Many people seem to be afraid of falling into the grates that line city sidewalks. I know some people who go out of their way not to walk on top of these grates. I think this is pretty absurd. When was the last time someone actually fell through a perfectly normal, stable and closed sidewalk grate?

I understand that sometimes the grates are sunken in from a lot of weight going over them, but they are not broken or cracked. They are designed not to break under a person’s weight. There is probably a 2% chance you will actually fall through one of these sidewalk grates.

Part of me sometimes fantasizes about actually falling through one of these grates to validate these people’s irrational fears of walking over grates. I think it would be kind of funny to actually prove this seemingly widespread fear real. Plus, it might be amusing to make the news for falling into one of these situations.

Another Monday

P.89  11/9/09

It’s a Monday and I’ve barely gotten any work done today. But that isn’t news. It seems like I never get work done on Mondays. I don’t have any pressing work due soon and I’m exhausted. Plus, there’s a fresh weekend full of content to see on Facebook! And I learned today that I am off on Wednesday for Veteran’s Day (which I always thought was on a Monday) which is pretty exciting because I am going to spend it with my BFF, Matt in Baltimore.

I had a monumental and super exciting weekend too, which is hard to forget about. Saturday night I went to one of the best Caps games ever with my roommate and family. The amazing final score was 7-4 with a back-to-back win over the Florida Panthers. We sat in box seats right behind the Fan of the Game; a guy with a bald head painted in all red and he wore a jersey that said, “Head” on the back.

My roommate and I got our picture taken with him as well as with Slapshot who came right up to our box! I am friends with the roommate of the guy underneath the costume, and I told him so. It kind of freaked out the Slapshot guy but all in good fun. It was great. I love Slapshot.

Then on Sunday I had the kickball playoffs. My team was in first place going in, and we won our first game against the worst team, 7-5. Our next game was against a team we had never actually played, and it was a great game. We ended up losing 9-7 which was pretty sad. Our next game next weekend determines who will land in trophy-winning third place. It’s pretty exciting. At the bar we played some really good flipcup and my whole team played Survivor Flipcup. I ended up making it all the way to the final two and lost by half a second, which was pretty fun.

All in all, it was a pretty awesome weekend. Too bad fun weekends have to be followed by monotonous, boring Mondays.

Post 312!

P. 88  11/8/09

Out of boredom and curiosity, I wanted to know how many times I have posted on this blog since starting back in January. I was hoping that this post would be some monumental number like the 100th post or something, but apparently I am way past that. I tallied up all my posts (including all of the Songs of the Week) and this post will make it be a total of 312 posts. Amazing.

I wanted to celebrate this, but couldn’t figure out anything special about the number, 312. So I did what anyone in my position would do: I Googled it. It turns out that 312 is the name of a beer. Perfect! Upon further research, the kind of beer is called 312 because it’s named after the area code in which it’s made, which is in Chicago, Illinois. Clever, clever! (This is also extra cool because I have always wanted to go to Chicago. I’ve never been.) You can find all the details about the beer here. The full name of this beer is the 312 Urban Wheat Ale and it’s manufactured by the Goose Island Brewery. You learn something new everyday! I really like the packaging design too:

A Change Is Gonna Come

A. 54  11/6/09

I’m back at work after a short hiatus of staying home sick. And it’s a Friday. And I have a headache. So I’m not going to bore you faithful readers with something long and drawn-out, because I don’t see the point. Instead I am treating you to one of music’s most beautiful and meaningful songs of the sixties.

The song, “A Change Is Gonna Come” by Sam Cooke became the anthem for the American Civil Rights Movement. It has also been covered by around 31 other musicians. Below is the original. I just love the string section. And Sam Cooke is one of my all-time favorite musicians. Have a good listen and a great weekend!

Also, I can’t resist not including this too. Here is Al Green’s version. I love it. He can really wail.

Daytime TV’s Best

P. 87  11/5/09

Like I said in my previous post, being sick and staying home from work can get pretty boring. It also allows for an enormous amount of television watching. While watching the tube today, I have come across the following memorable quotes which I feel the need to share with you. I know you will like them. You can thank me later…

” You don’t have hangovers when you’re drinking. You have them when you’re sober.”  – a stand-up comedian on Comedy Central’s “Live in Gotham City”

“Wow! Look how thick it is! It’s like a hockey puck!” – someone discussing the original iPod on VH1’s “I Love 2001.”

“[The movie,] Moulin Rouge was like the radio station you hear at a dentist’s office: Playing the top hits from the 70s, 80s, 90s, and today!” – someone on VH1’s “I Love 2001.”

Ok, well that’s all I got. Figures. It is daytime television, after all. Entertaining, yes, but only for a few minutes at a time. What more did you expect?

Lessons Learned While Being Sick

P. 86  11/5/09

Well it’s sick day #3ish and I am missing yet another day of work. Here are some things I have learned from staying home (and only leaving my room to go to the bathroom or the kitchen). Oh boy!

1. Daytime television is terrible. What is being offered from say, 9 AM – 3/4PM, you ask? Well, not much. A brief channel surfing at 12:30 PM today will bring you last night’s hockey game reruns, golf, home improvement shows, “Freaky Friday” with Lindsay Lohan, “Full House”, and various news shows.
2. When you are sick, you learn a lot about how the body works. According to my friend who’s a nurse, when you have the chills, your body is really actually hot. And when you have the chills, you should take a fever-reducing medicine like Tylenol. So I did. Although it just made me hot and sweaty. My friend explained to me that I am supposed to feel hot, because (and this is where it gets confusing) my fever is “breaking” and going down. So being cold equals being really hot. And being hot means you are still hot. And feeling just right is just right. Great. So now I’m hot and sweaty and I’m supposed to take some more Tylenol. But if that just makes me more hot, then that won’t be any help. Ugh.
3. Being locked in your room greatly limits things to do to keep entertained, yet you are not supposed to be entertained when you are sick. You are supposed to take it easy and get better. Being sick is sooo boring!
4. Facebook actually becomes dull when it is your main source of internet entertainment. It’s odd how entertaining Facebook can be when you should be doing more important things with your life. But when you have nothing to do, suddenly Facebook just isn’t as appealing.
5. Eating nothing but soup for days isn’t as bad as you might think, if you like soup. Soup is actually one of my favorite foods (I know that is a generic statement, but it’s true). Well, even with being able to have as much as my favorite food non-stop, like, #3 above, it can sure get monotonous. So while eating hot food is encouraged when you’re sick, and there are probably other things I could have other than canned soups, the other problem is that I really need to go grocery shopping. But leaving my apartment might not be the greatest choice for getting better. So I am left with soup and more soup.
   
6. Speaking of food, apparently I am also incapable of correctly popping a bag of popcorn. Be it regular size or a mini-bag, this is a life skill I have yet to accomplish in my new apartment.

So that’s about all I can think of right now. The things you learn when staying at home from work for multiple days in a row, while it may not be monumental and life-changing information, might still be helpful to know at some point. At least I’m going to keep telling myself that…

One Day Late

P. 85  11/4/09

Well, my plan to get sick so as not to come in to work was a success…sort of. I did get sick. And I didn’t go in to work today. But I was a day late in my plans. I ended up going to work yesterday for the day-long conferences, which I miraculously stayed awake for. -That could have been due to trying to hold in my coughing throughout the day.

It turns out I probably should have stayed home from work yesterday, because last night I started to cough even more. I tried not to open my mouth for anything unnecessary like talking, for fear I would just let out a string of coughs. I went to bed relatively early and woke up today with a productive cough. I also woke up sweating, but that was because I went to bed freezing, so I bundled up and turned my heat on high. I called in to work, telling them I was too sick to come in, too. While I could have gone to work today, I figured my co-workers wouldn’t want me near them with my mysterious germs. Plus, my family and I are going to a Caps game this Saturday night and I need to not be sick for that! I need to be healthy by the weekend! (Plus, I have kickball playoffs on Sunday!)

I’m not sure what exactly is ailing me. From what I’ve heard, it doesn’t seem like I have the Swine Flu. I could however have the regular flu or a cold. I’m not quite sure. But what I do know is that there’s one phrase I have come to live my life by:

“Be careful what you wish for, because you might just get it.”

I Wanted Swine Flu

P. 84  11/3/09

As some of you may know, I was trying to get the Swine Flu. I know, this is a deadly disease and that ok, sometimes I don’t make the wisest of choices. So let me explain…

Today at work we have conferences all day. We have employees from Oklahoma City (another site of our offices) come all the way up to D.C. for this. All day long we discuss branding and how logos and such should officially be used. We also discuss and look over everyone’s previous art work and talk about our creative processes. Well, I’m still sort of considered the “newbie” and as a result, 95% of the work I do just uses already-created templates where I insert new text or pictures. It’s pretty basic work. No creative processes involved. Last year at our Branding Day, I couldn’t keep my eyes open, and had a hard time keeping myself awake and engaged. This year, when my boss announced we were having another Branding Day, I decided to go to desperate measures to try to get out of this eight hour day of Hell. (True, I could just lie, but I would feel really guilty and plus, I have found that I am a pretty terrible liar.)

So I came up with the seemingly ingenious plan: I needed to get the Swine Flu (or regular flu) in order to have a legit excuse not to be able to come in. Just normal being sick, would not be a good enough excuse to miss this, and I feared that if I didn’t have a real deal reason not to come in to work, I could suffer some serious consequences, which I was not interested in finding out about. But oh, the Swine Flu! How perfect! Nobody wants to catch it, and if you have it, you are required to stay home for a decent amount of time. Nobody would want me to come in then!

So my plan was to hopefully catch the Swine Flu over the weekend, preferably Sunday, after Halloween. I’d come in on Monday, displaying some serious symptoms, and then have to not come in the next day, which just so happened to be out Branding Day. (“Awww, geez, fellas, I’m too sick! Sorry!”)

Well Monday was a normal day at work. But then I got an email from a roommate who had recently come back from a two-week-long trip to Spain. She said she was feeling rather sick and might have the Swine Flu and was going to the doctor. Perfect, I thought! I can go home and catch the sickness from her, the night before the “big day.” Well, it worked. Sort of. I did develop a persistent dry cough. But that was it. This morning, I tried calling in to work to tell my boss that although I was planning on coming to work (playing it like the good worker I am) I was going to explain that I could have the flu. But, alas, my boss and none of my co-workers were answering their phones, so I just had to rough it and go in anyways.

So I’ve been at work, suffering through this day-late cough and this very boring conference day. Well, maybe I’ll get brownie points for dragging my sick self here?

YouTube Spectacular

P. 83  11/2/09

Thanks to Gchat and away message stalking of people I don’t actually know, but who are in my contacts list, I have found my new favorite YouTube video. This is up there with the Ramen Noodle Bath video, but possibly better. The description is as follows:

“Five brave workers decide to record themselves simultaneously at their office doing something…unthinkable…”

Yes, my friends, this video is so great that I felt the need to post it to my blog. And as you may know, not just any video can qualify. (But the awesomeness that this video is, might also be contributed to this earlier post.) Anyways, my favorite parts is at 2:24-2:27, although it’s all pretty amazing. Enjoy!

Canadian Graphic Design

A. 53  11/2/09

At the beginning of every month I head on over to a website I have found which holds what seems to be a design “contest” for people to submit their own calendar computer desktop wallpaper designs and illustrations. Each month I choose my favorite, print it out, and hang it at my desk to use as not only a calendar, but a pretty piece of art to look at and maybe even be inspired by. In April of this year, I came across my favorite design of the year thus far:

I absolutely love(d) the typography-turned-graphic the artist created for the word, April. It was like nothing I had ever seen before. A swirling maze of lines which seemed inspired by Art Nouveau line work and maybe even Renaissance flourishes. To add to the graphic, the green was a pleasant color, too.

For this month of November, I was scrolling through the possible calendar choices I had. I came across a particularly striking black and white composition, simply titled, “Negative Space.” As I was reading the description for his November calendar, [below] I decided I had to look into this artist who intrigued me since I first noticed his work with the April calendar.

“After trying numerous different approaches similar to my flourishing April type, I ultimately settled on a very minimal, negative space-based design. I didn’t include a version without the calendar as it felt a little too minimal without the supportive type.” Designed by Colin Parks from Canada.

I clicked on the artist’s name which in turn took me to his website, www.colinparks.com. After wandering through his site and artwork, I was intrigued to see his other website, an art blog, calledStraight No Chaser (which I am also including in my list of links at the right). I highly recommend you visiting it. Not only is Colin Parks a young and clever designer, but another exciting thing about him is that he’s Canadian. (And if you know me, you know that I love Canada.) Below are some of my favorite things he’s designed:

Colin also re-designed the DVD jackets to many of the movies he owns. He is a self-proclaimed movie junkie and owns a varied collection of many movies. The covers he designed can be seen here. Some of my favorites are for “Dracula”, “The Tuman Show”, and ”A Clockwork Orange”.

Well, I hope you enjoyed learning about a Graphic Designer today. As an artist, I feel like I really should be posting more art-related things on this blog…