Ah, summer.

As much as I liked this class, I'm glad the semester is almost behind me. I learned a lot and have a few new portfolio pieces. However, I'm looking forward to relaxing. At least for the week and a half between the end of Words & Images and the beginning of Hypermedia.

Stuff I'll be doing between doing lots nothing:

• Sleeping
• Cracking open a bottle of good wine and reading the stack of magazines I've neglected for months
  
• Painting and drawing outside on the deck
  
• Going somewhere for Memorial Day weekend
  
• Cleaning out my closet - it's time to make room for new stuff!
• Shopping for deck furniture
• Catching up with friends
  
• Watching the entire DVRed season of LOST

Something creative every day

I'm taking a self-imposed creativity challenge. The goal is to do something, anything artistic/creative at least once a day that does not have anything to do with work or school. I might let the school projects slip in there once in a while, but work, even though it's creative, definitely does not count. Whether it's sketching, painting, making a new necklace, singing, dancing or playing the piano, it's time to get back into the creativity habit. If I produce something tangible (a drawing, jewelry, etc) from these daily challenges, I'll try to post them on the blog (although, that might be a different kind of challenge in itself). While I'm taking this challenge, I'll also be attempting to invent the 36-hour day because I'm not quite sure how this will fit into my schedule. We shall see.

Why project 3 is making me crazy (otherwise titled, I need a Mac)

This poster is a nightmare. The file is freaking huge (over 800,000 kb) and kept crashing my (pc) computer today. I was planning on taking the files to the printer during lunch today, but since I couldn't save the files, no trip to the printer for me. As I write this blog, the poster is attempting to save. It takes about a fifteen minutes to save the damn file. Now, I'm a day behind and I'll have to cram everything else in tomorrow since I've spent the evening fighting with this stupid file.

ETA: I finally saved the stupid file, but now my disk keeps freezing up when I'm trying to burn the files to it. How the hell am I supposed to get this thing to the printer if I can't even burn it to a disk? What a freaking PITA. It's not even that big (physically) - 18"x24" shouldn't create massive issues, but I have a lot of layers, so that's the problem. I'm having a difficult time trying to make it better because every change requires another 15 minute save. I officially hate this poster. And I think the feeling is mutual.


On a brighter note, since Stacey requested a picture, here's Lucy. Isn't she adorable?









Stella also wanted to say "hi."

I need air

I'm trying not to get overwhelmed by the amount of work I have to do this week. This campaign project, while fun, is extremely time-consuming. Fortunately, my profile is pretty much done. Stephanie liked the writing and it only needs a few tweaks; same for the design. So, I can throw all my energy into the campaign. I suppose I should work on some of my freelance projects, too.

I stayed home from work today because, 1) We got a new dog over the weekend and she's having some issues adjusting to our other dog, 2) I didn't get a very good night sleep last night and feel like crap, and 3) I need to work on this project. The two animals have me sandwiched between them on the couch, which is making it slightly difficult to work, but they seem to be happy that someone is home with them today.

Time to get back to work. I need to finish this poster ASAP, so I can deal with any printing nightmares that are bound to occur. I figure if I start on Wednesday with the printing process, I'll have three days to get it under control. And, I'm really glad I didn't choose the arts in education as my cause since two other classmates chose that. Even though, it is my biggest soapbox, I think it was a wise choice to go in a different direction for this project.

In the trenches - a brief rant

In my quest to eradicate "to be" from all of my professional writing, a few obstacles emerged. Many people feel such deep attachment to using this verb that they suggest it for headline usage (and then ask why I disapprove so much- true story, happened today.) But really, do you want to read that "widget A is here" or do you want to read that a "widget A increases efficiency"? I'll go with the latter. Who cares if it's here? Unless it's Jesus Christ himself, I don't care what (or who) is here, but I do want to know what it does and how my life, job, dog, general disposition will improve if I buy it. After all, isn't the point of all advertising to get someone, somewhere to buy your product or service? Simply telling me that it's here doesn't make me care enough to find out why I should care.

So, the next time someone asks why I disapprove so much of using "is" (especially in a headline), I'll use my classmate, LaDonna's, example of comparing it to Arial. Or maybe, to use another design analogy, I'll compare it to using a Photoshop filter. Just because it's there, doesn't mean you should use it. With so many other colorful verbs (or interesting fonts or alternatives to filters) out there, why choose the easy, common one?