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Dude, what are you going to do? Jostle her neck and punch me for taking photos?




The guy without the bear suit charged and got clocked by the guy with the bear suit.




I only notice September was spelled wrong once I posted this photo to the internet. I had kept forgetting when what race was when so I took a photo.




Geometric.




It's like Friday night.

Creaming Method

Yeah, I use "Creaming Method" with the hope that something other than baking cums to mind.



They're better muffins than the last batch but they took three times as long to make. They did dome nicely.

They are good muffins. I think five are left.

...

It's 8PM and it's nearly 80 degrees.

...

I'll be working on Sunday for the 9to5 job. I would rather not but I need to see stuff. I've been making decisions blind and I need to stop pressing my luck; so I will go to see.

I've really got nothing to say. I just dropped by to brag about homemade muffins.

Winners Win But So Do Losers

The kid won. I should be happy. I was involved with a lot of what people saw.

It was good work but it came at a price.

Winning is better than losing, mostly.

It's been five days since the primary. I haven't spoken to anyone about it yet.

I read a quote of his in the paper. A quote he gave at his victory party. He said something like "It's a new organization, guided by some wise folks, but what really energized the campaign was the young people that got involved."

I checked his webpage every day after the win. It didn't get updated until three days later. I thought, "Too bad one of your young people couldn't find the energy to update the webpage."

I wonder if I could have guess correctly sober

I had more important things that I could have been doing but I hadn't been around for awhile so I dropped by after work and had a few and maybe a few extras. I left before 9PM. I know this because Starbucks was still open and my favorite barista was working.

She saw me, then looked away and smiled like she most always does. The customer in front of me was having trouble placing his order using English so he switched over to Spanish.

I could make out that in addition to what he ordered he also wanted water. I guessed that she explained that they had bottled water and noticed that she made a slight gesture to the display case in front of me. I waited a brief moment before I reached out a bottle of water and proffered it.

She looked at me and asked if I spoke Spanish in Spanish.

"Pequeño," I replied which was my guess at the word small.

I wonder if I could have guessed correctly sober.

I'm a sucker

I've been helping out but I have conditions. Basically, I tell them that I want all the elements and that I don't want to have to go looking for stuff. I think that my conditions are reasonable.

A lot of what they ask me to do involves photographs.

It seems that very few of them can take a photo and when they do get a good shot, it's only at a resolution that's fit for the internet and not for print media. When this first happened, I told them what I need for print but still rarely do I get what I want.

Not all pictures are worth a thousand words.

After, I climbed down from the roof, I was emptying my pockets and pulled out from my back pocket a carpenter's pencil. I don't use carpenter's pencils too often because the line they draw is often thicker than I like. The line can be close to 1/8 inch and frequently I prefer something more precise but, with roofing, a regular No. 2 just can't handle the ruinous nature of stone encrusted roofing material.

As I tossed it onto the dresser, I thought, "That tells a story."



The candidate is not yet thirty years old and most of the people helping him are as young or younger. I figured that they would all have the ability to take all sorts of photos but it appears that they are all too self-centered to take pictures of things other than what they are going to post to their own Facebook page.

It drives me nuts.

Learn to take a freak'n photo.

I've stated out loud to anyone that would listen that everyone should be taking photos of everything. We don't have to use everything but when we do need something, it's unfathomable to not have anything.

I was asked on more than one occasion to take a head from one photo and stick it onto the person's body in a different photo.

"How about you get me decent photos?"

I only swapped heads once. Fuckers.

"His eyes are kinda closed in this one. Can you open them up?"

"No."

I complained about it later to the friend that got me involved.

So they wanted me to spend about two hours digitally altering that photo when whoever was taking it could have merely asked, "Wait, could I take just one more?" They had me waiting most of the day for this picture and then they want to waste more of my time by having me drawing in eyes? Do you know the skill level involved in drawing new eyes onto someone? It's more skill than I have. Not with a deadline for tomorrow.

I used the photo unaltered except for cropping and color correction and when they saw the final product they said, "Oh, you got the eyes open" which made me even more furious.

About two weeks ago, after a lot of frustration in trying to get material from the campaign when they kept me waiting and then still didn't give me everything I needed. My friend called me and said she wouldn't have everything until after 11PM. I had been waiting since 10AM.

"I don't think I can work for you folks anymore," I calmly stated.

"I know," she replied

The next day I walked in and we started talking about the jobs I knew weren't completed and then she started talking about new jobs.

"I'm only committed to the senior piece, the shadow piece and possibly the City Hall piece."

"Oh."

"Yeah, remember? I quit."

"When was that?"

"When I was on the phone with you last night."

"You said that, "You think"-."

"Well, today I'm pretty sure. Actually, I'm positive."

But before I left I had some on the new jobs started because I'm a sucker.

...

If you're wonder what that 100% is about on the pencil, it refers to the wood used in making the pencil. FSC is the Forest Stewardship Council. I had to google it.

I sometimes sort my emails into folders

I named the folder 'Bane'

I'm not a fan of politics but some of my friends are and because I'm a good friend, I get involved in politics.

I think that you should have your friend's back; that's one of my most self hated virtues.

I noticed a competitor's mailer on her desk so I picked it up. I think it's important to see what the competition is doing and also I like to see what other designers are doing with political pieces. I'm not ashamed of stealing ideas.

It was a glossy piece, full bleed, 11 inches tall by seventeen inches wide, folded in half. Inside was a layout I did a couple of months prior for the campaign we were working on. I said, "Looks familiar."

Someone laughed.

The premise and the layout were the same; it's one thing to steal one or the other but to steal both in one piece is too much, classless and unimaginative.

I was slightly flattered, though, before I was disappointed that there was nothing for me to steal.

(I learned the word bane from a Tony Curtis movie*)



*that's sort of true.

The Pros & Cons of Muffins

"How's the accent?"

"It comes and goes but I did bake con muffins."

Get it? I said Con muffin instead of Corn muffin because I'm from Boston and we don't pronounce our R's.

I do actually say con for corn when I'm not careful or not in mixed company. Mixed being outsiders.



And I actually did bake corn muffins that I added blueberries to. I don't think I'll be adding any blueberries to my corn muffins in the future though. It's not that I disliked them in the corn muffin but I like blueberry muffins and I like corn muffins and both together do not improve the muffins but distract from it.

I don't go to many ball games

She had said one of the things that she wanted to do after flying in from Vegas was to see a Red Sox game.

I don't go to many baseball games but she was getting the tickets and all I had to do was to show up; so I did.

The $12.50 seats weren't good or at least I don't think they were, we never actually saw them. When started off in standing room only almost directly behind home plate and then we moved down to some vacant seats. It turns out some folks don't like watching a team most likely out of the playoff picture and ten runs down.

They were good seats, at least $75 a piece and the some guy two rows down was being a douche bag to the elderly lady taking photos for the ball park; and we made mention of it frequently, to the point where the lady in front of us turn around to said "Enough already."

I usually don't go around calling people douche bags and I think the lady had I point, so I apologized but my friends really didn't agree with her concerns and after we drove her away, I was asked why I apologized.

"I think she had a valid point. She's at the game, the home town team isn't doing well and she's got a bunch of yahoo's saying douche bag every four seconds. I think that can bother some people."

"This is a ball game! There aren't any kids around. This isn't the 'no cursing section' you have to expect to hear that kind of language."

"I'm just saying that I see her point. I think it's valid."

"She's not your mother. She's not my mother. She's not his mother or his mother."

There was a good chance she was somebody's mother.


...

I know the power of language but I also know that most of the power comes from within the recipient. I've desensitized myself to a lot of language. You can call me a douche bag, a mother fucker, or any other assortment of hardcore obscenities and most likely, I will not care but I can see where some folks may not want to experience that.

I've said, "If it's not true: who cares? Why should it bother me? They're lies. I don't know that guy and he doesn't know me and if it is true, then why would I be upset? It's true, and either I'm okay with the truth or if the truth bothers me them I should change."

You shouldn't be bothered by the truth.

I should be on the roof but....

They will tell me the purpose of the piece. They will hand me the components or tell me of the components that are coming and then leave me along. They trust my design skills. I get free range to edit.

He was holding two versions; one, I think expressed more of his vision and one was more of what I thought looked good and still got the message across; the tie breaking voice sided with mine but he still wasn't convinced.

I did two designs because, even after a few questions, I still was uncertain of what was precisely wanted and either I wasn't getting what was being said or they were having difficulty explaining the vision; and I've found out that instead of searching for the right questions, it's better to give people choices and then go from there.

It's like going to the Optometrist: "Is this one better, or this one? One or two?"

I've known Charlie for years. I met him during a mayoral campaign. A friend volunteered to be Campaign Treasurer, so I got access to the inner workings. Charlie was a senior adviser or maybe even campaign manager.

Charlie's son and I have the same name.

He was still staring at the two versions when the third opinion walked away.

"Why?"

"What?" I asked because my mind was elsewhere.

"Why do you like this one?" he said as he waved my version only I couldn't see it was my version because I could only see the back and the backs were the same.

I think I smiled. I appreciated the question. I know sometimes it's hard to articulate but I think you should be able to explain how you feel about something when you have just expressed an opinion on it. I don't think, 'I don't know. I just do' cuts it. He was putting me to task but it was just so he just could know. He was hoping that my reason for liking it would convince him to like it too. I like the opportunity for discussion.

Charlie's visions are a bit hokie-er than my own person design choices but I can see how his style works in certain areas. Sometimes, hokie sells. I had already relented to his hard edged hokie vision for getting his message across. We were now working on getting something that had the most visual appeal.

"I think, it's a cleaner design," was my simple answer.

"Okay, we'll go with it."