Karma works

Back in spring I wrote on this blog about donating our used video game consoles and some games to a local after school community centre (their video game console had been stolen).  Since then, there's been some interesting things happen because of this.

Initially I went in and helped out a bit with some (attempted) redecorating in the centre and just chatting with the people who run it day to day.  Around mid-May I was contacted by someone who had passed my name on to the higher-ups in the community centre (they knew I was a graphic designer) and asked me to be involved in a summer activities calendar to be distributed to the schools here.  

The calendar was designed and done by the end of June and was received quite well (and I liked working on it because it was a fun change to do bright and colourful designs for kids!).  After that, I didn't hear anything back (and didn't expect to), until yesterday.

I had one of the women who was involved in the project call me up out of the blue to tell me that this calendar has been the topic of a few discussions with some key people in the community -- and that she'd like to ask if I would like to be involved with producing the calendar for the next THREE years.  (I said yes, of course!)

So I just thought it would be interesting to show how something that started out as a small deposit to our karma bank ended up being something much bigger!

4L of milk and a Christmas attack to go, please

We went out and grabbed some much needed groceries last night (it was a drag...literally, both of us just wanted to sleep). Cruising through the aisles, we couldn't help but notice the explosion of Christmas everything all over the place. Even in the meat department there were trees and gigantic Santas all over the place. Add this to the overwhelming amount of Christmas ads on tv and the radio...we feel like we've come back to Christmas-mania! (The worst part for me is a weird underlying panic to start writing lists and think about shopping -- augh!)  

At least the main purpose of going grocery shopping was accomplished. (I think we're having some European withdrawal -- lots of fresh pasta, gnocchi, polenta, lemons, limes...no gelato though *boo*.)

Wild Saturday nights

(The above title is a complete lie.)  I'm sitting in the office right now, loading my sparkly new macbook* with email account information and waiting for it to chug through it's 1's and 0's.  (Binary solo anyone? LOL)

It's been a busy day, lots of places to hit and I can't remember when we had so many errands to run in one day.  First we hit up Ben's birthday party around 9:30-ish (so many cute and funny things a 3 year old can say!) and then headed back across the river for eye appointments at 11:30am (which we were late for thanks to 3 ferry waits, but they squeezed us in...gritting their teeth I'm sure) -- oh! and eye appointments because we were due, and also thanks in part to Trevor's glasses breaking...AGAIN.  Stupid Flexon glasses with their stretchy metal bits -- what they don't tell you is they get to 2 years old and then snap at the corners...

Anywhoo, I digress.  Eye appointments were done (my eyes, perfecto except for a smidge of astigmatism, and Trevor's eyes improved for the second visit in a row, leaving the doctor almost speechless -- we made a joke that Trevor's been doing his own mock laser eye surgery with a flashlight and a magnifying glass...).  Next up was getting a pair of glasses that could be ready for Wednesday (as of Thursday we are out of here) and we headed to the Lenscrafters for that.  (Oh, and stopped by two banks...one to pick up some euros, hurrah!)

I can't remember the last time we went to the mall on a Saturday, but it was a zoo.  We spent a long time trying to find frames to fit Trevor's knobby head ('knobby' used with love there, LOL), placed our order and grabbed some lunch (I think it was 2:30pm by then).  After that it was over to get Trevor's hair cut -- which we had to come back after 4pm it was so busy -- so we went over to the Best Buy and bought the macbook (also, as a side note: they make you feel like you should have to pee in a cup just to buy a computer...questions and weird looks all because you know what you want...).  At that point the monsoonal rains came (it was crazy) and we ran to the car, drove back to the mall, ran into the mall (v. dramatic, with wind and rain lashing at us), picked up the glasses, ran back outside into the hurricane (again, drama!), drove back to the hair cutting place and I waited in the car while Trevor got all-man-groomed-up.

You'd think the day would be over at this point, oh no, we have more!  Since we're gone next week, we decided to vote in advance polls so we booted to a local high school and proceeded to have the most slow and PAINFUL voting process for me...not Trevor.  I'm never on the right list so I had to go through and get paperwork done, which wouldn't have been bad had it not been for some insanely slow man writing the form out (seriously...Trevor had been checked off the list, voted and come back and this guy had only managed to write my last name on the form).  It was crazy.  After about 15 minutes of slow form writing (which only needed my name, address and telephone number!!!) I voted and we got the hell out of there.  We grabbed a quick take-out pizza for dinner and came home and crashed around 5:40pm or so.  

Which brings us to the beginning of this post.  I'm now finished setting up email accounts, and my eyes feel like squares.  Time to go to bed.

(*I thought I could wait for either the new macbooks being released any day now, or better, no macbook at all, but this week has proved that I can't just get up and galavant away without having some connection to work, so guilt and fear took over.  Call it an expensive piece of mind.)

A fanny pack for your face

I came across this beauty on Etsy today.

Now that you're scratching your head (and pondering how you too, can have this textile marvel they call the 'nekk n brace'), let's take a look at it's description from the seller:

a lil bit nekkn a lil bit nbrace
Its a scarf. bandanna. with a pocket to hold your treasures. like a fanny pack for your face.
bold geometric pattern
choose your own adventure style. many different ways to wear the nekk'n brace.
great for ridding bikes and looking swass.
made from 100% salvaged materials

Neck brace. Check!
A scarf and bandana and pocket all in one? A scandanet? Check, check and check!
A fanny pack for my face. MY SEARCH IS OVER, check!
Bold geometrics, great for accentuating the face. Check!
Choose your own adventure (like the books!). Most definite check!
I can 'rid' my bike AND look 'swass' with it! Damn right check!

All this for just $40 (plus shipping of course) and you can be the coolest kid in your 'hood, right on time for back to school!
(Granny's old speckies, 10-speed and shirtlessness optional.)

Tooting my horn

Yesterday was luck and fate wrapped in a box and delivered to my desk. I was looking for places to stay in Barcelona online for our holiday and I stumbled upon a price drop for our cabin 'rating' on our cruise portion -- and called up my cruise agent, stat! The original price I found was still the same that we had paid before (bad memory for me), but by the time our agent called us back (around 6pm) the price had dropped $300 EACH and we managed to scoop that up!

Just to show how much these prices seem to jump up and down, I looked on the cruise line website before bed and it was back up $310. Crazy!

I'm almost speechless...

...but not quite. I stumbled upon the news of a Jamie Oliver video game this morning. (Yes, I had to re-read that sentence as well as it doesn't seem right.) Here's the premise behind it:

The game will include a series of real-time virtual challenges that involve real-life chopping, stirring, and plating; recipe cook-offs with other players; and a timed competition against the clock. All of this will take place in three-dimensional kitchen settings with measures of quality and taste.

The game will feature 100 original Jamie Oliver recipes such as Italian Tomato and Bread Salad, Pea and Goat Cheese Risotto and Mrs. Oliver’s Chocolate Pudding - all accompanied by real-life photographs by David Loftus who has worked on most of Jamie’s cookbooks, space for 100 of your own recipes, a shopping list mode, and competitive cooking game mode.

And here's some screen shots of the game if you're still having trouble wrapping your head around it:
Call me crazy (crazy), but I think I might stick with the Jamie Oliver cookbooks!

Hiatus?

I haven't been around for a few days due to work at the moment. It's dictating my life at the moment and tells me when I get to blog, eat, clean, sleep, if I get a weekend or not (not, for the most part). It's wearing and tiring dealing with hairy deadlines, crazy amounts of revisions, and printers halfway around the world (at the moment I'm waiting on an email from Australia before I can go to bed). Yesterday I thought my mind couldn't take in anymore information, it was too full of other people's details to bother with things that I had to do. Brain saturation, that's what I'll call it.

At this point, I don't really know when things are going to let up. They seem to just stack and back up, and now I'm starting to worry about our big vacation in October where I get to jump ship for a month (or if the ship I'm on will sink before then...lol, ponder that thought!). Thinking a few months ahead at this point is just nerve-wracking, so I'm trying to gently poke people into action to get things done in a timely* manner.

*Client speak for a polite term to get their asses in gear.

Due to all of the above (and imminent meltdowns in my brain) posting to the blog may be spotty for a while. I will, however, leave you with a small shred of evidence that I do (with permission) occasionally have a life outside my office:

I would go blind trying to make this

Frances Trombly has some serious patience. She hand-stitches replicas of her old receipts. Crazy...but very cool!
via Creativadoration and Designers' Block UK

Chairgate

My office chair arrived last Friday, on the porch in two boxes, after waiting almost two months for it. At the time, I didn't look closely enough and assumed that it was a box '1 of 2' and '2 of 2' situation. Upon closer inspection (and seeing that UPS has now changed me to a MAN -- 'Kenny' instead of 'Kerry') there were two chairs. At first I thought, 'bonus!' -- as compensation for all my waiting they have rewarded me with two! But I became more skeptical because you don't always get something for nothing, right?

So Trevor assembled up one chair and we left the other in the box sitting in the living room. I figured that UPS would eventually figure it out... Instead, I get a call from a random woman this morning talking about a delivery that might have accidentally come to our house. I called her back and left a message to be a little more detailed about what she was looking for as we have deliveries that come and go from here fairly regularly. Well, I can't say that I was surprised when she said it was a chair and managed to describe it (although her idea of the chair weighing 40-50 lbs is a tad inflated I think, the box really weighs 19 lbs).

I'm hoping there's going to be a happy ending to all of this because she's 'pissed!' (her own words). UPS has made no effort to contact me (how she got my address and phone number is a mystery) and they are supposed to come and pick it up sometime today and deliver it to one seriously steamed woman. Good thing I never unwrapped it! (Not that we have room to put it anywhere...)

Separated by a few decades...

Left: Our nephew Lucas. Right: Bill Murray in Caddyshack. Awesome.

Miracle Berry

This isn't anything new, but it's new to me. I read about the 'miracle berry' today that turns sour things sweet. You take one of the berries (that goes for $2-3 each!), put it in your mouth and chew and swirl it around and hold it in there for a minute. After that, you can go to town on trying all the sour things in sight and have them taste sweet.

Examples: Tabasco sauce tasting like hot doughnut glaze, lemons that taste like candy, vinegar tastes like apple juice, and oysters and lemon juice that can be chewed like gum.

The effect lasts for about an hour, and if you taste sweet things during this time it can almost be too much to handle. You can learn more about it here.

Ah, work

Yes, this could be an accurate depiction of my week. I've officially decided that the words 'long weekend' are synonymous with 'people who have bad planning that make it your problem and deadlines so tight they could strangle you'. Yes, I might be overly dramatic with that, but it feels that way. Every day closer to the long weekend has been torture this week -- perhaps there's a voodoo doll with my name on it in a public place? *sigh*

And today is just another day, filled with more surprises I'm sure. Wish me luck (and items on my desk luck as well -- they have become launching tools as of yesterday)...

Inflatable mouse

For those of you who have inflatable girlfriends/boyfriends and the oh-so-10-years-ago inflatable furniture, you can now put your hot air to good use with this inflatable mouse.

Make your iPod look meaty

I doubt this will catch on, but if you've always wanted your iPod to look like a small block of meat, this is for you.
• via tokyo times

Practical?

I found this on Costco's website. It's a backyard 'drive-in' projection screen. For those of you who live in the boonies (and like to park your car on the lawn), and don't have neighbours (or moths, mosquitos or other things attracted to skin or bright light), invite me over for a drive-in party. Until then, I'll stick to the warm, bug-less, car-less indoors.
(Imagine storing this behemoth too!)

Ehm...

I wonder how many barrels of Dippity Doo this took?

Is this what I've come to?

As overheard on a phone conversation with someone who doesn't know I have a blog:

"I think blogs are for people who are very lonely and have nothing else to do."

Guess who will never be invited to see my blog? hahaha!

Espionage

Here's the view from my purse at step class today. Looking up to the ceiling at the very odd garbage can placement. Did this pass inspection???

Shoes anyone?

I wore these to a meeting yesterday and walked 5 blocks in pain. Nice.
They're size 8.5, worn once (maybe twice, can't remember) -- just in case anyone wants dibs on them before I chuck them in the bag for the clothing donation place.

Shoes that do this are evil.

Busy time at the hive

I have a really bad habit of getting all nervy and disjointed when work seems to slow down. After getting rid of the 'bad boyfriend' client I thought there might be the sounds of crickets in my office. Not so. This week has been crazy busy with new projects and things are buzzing. And here's where I go into the panic mode of making sure I have enough time to get it done (and have everything organized). One of the more interesting projects is organizing a photo shoot that's going to be outdoors with office props. I'm already trying to fit my head around the logistics of that, not to mention how much time it's going to take to scout out sites to shoot. And questions like, 'do we need a stylist?', 'do these people know how to model?'. Whew. One step at a time there -- finding a photographer is going to be the first task.

I'm also going on a spy mission this morning at class. Every week I look up at the ceiling and see a pipe that has a strange beige rubbermaid garbage can bolted to the ceiling where the pipe goes up into the next floor. Even stranger knowing that the building is brand new, AND houses the Township departments (particularly that of the engineering and building inspection). I don't know how that passed inspection ('garbage can bolted to cement ceiling, that's to code -- check!'). So I'm going to sneak a photo of it to show Trevor as he's highly interested in what I'm talking about. lol.

I'll be back later with the evidence!