carrying on...

 

since it is Monday many of you are probably looking for Carrie's political post. Originally I asked her to post through the recall. Now that it is over she is taking a break but may post again. She wanted me to tell you that she truly believes that the grass roots movement is stronger than ever before. There is more to come.

And you've probably noticed that I am posting less too. I just have so many fonts to make and that is where my head is at now. I am going to be posting little interesting things on my Facebook business page more often. But will try to post at least weekly here. If you want to follow me on Facebook you can go to the Facebook link on the right. Go to my page and LIKE it. It will then show up in your Facebook feed.

Have a great Summer!

gone fishing...

well, not really. But I am taking a week off from blogging to do other stuff. Finish up Lake Vacation Doodles. Paint a door. Learn Aperture. Work on a new homepage... So see you next Monday. Have a great week.

PS... The boat illustration is from the upcoming Lake Vacation Doodles. And the W is from my Drop Cap One font just in case anyone was wondering.

People...

i hate it that i have a messy desk...

If a cluttered desk signs a cluttered mind, Of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?Albert Einstein.

I hate it that I have a messy desk, I have always had a messy desk. I want a tidy desk, I crave a tidy desk but for some reason I rarely manage it. This picture may be the cleanest my desk has ever been.

Here is an interesting article by Jennifer Williamson...

It takes time to organize. Some experts have suggested that the time it takes you to organize your desk can be more productively spent doing your job-and that organization doesn't save you a large amount of time to begin with. Disorganized people often claim that they know where everything is, and this is often true-and if you're well organized but the paper you need is across the office in your filing cabinet, it may take you just as long to get your hands on it as it would if it were under a pile on your desk.

Everything's in front of you. People with messy desks may actually be less prone to procrastination. That's because your papers are all in front of you, not filed away in a filing cabinet where they'll be easy to forget. Your desk may be messy, but at least you can see at a glance what needs to get done.

Searching through the piles helps you make connections. When you have to go digging through your papers to find something on a messy desk, you can dig up all sorts of things-projects you've been putting off, old ideas you've been thinking about, and even other projects and information that fit with what you're working on now. If your desk were organized, your projects would never "mix" like this-and you may miss out on some important connections.

Organization is a form of procrastination. You can spend hours every day organizing things instead of getting real work done. With a messy desk, you naturally organize your work in a way that reflects how your mind works. When your desk is messy, you may actually be more efficient and effective than if you're organized.

Creative thinkers are messy. Creative thinkers tend to have messy desks. In January 2006, a study of hundreds of CEO's indicated that the highest scorers in innovation and risk-taking scored lowest on organizational and neatness skills. Creative people organize their desks intuitively to correspond with the way their minds organize information, and studies suggest that people with messy desks have great career potential.

I do agree with Jennifer... but I still want a clean desk. It's probably never going to happen.

chautauqua & graphoanalysis...

now there are 2 interesting words... The delightful blog Each Little World had a post about Chautauqua and referred to it as a Summer learning program. But that got me thinking about 'chautauqua' which I had just assumed living in Wisconsin was an Indian word. It still sounds like one to me, but I like the idea of a Summer learning program. Except that I am generally too busy in Summer to take on a learning program.

And since we are now looking at the long hard Winter months I decided I will have a Winter learning program. I plan to learn the 8 Basic Steps to Graphonanalysis. My sweet friend Chris put this little packet together for me so I can learn this. She sent me this in Summer and I have been hoarding it until now. Handwriting analysis has always interested me. I've had someone analysis my handwriting once and it was oddly accurate. It seems like a fun thing to spend some time on.

Winter freaks me out a little even though I have lived through many. It just gets long and hard and dark and I am trying for some new habits and bits of planned fun.

So how do the rest of you who live in the great, white North get by? What are your favorite Winter things? Plz share.

the sewing machine project...

My neighbor and graphic artist friend Lois is on the board for this organization. I think this is an amazing project. The Sewing Machine Project is five years old and it was started to help tsunami victims in Southeast Asia. It has delivered almost 1,000 sewing machines within the United States and to five other countries--most recently, Haiti. They have replaced machines lost to hurricanes and tsunamis. And have also helped women start sewing collectives to become self-sustaining.

They have created a line of bags out of recycled sails under the SeaHope name, and are selling them to raise funds to help those affected by the oil spill in the US Gulf. They are now collaborating with an organization that refurbishes women's shelters and planning to put sewing areas into these shelters.

They accept sewing machines, fabric and notions, and cash. $30 will ship a sewing machine somewhere and I just donated using PayPal.

I cannot imagine being without a sewing machine, this holiday season it would be nice to help those who need one.

thank god i make fonts for a living...

SAMPLE INTERVIEW QUESTIONS: Questions for job applicants at tech companies:

• Apple electrical engineer: "Approximately how many garbage men are there in California?"
• Facebook senior software engineer: "Given an array of integers, find the maximum number that can be reached by summing the best possible consecutive subsequence of the array."
• Yahoo senior product manager: "Estimate the volume of water on the Earth."
• Hewlett-Packard software engineer: "Describe an orange."
• Microsoft senior engineer: "Find the anagrams in a dictionary."- (c) 2010, San Jose Mercury News (San Jose, Calif.).

OK the only one I have a shot at is describing an orange. If job hunting isn't awful enough I cannot imagine being asked these questions... You can read the whole article here.

i can't eat off colored plates...

That is not quite true... I can eat off some colored plates depending on the color of plate and the color of the food. But I don't want to and I think about the weird color/pattern combination the entire time.

I was once in a store with my friend Barb and she showed me a plate she though I would like. I remember saying I could not eat off oddly colored or large patterned plates. She paused and said that it must be a lot of work being me. And you know some days it is.

John has said that while some people have perfect pitch I have perfect color. And I have to say that it is nice that he works with my idiosyncrasies.

Most of our plates are white, we have a blue square set and some jadeite divided ones. Now John likes divided plates so his food does not touch and he likes to eat his food one thing at a time.

I have some lime plates that I am going to use to put pots of plants on. Try eating sliced tomatoes or a plate of spaghetti off of those. The red of the tomatoes and the green of the plates gives a brownish cast to the food. Ick.

OK I can see your blank stares as you read this. It is funny how some things bother some of us so much while other people don't see them at all... I guess if we as a couple were plates we would be white divided ones... oh well. And yes I have been told that I think too much.