I have not, in the past, been a big fan of April Fool’s Day. But the past two have been different.

Because April 1 is Emma’s birthday.

Click to continue reading.

Last night when we got in, Emma got the mail and said, “Oh, your present arrived!”

Click to continue reading.

Meeting your wife for burgers and fries, then going for frozen yogurt, just because you want to spend time with her and get her dinner and something she enjoys.

It’s the simple things, really.

(And thank you, Five Guys and Menchie’s.)

1. I think I have the post to Facebook thing worked out now. No, no I don’t, gonna have to contact support.
2. My wife is amazing.
3. Shaving first with, then against, the grain of your beard really DOES make it better. I now understand, but I’m not doing it to the mustache area, as I still fear I’m going to remove my nose accidentally.

Thanks!

At SeaTac Airport right now, waiting for a flight, 6AM, gate A13. United 566.

Going to see Emma.

There has been a huge change in my life in the past eight months, and I haven’t really talked about it at all. Part of it – a lot of it is the impostor syndrome. There’s a part of me that believes I don’t really deserve this change, and sometimes I feel really weird talking about it.

But if I’m going to fight this thing, then you know what? I have to talk about it. Because what happened to me is the best thing that has happened to me, ever, bar none.

What happened to me… is Emma.

Click to continue reading.

A while back, I wrote a post about the things I use to create. But a lot has changed, so I thought I should do an update. (I saw someone look at it on the site states, and figured it could use a bit of an update.)

So: here’s the tools I’m using now:

Click to continue reading.

So I figured I’d mention that my resume has been updated, looking a bit spiffier, thanks to the assistance of the Reverend Doctor Barbara Ewton of The First Congregational Church of Verona, who my dearest Emma lives with, helps and who is giving us a lot of help in the wedding preparations! It’s down to one page, the fonts are updated (Segoe UI), and it’s really looking much better. I probably need to update the infographic that I’ve had going with my resume, as well, to make it a bit more punchy.

I hadn’t really thought about it in quite a while, but it really needed a revamp. Next step is to put it up on the job sites, get a push on my visibility.

So the people I live with have been having a tough kind of few days. I decided to make dinner, and looked around the house for what we had. Thankfully, we had stuff from a Costco run recently, so I just asked for someone to please get me some mozzarella cheese, and boom it appeared.

So I thawed three of the very large chicken breasts we got from Costco (the house brand), then got out one of the larger pans. Put some sauce in the bottom, put the chicken in. Put some sauce on top, then sliced up some of the mozzarella cheese (not a lot, and not very thick), and put it on top. Then some more sauce on top of the mozzarella, and sprinkled it with basil and oregano, and baked for about 25 minutes. The cheese got soft, the chicken got done (you’d probably want to cook longer if you used the chicken frozen, but I think that might mess things up a bit), and it went over well. Served it over noodles, a little bread on the side.

There were leftovers (my housemates couldn’t finish the chicken breasts, which are very very large, to be honest), so they have food for tomorrow.

This is how I spent my evening, cooking. It’s terribly calming, in a way, when you have to consider what you’re doing and how to do it, and focus on it.

Tuesday is the Lightroom panel at the Seattle Area Photoshop User Group meetup, which has the promise to be very interesting. (I’ve played with LR4 a little, and should get to know it better soon.)

This past weekend I watched the movie “Helvetica”, which some people might think would be terribly boring, but if you have an interest in these sorts of things is actually very interesting – looking into how the font developed and spread, along with interviews with fontmakers, graphic designers, and going into why there’s a number of designers who dislike Helvetica’s ubiquity, and why. Really, very interesting (at least for me). I need to watch the other films in the sort of trilogy, “Objectified” (about industrial design and designers) and “Urbanized” (about urban design, including architecture). The third isn’t quite my thing right now, but knowing about it might be pretty useful. (And all three are on Netflix, so that’s helpful!)

Thinking I should ramp up my drawing, too. Just because I still am pretty terrible at it, but there’s only one way to get better. I may just not have the eye for life drawing, but some other kind may suit me.