Alright already.......this one is for Miya....

Here's the freaking cat! Happy? Actually, I had planned to blog about the little stinker today anyway...

I literally let the cat out of the bag yesterday anyway when I stated that I had a kitten sleeping with me so I figure its time the world got to see the new "man" in my life. His name is Jasper and he's firmly established himself as the rightful dominant male of the household, however, as our household consists of myself, Annie and the dog and we're all chicks essentially guaranteed Jasper the male vote anyway. He came home Saturday night and its amazing how quickly you get used to having a cat in bed with you again. Everytime I go to roll over or move I wake up fully and have to see where the cat is before I do....seriously, he's so tiny he's about the size of a coffee mug right now...I'd hate to squash him! Luckily he'll grow fast so it won't be an issue. He's already able to climb up and jump down off of my bed without assistance and this morning proved he was more than capable of climbing Mt. Mommy as I was blow drying my hair.

Life has changed a bit....I had to buy a pet gate to keep the dog out of my room and out of Jasper's food. Cutting a cat sized hole in it last night was interesting, but rewarding, as my idea seems to have worked. Jasper can come and go as he pleases, the dog is stuck on the other side of the gate (and not only out of Jasper's food but my waste basket as well)yet she can still look through the gate and see what the cat is up to.

I know I said I would never have a cat again after Basil but its funny how quickly something new to worry over and care for can take that old pain and turn it into love. Yes Jasper is a commitment...I could easily pass 50 and still have him around (man, am I really that old?) but he's such a sweet thing that I really don't mind (yes you all heard right--for those of you who knew Basil...Jasper is the complete opposite, he loves everyone!)

Sorry to all about the quality of the pic....Miya, once I get a better one I will email it to you, he rarely holds still long enough for me to get a good shot...I have plenty of closeups of his nose though as he keeps zipping in to sniff the camera.

Happiness is being owned by a cat? Nah, happiness is having the cat for your friend.

stand back boys...she's toxic!

Perhaps not bad enough for a gas mask but after I modified like a bajillion (okay 1000) switches over the last few days my hands were fairly well coated with silicone caulking. Silly me didn't want to show up at Outback's last night for dinner with Jase so I used some goop remover and scrubbed myself free of the caulk....only to rub in the overwhelming smell of citrus based acetone. Besides stinking to high heaven my hands were practically white from the dry skin I'd just given myself...so I grabbed the only hand lotion I had in the car which was a verrrrrrrrrry pungeant mandarin orange from bath and body works (in my defense the lotion was a gift and is not something I would have purchased for myself). Needless to say, boy I was quite citrus-y last night! Not only was Jase kind enough to refrain from commenting, he managed to eat and keep down his burger. As for me, I had a serious case of queasiness by the time I got home. Several handwashings later didn't remove one bit of that stink but somehow the kitten slept with me anyway. Got up this morning and, while I can still smell a few hints of acetone, the lime verbina lotion I have at work seems to have fairly well masked it!
Lesson for the day girls: acetone might be good and well to use removing nail polish (in small doses of course) but NEVER use it for any other purpose on your body! Not unless you intentionally want to clear a room (and your head cold!)

what's found is new again.....

Not always really, but for me this is oh so true. I open a box of items that have been packed away for awhile and not only am I amazed at just where and when did I acquire all this cool stuff, I also stand in awe of what good taste I have! (Not that anyone else would really agree but I always pick out the thing that I will just love...seriously, consult me if you're going to buy me anything and I guarantee I'll love what I pick out!)

This time the old isn't necessarily new, but I love it when I forget I own something and then stumble upon it. Case in point: I grabbed a cd binder on my way to work yesterday because I knew I was in for a long day on my feet in the warehouse modifying security switches for a rush order. No idea what was in the thing, in fact I had no idea when I last used that particular binder. Imagine my astonishment of getting to work, opening it up and finding my "Elizabethtown" vols 1 and 2 soundtracks. I LOVE those disks! I promptly put them in and, while they weren't the rock I'd planned to keep myself going, they were exactly what I needed because the soothingly mellow tunes kind of drop you into some sort of zen state where you can handle whatever comes your way. Ok, ok....maybe its not quite that melodramatic, but dang I missed those disks.......even though I didn't remember it until just yesterday!

Camera Charger....

Found it! After completely cleaning my room Wednesday night I was frustrated to not find my camera charger anywhere...seriously, I was going nuts with having a dead camera battery! Woke up Thursday morning and, on a whim, opened my desk drawer and THERE IT WAS! Sad thing is I had checked there twice before so either I need new glasses or there is a mischeiveous little fairy flitting about hiding my stuff! My vote is on the fairy.....

Darn Fairies!

From one end of the spectrum to another....

For anyone who hasn't read the other side of this blog you might want to check it out as a contrast to how something can seem negative to one and positive to another.

Yes, Jason and I went to Sundance. Yes, Jason was a tad bit....unprepared... I, on the other hand have discovered something completely wonderful: I knew what this woman wanted. I understood the "Greek" that was flowing from her lips and was able to interpret clearly to Jase after our "meeting" so he understood what was expected of him the next time he decided to take a trip back up the mountain. It is amazing to see something that I was already putting into action in my life verified! (As some of you may know I am opening a shop on Etsy next month and have been buying small items here and there from various sellers to see how they package their product, the quality of said products, etc etc so I will be prepared for when my small shop opens. I plan to know what my product will sell for, have my packaging figured out, my product line ready to go and my marketing tools in place before I even sign up for a shop.) It is called market research (though the girlie side of me just looks at it as justification for buying some cute stuff!)

Jason walked away from that meeting totally confused (understandable...she threw a lot of info at him really fast) and a bit bummed. It wasn't his work he was critiquing....just his lack of preparation (anyone else hear Scar in the background warbling out "Be Prepared"? No? Just me then....) It all comes down to what you want to focus on, doesn't it? Here Jason walked away feeling like an idiot (his words, not mine!) and with a "what's the use" attitude when really this woman was telling him she liked what she saw.

How many of us do not REALLY listen to the creative criticism around us? I know I am guilty of this. All we hear is the negative and not take into consideration the good advice that comes with it! Case in point: my design class. The teacher flat out told me I had no understanding of color and that I need to start looking at what inspires me and start thinking about why I respond to certain images, colors, words. He was right. My final assignment in that class was that Alaskan travel brochure that I mentioned a few blogs back. I threw myself into that assignment, I thought about my color choices, wording, images. I thought of my target audience and went forward. Some things didn't fit and I had to scrap a few ideas along the way. After my teacher's comments I was hesitant to send him this assignment, thinking that even though I liked what I saw that he would point out yet another reason I had no business in design (NOTE--THE INSTRUCTOR NEVER SAID THAT...THAT WAS MY INTERPRETATION FROM HIS CREATIVE CRITICISM!) To my shock I found out Tuesday that my instructor loved the work. In his words "Very good". Coming from this instructor this is high praise indeed. His assistant (who is teaching my illustrator class) was standing nearby and listened to this instructor as he went through my assingment, finding no fault along the way. The assistant leaned over after my old instructor walked off and asked if I knew what "Very good" really meant. I shook my head no. The assistant smiled and quietly said, "It means it could be taken to the client exactly how it is right now and be published". You could have knocked me over with a feather. Seriously. I was on a cloud for the rest of the night over that one. Not just the praise...but I suddenly realized that I COULD BE A GRAPHIC DESIGNER! I can honestly accomplish this. I can take that negative little voice in the back of my head that says "see, you're no good, why do you even bother" and flush that sucker down the drain. Open up some mental windows and let the sun in!

Preparation is a wonderful thing....but cutting yourself some slack, realizing your human and (therefore) make mistakes can help keep you from being your own worst critic. Jason and I both have wonderful opportunities in front of ourselves if we just(as he so perfectly put it) do our homework.

Brothers can be wonderful things sometimes....

Okay, okay...I put this blog off because I wanted to find the perfect picture to go with it, and then I slaved removing the watermark from said perfect picture only to now have the system say the pic is saved improperly and to try again! Enough already...on to the blog!

Brothers. Those annoying creatures that pull our hair, tease us unmercifully (boy they discover quick just which ones of us are extremely gullible!), they snitch on us to mom and somehow always manage to beat us to the best toys in the box. They will make your life unbearable if they find out you have a crush, refuse to set you up with their friends and be your worst nightmare when your dad pulls out that famous "why can't you be like your brother" line.

Brothers. As adults it doesn't seem much better...there is still competition. There is still teasing and they still refuse to set you up with their friends, but now there is something else in the mix: compassion, caring, concern.... case in point: Valentines Day. Not the best of times for single chicks, especially ones that haven't seen a date in so long that they aren't sure they'd recognise one if it walked up to them, chucked them over a shoulder and fireman carried them out the door!

This year I planned to go to the Smiths and watch movies with the girls while Tom and Cynthia went to dinner. No frills, no nothing, but then I wasn't going to sit home crying my eyes out over it. Lo and behold the day before V-Day I get a phone call from Jase who asked if I wanted to come over tomorrow because he made some great tortellini soup and wanted to share. Me, clueless, said "oh, I am going to the Smiths to watch movies with the girls". Silence. Jase, "look, I'm just going to drop the subtufuge here...I am trying to find out if you're going to be home so I can take you out to dinner". Wow.....I really am dumb. I got a lot of guilt for breaking up my "non-date" at the Smiths but agreed to go out with Jase the next night.

V-Day. Outback Steakhouse. We drive in separate cars because they are not taking reservations and we figure the faster we can get there the sooner we can get a table. So I pull up, walk up to the building and out comes my brother with a freaking huge bouquet of flowers in every color of the rainbow. (Note: its a week later and those things are still looking gorgeous in a vase at home!) There is about a 2-hour wait so we wander through the nearby shops (Pier One, Comp USA, Barnes and Noble) just to kill time. Finally its time for us to go in and we sit down to a great dinner with Jase's friend Melanie (also single) and her teenage son, Ian. Good food (I had the prime rib), lots of laughs and here I am thinking I am paying for my part of the dinner. Bill comes, Jason takes it and pays for everyone's dinner (Jase I shudder to think what you spent that night!) Melanie and Ian head home (they had stuff to do according to Melanie) but I drove to Jase's and we watched this week's episode of Lost and then a few Tivo'd episodes of American Idol before I finally dragged myself out the door and for home, flowers firmly in one hand, a container of delicious tortellini soup in the other. Home, bed, sleep...the end to a very nice evening.

Don't get me wrong here....I could have had fun hanging with the Smith girls but sometimes a girl needs to get out and have some fun, and know that someone loves her and is coverned that she not be forgotten.

Brothers. Pests? Not always.....sometimes they can be the most caring and understanding people you know.

Update

Still haven't charged my camera battery...can't find the charger! You know that when you absolutely can't find something that it is time to finally clean up that pile of papers, etc you have tossed on the floor. Only ended up working a half day yesterday so I ran a few errands, grabbed a nummy taco salad at Carl's Jr, took it home and grabbed the latest Fannie Flagg book I nabbed from the library's sale table. Four hours later I looked up, realised the roomie was going to be home soon so I started getting stuff ready for dinner (grilled pork chops, yellow peppers, onions and pineapple chunks on rice). Finally got around to putting that window film up (I bought it about 3 weeks ago!) so I can have my blinds open and yakked at Lucie about college for a few hours.

Woke up this morning to delicious sunlight streaming in my windows (boy have I missed that!) and came in to work. School starts again tonight (Design 103 and Psych 101 this time around) and I am looking forward to that. Think I may ask about working a half day on Friday or just taking the whole thing off so I can unpack those final craft boxes I have in the storage unit. I have a color wheel and a color composite template in there somewhere that I need for my classes so I have GOT to get those boxes pulled out by sometime this weekend.

Over the weekend I finished my final project for my In Design class...a travel brochure for Alaska and I am thrilled with how it turned out. I haven't heard anything back yet from my instructor though so I wonder how he took it. Regardless though I finally felt like I created something that made sense. There was a reason for my color choices, for the page layout. My instructor had mentioned earlier that, even though he knew it was my first class, that I needed to start looking at what inspired/interested/spoke to me and start collecting publications that helped with that since I really had no idea what I was doing with color. He was definately right. It was wonderful to have everything just pop into place this time (talk about relief and feeling like you've had a major breakthrough!)

p.s.

The new ID pic is temporary....I just got tired of the black and white one so I snapped a quick photog to shove on here. I will take a better one later....Happy Presidents Day everyone!

Not a complete waste of my time....

Here is one of the pics I snagged up Hobble Creek Canyon Saturday....its the one that had me up to my knees in snow so I am happy that it turned out. I must admit though that this building had a lot more *pop* to it when I saw it in the fall surrounded by autumn colors. I am going to try and get some more of it in the spring and in the fall just because I love this building! So yeah, I did have some shots come out....still need to zip out there for more...but on the whole very happy with the stuff I've taken lately.

Oh...and I found a fifty cent piece where I parked my car that wasn't mine...how lucky is that?!

Wouldn't you know it...

I get all the way up to a cool site up Hobble Creek canyon only to find out I hadn't charged my camera battery since I took it to Vegas. No idea what shots actually turned out but I waded knee deep through snow (in my tennis shoes!) to get some shots of the partially frozen creek. I have to come out again next weekend because there was a couple of shots I would have loved to take but the battery was completely gone before I realized the best shots were further in...... no worries, I am sure I managed a few great shots before the camera insisted "no more"!

Having taste sucks.....

Its hard to admit that some of the pictures I considered for posting on my Deviant account now seem blah to me. Here I had a nice little file folder of images sitting here, waiting for the daily lottery to say that it was their time to shine, and now I go in there, scroll around, and leave wondering why I thought that shot deserved to be seen by the world at large. Guess I need to get out there and get shooting...think I will try zipping up the Hobble Creek Canyon when I head out to Springville tomorrow and see what happens. I wish spring would hurry up and get here already, there are many shots I have been planning to take, I just don't want them blanketed in snow!

Miya, don't bother reading.....

For everyone else....here's the first trailer available for Indiana Jones 4!

Boy did I ask for it.....

I just HAD to go and use the "S" word yesterday....winter retaliated by dropping 2" of snow on my car this morning! But I had the last laugh....I got a couple more interesting winter pics to add to my portfolio! Take THAT winter!

Deviantart delay...

Hey everyone!
I have really enjoyed my personal goal of loading 2 pics onto Deviantart monday through friday (when I have internet access!)I really missed my uploads while I was away at the trade show! This goal has really made me not only focus on what I am posting, but has also forced me to stop being lazy and get out there and take some pictures so I don't run out of material to upload! Today, however, there may be a delay since Deviant is having issues with their category field...unfortunately you can't post a picture without that little option...don't worry, I will keep popping in throughout the day to check its status. If anything I will upload tomorrow I guess. Until then, here's one of the images that I was going to post this morning, I hope you enjoy it. Unless we get more snow this will probably be my last winter shot of the year, especially seeing as how by the weekend we're supposed to have a high of 50 degrees....do I dare ask if its finally spring? Now to get moving on my Etsy project...yes the March deadline still stands (note I don't say when in March though!)
Have a wonderful day everyone,
love,
Shawna

Annual Postage Increase????

Yes kids, its true, the US Postal Service is increasing our rate from .41 to .42 starting May 12th.....one year after its last increase. According to this news website the post office will now be increasing the price of stamps every May. Time to stock up on those "Forever" stamps!

Bed, Bath and Beyond.....

Someday there will be a plaque on the wall stating "Shawna Slept Here"...though goodness only knows why they'd want to broadcast it...yes, that's the kitty I bought who pretty much spent most of the night on the floor Here's the bath that was absolutely huge-mungous! I've never had a bathtub deep enough to be completely submerged....it was sheer heaven! And last but not least, here's the "beyond" (otherwise known as the living room/office/dining space) This room really was amazing but I was right....my mattress may be old and not-so-comfy (I woke up with a kink in the neck Sunday morning) but there really is no place like home!

Update for Feb 7, 2008.....

Uh...better make that Feb 8th 'cause the time just rolled over. I am here in my room at The Venetian in Vegas and I must say....this time around the trip was much nicer. Sad to say, but having along the right person certainly helps! That is not to say that I am not exhausted (cause I am), that my feet don't hurt (cause they really do) or that I like Vegas (cause I still find it depressing as hell) but Dan is very entertaining. He knows where the fun stuff is and isn't afraid to pull out the truck from valet parking and take us there. I will post pics of my suite probably on Monday but, suffice it to say, this room is pretty much as big as the duplex I live in (its a small duplex...what can I say?) Honestly, the bathroom in this room is bigger than my bedroom at home! You walk in and there are french doors leading to the bathroom suite, then there is the king sized bedroom area and then you go down two steps and into a living room with an L shaped couch, "dinner table", and desk set. I seriously need to look at what the mattress is because I am in love...last night was the best sleep I've had in a long time and girl wants to have a mattress of her own!!!! The Venetian is beautiful...vaulted ceilings with "painted" scenes, heck there are renaissance images all over the ceiling of the carport where you enter the hotel! Of course, like every other casino you walk a couple of miles through and around the slot machines, crap tables and the like to get to the convention center so by the time you get there you are already tired...then you get to stand for hours at the show! Note to self...next time buy some gel liners for the shoes! Anyway, as I have already told a few of you, I will be home around 2 in the morning on Saturday (we're hitting the road after the trade show ends...Dan thinks we'll be pulling out of Vegas somewhere around 6 p.m. As uncomfy as it may be, I really am looking forward to sleeping in my own bed. This room is so freaking huge that its easy to feel a little lost. Kid all you want but last night I bought a stuffed cat at the New York New York casino gift shop (we'd gone over there to meet a vendor who took us out to dinner at the MGM Rainforest Cafe...not exactly a quiet and peaceful place to eat but good food!) anyway, we were walking back through the New York New York when Dan decided to look in a gift store for something to take home and I spotted this calico stuffed cat. I walked away several times but kept coming back until I finally just took it up to the register. Dan has already given me crap about it...but it makes the room feel a little more home-y. Guess I am just not cut out for the swank-o high rolling lifestyle......

Saw vs. Wallace and Gromit

Funny thing I found on You-Tube....click here and prepare to laugh