SCRIPT—Irene: Preventing a Misunderstood and Unnecessary Revenge.

I just packed up H.H. in a garbage bag and put him in the closet. Right now I'm typing on his predecessor, Calvin Coolidge. Usually in situations like this I wouldn't worry about H.H. However, since last year's snow storm I've had this little brown water stain on my ceiling right above my desk. I'll be damned if Irene is claiming Herbert. I can see this little senario playing out:

ROUGHLY 3 AM.

CAMERA OPENS ON SARAH SLEEPING SOUNDLY IN BED. SUDDENLY THERE IS A LOUD CRASH FOLLOWED BY THE SOUND OF DRIPPING WATER. SARAH SHOOTS UP AND LOOKS BEHIND HER. RECOGNITION TWISTS ONTO HER SLEEPY FACE.

SARAH:

Irene, Irene, Irene, I-rene! I'm begging of you please don't take take my man!

VOICEOVER IRENE:

Ha ha silly little girl! You thought you were immune to 

Irene's wrath simply because you are in Zone C?

SARAH:

Irene, Irene, Irene, I-rene! Please don't take him even though you can!

VO IRENE:

Stop singing Dolly Parton at me, it only makes me angrier! 

SARAH:

It was actually in the style of the White Stripes, but sure.

[Skip beat]

Major Bloomberg said I would be safe in Zone C and 

should only worry if you were a Cat 3 or 4!

VO IRENE:

That little turtle? You listen to him? Don't you remember last year's Christmas snow storm? 

My brother Kevin forced you to stay in Houston for an extra 3 days...

SARAH:

Tell Kevin I said 'thanks' for that actually. I got a few extra days with the fam and...

VO IRENE:

... and then you sat in at Bush Intercontinental for another five hours after that? 

Had you learned your lesson?

SARAH:

[audible gasp]

VO IRENE:

NO YOU HAD NOT! 

And it was I who further trapped you in the airplane once you got to Newark! I personally held back the little cart thingie that connects the jet-way to the aiplane door! 

[evil laugh]

SARAH:

Wait, you have a brother named Kevin? Does he take form in snow or wind? Is it just the over all precipitation that makes you related?How exactly do you... Seems a bit odd...

VO IRENE:

Silence you little turd monkey! Your insolence is only further proof you laugh in the face of my mother, Nature. You follow your turtle mayor's advice dispite my warning. LO! I claim your only prized possession. H.H. as you call him is now mine!

SARAH:

Nooo!

SARAH THRASHES MADLY IN HER BED SHEETS IN A DESPERATE ATTEMPT TO REACH FOR H.H.

PAN TO H.H. FALLING OFF THE IKEA DESK AND ONTO THE SOAKING WET FLOOR. MORE WATER FALLS FROM A HOLE IN THE CEILING ONLY FALLING ON H.H. 

SARAH SOBS INTO HER TWISTED SHEETS AS THE EVIL LAUGH FADE INTO CAMERA BLACK.

END.

Well we can't have that now can we? I'm not sure how you set up a script as I've never written one, don't worry I don't care if it's right or not. 

So yea, to prevent Irene taking my man he's wrapped in a garbage bag and hidden safely in the closet.

Shhhh. It's a secret from looters too.

How Do I...

How do I explain this properly? I want to keep this blog on the professional development level. I don't think its any secret however that I've been exploring other areas within my personal life that are supposed to keep me happy. Sure, my job is a big part of my life—HUGE actually for someone who has no children and no partner. Which of course brings me to my second highest obsession: being single.

Ah yes, it's painfully true, I am without a better half. A partner. A ball and chain. A best friend of the opposite sex I let poke me. I honest to God think my chance at total crazy bliss has already passed—but that's another story for another day. But I do believe that I can find someone who will make happy. At least someone to spend a Sunday evening with. Do you know how hard it is to eat an entire rack of lamb by oneself? Neither do I as I've never had anyone to share a rack of lamb with. My needs are rather simple. You don't need to rock my world, but you do need to be a competent adult who: likes me, has a job, isn't dependent on illegal substance(s), and likes lamb. Let's dream big people!

So you can imagine my surprise when I joined Match.com. Ok now first of all, I know a lot of people who have met their mates on-line. I have attended a few on-line weddings, hell I was the signed witness at one of the best (Yazzersize!). In the past I just didn't think that was going to happen for me. But then again I had never really tried all that hard. At my birthday I realized I was the only single person in attendance. This usually wouldn't bother me, I've been single since college really. But I'm so much happier now that I thought...I thought I deserved to try again. I think that since I actually like myself and my postion here, I deserve to find someone to share all that roasted meat with. Plus another friend of mine but it perfectly, "You go to the gym 4 times a week to make sure your body stays the way you want it. Can't you go on one or two dates a week for the same idea?"

Yes. Yes I can. Practice was in order. Even if I didn't meet anyone I wanted to spend a whole lot of time with, it was clear that on-line dating would at least provide me with some practice. If I met someone to hang out with a few times, awesomesauce. If I just got to see a few new people, also awesome.

But now we're about a week in and well... No, no I can't! Tonight has been the most depressing (or hilarious depending on your opinion) date of them all. I present in all truthfulness and all reality: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Sweet Dee Dates a Retarded Person—Real Life Edition.

Now before you get on me with this remember I did not name this episode of Sunny. I did not star in it, write it, or even conceive its idea. But I did live it. I lived it so effing hard core I have to point it out. I don't know if it's just meta or if it's fate or just another reason I should be seeking out my Charlie companion. Either way I had no idea what the shit just happened. But I do know you do not spend an entire date talking about yourself, wearing a backpack and sweatshirt in the middle of August. I know that's not a lot to go on but I'm desperately trying not to be mean. The only "proof" I have of this terrible date was the look on the bartender's face when we ordered. He gave me the biggest glass of wine I've never seen with the words, "Here ya go honey, you're going to need this." Indeed Mr. Barman. Indeed.

This was the look on my face from 6:30— approx 7:00 PM 

PS if there's a significant amount of misspelled words or overall lack of coherence with this entry I apologize. It's just the wine I've continued drinking since said date, for shizzle. 'Lil Kevin—OUT.

Bulletin Board

I figured out what H.H. needs! An inspirational bulletin board. I just received a whole lot of great cards in the mail, a baby announcement, a rehearsal diner invitation and of course the wedding invite itself. How cute would those look pinned up across from me now? Very.

I like this whole improving myself business. Check out my new lamp:

Sepia tone not included.

I'm not 100% sure that shade is on right side up. The label indicated it should rest a top the base as shown, and it's a bit wobbly if placed on the bulb "up side down". But doesn't that look backwards? Whatever I'll just try not to squint at it too hard.

Ok time to drink and wink.
-Improvements!

The weirdest tech problems!

Today was the weirdest day for tech problems, both professionally and personally. Currently I'm fighting with a service that claims I'm allowed to upload photos. It's been a battle of me viciously clicking the "Upload Photos" icon and its button just a-sitting there. So here's a great blog break to complain about today's other unfortunate mishaps.


First up, iMovie. Now don't get me wrong, I passionately hate this product and anything related to it.* But we use it at work to make book trailers on the cheap. It's easy enough to use, but has crazy limitations. Fortunately for us designers, we're really good Googlers and can usually find tricks around it. Can't make a girl fly through the air with the greatest of ease? No worries, tween her coming in and out of frame in Flash, but export at 12 fps as a Quick time to avoid banding issues, then import into iMovie and speed up by 200%. Bam! Flying chick. Only today no dice.


iMovie will not accept changes to a file that you've already placed inside it. I have a picture called girl_1.png but she's too big. I must rename her something other then girl_1.png after I make her smaller. Today iMove said No way Jose! to girl_2.png. After a lot of iMovie bashing, aloud and physically, flying_girl1.png did the trick just fine. Yarg! Anyway, our lady of flight is safely ascending to places otherworldly. This will be a super great book trailer with a lot of sweet flying action. (youtube link TK)


Next up on my journey of "huh?" Indesign stopped allowing the use of the hand tool. This is beyond annoying! Does this happen to anyone else? I can sit there and press the 'A' button all I want, but I am not getting that white arrow. Jerks! Reset.


Now there were other problems today too, but I can't remember how I got my Twitter feed to finally publish to this blog. Now I just have to use Twitter for this small victory to even matter. For anyone who wonders, yes that is a celestial portrait of me done by my friend Becky in which I'm holding a roll of "Awesome Paper Towels" I found at the Red Hook Fairway. No tech problems there, just pure awesome sauce.


*For example, when I went to paste this link here, I noticed that the word "Firelight" within this booktrailer is no longer italicized. Why jerk iMovie, why!? I hope no one catches it—ha! a girl can dream. Ok inevitable more tech problems to explain / blame tomorrow. 

T.C.B.

Taking Care of Business and working over time, work out. 

This seems to be my overall running theme for this summer, and so far I'm still into it. I made a promise to myself at the beginning of the summer to change a few bits about my life. I've given myself a year to reach these goals, otherwise I'm a-scadattleing out of NYC. It's great here, don't get me wrong. And trust me, my past self would have slapped my current self for such blasphemies such as: New York City is just too damned expensive. New York City is just too damned rude. New York City is just too damned dirty. New York City is just too damned annoying.

My past self would have said, Bitch you're just too damned old! Ah, birthdays. But I digress...

I've identified two underlying causes for such negative (and perhaps temporary) 'tudes. First up, New York City is expensive, rude, and dirty because I live within one of its many (safe) armpits. Now I love a Superfund Site as much as next tree hugging-Trader Joe's going-illegal loft resident. But I'm none of those things, so why the crap am I living under a bridge near the Brooklyn Shipyard & Gowanus Canal? You know someone once told me it has gonorrhea. People canoe through there too, gross. Anyway, it's pretty cheap to live near a river of poo* but after a few years, I think it's time to move on. But I gots to get the money if I wants to get the deluxe apartment in the sky. Enter new online portfolio.

Secondly, and even more embarrassing then living near the last known longshoreman sign up sheet (j'k that's cool as all fuck and you know it!) New York City is too damned rude because sometimes it's just me living in it. There's no one to save me from the unidentified serial rapists, F-train master-baters (most likely unrelated) or to just hold Ikea's impossibly heavy Expidit shelves as I slowly turn an allen wrench (shout out to K-Sharp!). With the exception of a few beautiful friends who have always fended off possible bed intruders or helped me climb up three stories while struggling with 150 lbs of DIY MDF, it's kinda just me. And frankly that kinda sucks. Enter new online portfolio.

Anyway, what's the point of this post? I suppose to reaffirm this goal, even though I'm only a few months in. But I think it's going well, I've made significant improvements on my online portfolio(s), watch out multi-state objects & cute boys of Brooklyn! Sorry glaussian blur and drinking an entire bottle of red by oneself—it's been real, but I think we should try to fix some of this.

*River of poo is actually quite far from my apartment, but I'm sure the local longshoreman know the best water route to view it.

Animals and Vampires

In the four years I've been working in children's publishing I've seen a lot of story trends come and quickly fade away. But some, for better or worse, stick around forever. My favorite trends are animal trends. Maybe it's my fondness for Charlotte's Web, Ribsy, Ralph S. Mouse and the awesome Stuart Little. Since working at Harper I've been able to watch my own younger cousins get into Warrior Cats and then fall out, only for their younger brothers and sister to pick it up—it makes my day! (Not to mention a huge part of my job.) And that makes me a happy employee and elder cousin. There's a lot of cool content in those books and lord knows I'm a sucker for an adventure series.

Unfortunately an all too real trend and epidemic will not go away. The unfortunate Supernatural-as-a-love-story trend. I'm ok with this in the sense that I don't care what anyone reads, as long as it's happening. But I do care in the sense that after a while non scary vampires and stuff is boring. So this little ditty from overheard really made me giggle:

I can almost guarantee The Velveteen Rabid Rabbit is in the works. Or maybe The Velveteen Rabbit and Pet Cemetery. I don't know, whatever would go with Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Which reminds me—I have to read that still!

Always listen to your certified Mac genius...

That's right sister! Because if you don't you could end up ass deep in unusable cables, frustration, and crates of empty wine bottles—whose contents were only consumed to ease said frustration. It's a wheel of constant sorrow. Cue the Soggy Bottom Boys!

When I bought H.H. from J she told me to use Set Up Assistant as soon as I got my new bundle of joy. I quickly dismissed this advice as soon as the Welcome video ended. I was too excited!
(As seen here) But I wasn't so concerned to skip over the transferring of important files (i.e. old pictures of my dog, drunken downloads of Ace of Base, etc.) because a co-worker* assured me I could use Migration Assistant at any time of my choosing. Oh how wrong he was!  

Needless to say, Tiger and Lion are not compatible much. At least Lion's Migration Assistant is super hating on Tiger. Oh how many updates must I run dear Lion?! And why can't I just un-install you and downgrade to Snow Leopard in order to use its clearly more effective assistant? Oh, you're an iOS or some shit. Whatever. No fear, I have my little USB man to get music, pictures and other essentials over. Stupid cats.

But in better "ta-da" news:

Could that be any funnier?

* co-worker is not a Mac certified anything.

A Short Rant & Some Color Swatches

PORTFOLIO UPDATE! I'm almost done with Interactive Documents on Lynda—tortoise and the hare much? Our IT guy actually called my boss to tell him that I'm the best Lynda student. That'd be flattering if it wasn't so very sad. But it does get me thiiiiis much close to building this thing-a-jigger(s).

Of course I haven't been able to transfer my files over to Herbert yet. Who'd think they'd make H.H leave his Nimbus 2000* behind for this Quidditch match? I know that the Firebolt** offers faster processing and transferring, but iBooks didn't come with a Firebolts Steve! Lord (Voldemort). It's ok because I'm "borrowing" my work Ethernet cable tonight—this shit is driving me nuts! But onto fun stuff...

HEX-a-mania y'all!

This first swatch is straight up stolen from http://www.colourlovers.com/ Ask me if I care. I don't! It's too lovely to not use. I think ded4b9 looks like paper and that would be awesome to incorporate my bookish feeling for my portfolio. I work in publishing—why fight it?

Brookyawn

Which brings us to our second adventure, this time in monochromatic-ania! I call this one newsprint. Gee, really thinking outside the box on that title Sarah. But it might be nice to off set the dazzling display of children's publishing with a basic LBP. (Little Black Palette)

Newsprint

Finally we really have to use our imaginations with Golden Opportunity (he!) but something about sunshine and bees just gets my goats a-going.

Golden Opportunity

Friends joke about my hyper design of shapes on shapes or patterns on patterns, but I love 'em. I'll probably cause seizures with anything other then a simple color palette. I'm into the monochromatic, clean design but I can't help it if it just feels boring. Anyway, this is just round 1 in a never ending color explosion of ideas.

...Monochromatic orange you say? Interesting. Bring on the epileptic fits!

* Firewire
**I keep forgetting to call it "Thuderbolt", and keep defaulting to "Firebolt" I feel this Harry Potter reference works.