Project complete…well, complete-ish

Published on 10 November, 2008 in design and work. 0 Comments

I’ve been working on a whole slew of stuff lately. Some of it is paid work, some of it is volunteer work and the rest of it is just fun for me to do. For starters, I’m pretty much done with the This Is Not T.V. series that I was working on. I haven’t uploaded them here, but if you’re my facebook friend, you can check them out now. I’m holding off on putting any new work up on this site, simply because I wanted to wait until the new website is up. The design for that is done and I sent the files over to Nate at IMNS to put all the code together for me. I still have to update this here blog to match, but we’ll get to that soon enough. Jut be patient… In really good news, my secret project is more or less finished. There are still a couple adjustments that need to be made to it, but they’re minor. So if you haven’t given me your address yet, be sure to do so as soon as you can. A few of you know about it already, but it’s only because I trust you with my life…which also means my secrets!

For actual work news, we’re making some good headway on all of this Cybernautic stuff, which is really exciting. The ribbon cutting ceremony for the new office went really well and we made some good contacts. The cards I made for the party got a very good reception, which means I can finally stop holding my breath for a little bit. Everything is starting to come together and get finalized for the rest of the marketing materials as well as the rebranding, so keep your eyes open for all of that stuff. I could go on for days about everything we’re doing, but I’ll just let the anticipation fester so you can be surprised when you see it.

The GOYA stuff is really coming along too. Speaking of which, there’s a photography/art show in Bloomington coming up on December 6th from 2pm-6pm. It’s next to the Castle Theater and it’s free to the public and I want to encourage you all to go and buy something! All of the proceeds will go directly to the missions work in Mitumba, Kenya, so it’s a really great cause and an even better way for you to get involved in everything that’s happening. All of the marketing materials for that are coming along rather nicely. Like the Cybernautic stuff, it’s still not completed enough for me to be able to show you anything outside of my mock ups that I created. The design is relatively complete, we’re just waiting on some changes to the verbage and all of the materials have been selected. I know it doesn’t sound like much of an accomplishment, but if you work in the creative industry, then you get what I’m saying.

So that’s where everything is at for any of you that are keeping up! A lot of stuff in the works, some of it is old news, but all of it is exciting. At least to me. I’ll keep you posted as to when everything gets finished, but until then, we’ll just have to settle for hanging out and drinking tea together or something. So, to wrap up, don’t forget about the art show on December 6th, and please, please, please email me your addresses asap so I can mail you out one of the secret projects when I get them all packaged and ready. Love you all.

12oz featured on Screenfluent

Published on 1 October, 2008 in design and work. 1 Comment

I just received word today that my design site has been featured on Screenfluent, which is an online showcase of great design. Unlike other design showcases, where a user can submit his or her own website to be listed, Screenfluent’s sites are in no way user submitted. As the great minds over at Screenfluent put it, “the featured sites are handpicked and proposals are not accepted. As legend has it, remarkable designs will find their way to Screenfluent.”

In times such as these, a man has to blow his own trumpet. Hopefully the new design will be hand picked as well.

Stupid blogs!

Published on 25 September, 2008 in design and work. 0 Comments

So, according to my wonderful friend, Isaac Downing, my RSS feeds aren’t working…at least not for him. If anyone else is having this problem, or knows how to fix the error, just give me a heads up.

In the mean time, I wanted to let you all know that I’ve been working on some random projects. I’ve started helping out a non-profit called GOYA Ministries, which you should all click the link and check out. It would take way too long to explain all of the amazing things these guys and gals have been doing in Mitumba, a slum of Nairobi, Kenya. But let’s just say that, if you’re my friend, you’ll probably want to help them out in any way you can because we all share one heart to help for the greater good. The work is still in the middle-development stage, but it should be finished soon. Once I get the final pieces back, I’ll post the work with descriptions to the site along with the new layout. Which brings me to the next point: I’m still working on updating the layout of the site (which means the look of this blog will change as well). I’m pretty excited about it.

What with school starting in January (did I mention I was enrolled in school again?), I’m looking to do some more freelance work. While the current site is just there as a display case for my art, it doesn’t have any examples of my more commercial work. I’m pretty sure if someone is going to farm work out to me, they’re not going to be looking at how cool my art is. They’ll want to know that I can do what is needed of me. So hopefully that will work out like I’m hoping it will.

Besides the GOYA stuff, I’ve been working on some really cool personal projects. No, it’s not more art (although I will have some more of that coming soon too) but something a little more special. If you’re interested in finding out what it is, shoot me an email with your mailing address, have some patience and eventually you’ll be as delighted to receive it as I am to mail it out.  It’s a rather involved project, and it’s going to require the help of some of my friends (hint, hint) but it will be well worth it.

In other news, I’ve found a printer for my art pieces. So if you love me, and want to support me in my efforts of my education, order some of them. They’re basically print on demand, so just shoot me an email with which one you want and what size you need it to be and I’ll give you a price. Hopefully the price will be reasonable for those of us poor folk out there to still get to enjoy it. I’ve also been working on some actual hand illustrated pieces (with some digital retouching) that I’ll be posting in the future once I find a scanner that doesn’t suck like mine does.

I think that’s all for now. In the mean time, keep your eyes to the skies and your ears to the ground and I’ll find you somewhere in between.  Much love, all.

Yup. I’m a runner…

Published on 14 September, 2008 in friends, running and stupidity. 1 Comment

So we get a late start on Saturday. Becca calls me around 5 and says if I’m not there by 5:45, they’re leaving without me! So, being me, I roll in somewhere around 6:10pm to Drew’s shed. I see Drew’s car, but no Becca. Or Bethanne for that matter. And all the lights are off.

In my head I’m thinking, “No way they actually left without me!” Then I remember that Drew is driving and start to wonder what’s going on. I go up to the door, give it a knock, and sit back and wait. No one answers! So I get out my phone, quickly dial Becca’s number and, just then, Drew opens the door, wearing nothing but a pair of boxers, scratching his chia-pet-hairy stomach because I just woke him up. So Drew, our driver, is still sleeping and there’s no sign whatsoever of the two B’s. We call, they don’t answer. About a half hour later, my phone rings. They decided to stop at a birthday party and didn’t think to mention it. So, for the first time in a long time, I was the first person ready to rock this race.

But the adventure just doesn’t stop there. About halfway up we decide to stop and get some Subway. We all grab our meal to go so we can eat it in the car. We were all tired, the weather was a disaster and we just wanted to get to Chris’ apartment. So the whole time we’re eating, I can hear Beth in the backseat. She’s not really complaining so much as she’s analyzing the situation. Every once in a while you’d hear things like, “There doesn’t seem to be very much mayo on my sandwich…” or “Maybe I’ve just been eating too much subway, but this is just starting to taste kind of bland…”

About 10 minutes later you hear her say this: “Oh shit!! What the f?!” To which we all go, “What?!” Turns out, the whole time she thought her sandwich tasted strange, she had been eating her napkin with it! She ate the entire napkin! Not even kidding. There was just a tiny corner of paper left and that’s it. By far the funniest thing that had happened on the trip.

So we get to Chris’ apartment, which, by the way, is awesome. He gets out some blankets and we all get ready to crash. Becca, who hadn’t really said much, all of a sudden starts to get hives. Turns out one of the roommates has a cat and Becca is allergic. So Chris gets some benadryl, locks the cat up and Becca doesn’t die in her sleep, which is a relief.

So, after still being awake at nearly 1am, the 5am alarm starts sounding. Now, for those of you who know me, I’m not a morning person. Becca on the other hand, who happened to sleep on the other couch in the living room where I was, is a morning person. The alarm goes off and she’s up and running like she just got off the bench at a basketball game. She’s singing songs and making jokes and smiling and chipper and the rest of us had our WTF faces on the whole time. All the while, peering out the window at an ominous sky, littering the streets with rain, hoping that somehow it would stop and become sunny before we started to run.

So departure time arrives and we head out the door to hail a cab. Once we get in the cab, we realize that not a single one of us knows where we’re going. We know we need to head towards downtown, but that’s about it. So the cabbie starts driving and we all start frantically calling anyone we know that we think might be awake at 6am to look up where the race starts online. Luckily we got through to someone.

It was pouring when we got there. We had to walk the last mile to the starting line because the streets were closed and the entire trail was lined with mud, garbage, people, and puddles so deep you could lose yourself in them. And, sadly, as we’re waiting for the race to begin, we all get separated. But there’s no time to spend searching because the race was about to start. So I jumped into the middle of the pack, gave myself one last quick stretch and started on my journey.

It wasn’t bad at first. You get used to the rain and the crowd slowly filters out so you actually have some room to move. About mile 4, we start getting out of the park and into the streets of Chicago. It was about this time that the rain decided to unleash it’s wrath on the crowd of people caught in the middle of a race. It started raining, by my estimate, twice as hard. The puddles grew, the wind picked up and the temperature dropped several degrees rather quickly. It made the run a little harder, but I’m extra macho, so I toughed it out :)

At the end of the race, I’m standing around in my shorts and no shirt, shivering, trying to figure out where the rest of my crew was. All the while, I’m trying to surreptitiously stand under the umbrellas of fellow watchers, but with little luck. Once I found Drew, I get my track jacket out only to realize that my phone and wallet are in a pocket that apparently isn’t water proof! My phone is soaked, my wallet is destroyed and everything in it is stuck together into one mass of bad planning. Luckily the phone wasn’t damaged though…just wet.

So this brings me to the worst part. We took a cab from the North side, near Wrigleyville down to the South end of town to get to the race. The race started at the Museum of Science and Industry, just North of China Town. We got there no problem. What we didn’t realize is that after the race, there would be no taxis and no train stations for miles! So now we’re all soaked to the bones, cold, tired and hungry, wishing we were at home where it was warm and dry. We ended up having to walk nearly 6 miles in the rain until we found a Border’s, at which point we got a hot chocolate and called Chris to come pick us up because we were pretty much done at that point.

That basically sums it up. The rest of the day was spent moving very slowly, complaining very loudly and watching football on an unnecessarily large television. Beth and Drew fell asleep, Becca and I just sat in our chairs, wrapped in blankets, and eating a pizza that could easily feed a starving village of third-world orphans. It was delicious, but it would serve as the end of our journey. We packed our dripping clothes into our musty bags, loaded up the car and made our way home.

I have to say, if I had it to do over again, I probably would. As miserable as the weather was, it was well worth every minute of it. It kept us on our toes and we all finished faster than we thought we would. It was a good bonding experience for the four of us and, really, the 8,000 other people there today as well. I walked away with a medal, that doesn’t mean I’m special in any way because everyone got one, and I ate a good handful of fresh fruit while shivering and wondering why none of us took the time to plan this out a little better. I guess it’s a learning experience for next time :)

New desktop series…

Published on 22 July, 2008 in design and wallpapers. 5 Comments

I’ll probably add some more to these as they get created, but I’ve recently just been having oodles of fun creating these images. So, as promised, here they are for all of you to download. I’m curious as to whether anyone is actually interested in them at all, so if you could be so kind as to call, text, email or comment and let me know which ones you downloaded, I’d love you forever. I may even kiss you. That’s up to you. But here they are:

1024×768  1280×1024  1600×1200

1024×768 1280×1024 1600×1200

1024×768 1280×1024 1600×1200

Go Outside!1024×768 1280×1024 1600×1200

When Dreams Take Flight1024×768 1280×1024 1600×1200

Depths of Dreams1024×768 1280×1024 1600×1200

Creation1024×768 1280×1024 1600×1200

For those of you new-age hipster types with widescreen monitors, just email me your screen resolution and I’ll whip one up. And, for those of you with those ginormous monitors, I can accommodate you as well. All of these graphics were created using hi-res photos, so they’re all pretty big to begin with.

Again, keep checking back as I’ll be adding more here and there and let me know which ones you downloaded. I hope you guys enjoy these as much as I do, but, chances are, you probably won’t. Until next time, folks. Enjoy.

Come on people! Pay attention!

Published on 9 July, 2008 in stupidity. 0 Comments

So I was just checking my facebook, and noticed this ad that was posted as something I might be interested in. The ad read as follows:

Join the Shedd Aquarium Auxiliary Society for Blu, a party to raise money for the conversation of our Great Lakes.

So did any of you catch that? The conversation of our Great Lakes.  Now, I think it’s pretty obvious, at least to those of us with some sort of grasp on the English language, that this is supposed to say the conservation of our Great Lakes. I mean, if you really think about it, conserving our Great Lakes makes a lot more sense than Conversing our Great Lakes, right?

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve been known to make a spelling mistake or two in my time. In fact, one time in particular comes to mind, when I was writing to Becca about how awesome I am at never misspelling anything, and my message had about a billion spelling errors in it. To my defense though, it was late and I was tired. But the bigger difference is that my message to Becca wasn’t an ad for the 3rd largest aquarium in the United States. Nor was it going to be potentially seen by millions of people.

And, yes, I live in modern society. I understand full well that butchering grammar and bastardizing a half way decent language seems to be the trend these days. But for the love of God, people, can we please pay a little more attention when writing something that important? I mean, there’s a huge difference between a conversation and the act of conservation. One involves a couple of friends, a bottle of wine, a comfortable chair and a relaxed atmosphere. The other is a huge undertaking involving a lot of education, research, sustainability, patience and a lot of hard work. One takes place in a room. The other takes place through out countless gallons of fresh water that feed the very rivers and streams that flow through our cities.

So, next time, whether you’re writing to me, your mom, your dog, your secret lover or you’re creating an advertisement for the masses, pay a little more attention to what it is you’re trying to say. One wrong word can do a lot to ruin your message.

Houston to home again

Published on 2 July, 2008 in friends and vacation. 0 Comments

There isn’t really much I can say about Houston. I was only there for about a dozen waking hours, but still had a good time none the less. Like I said in the last blog, I left Austin feeling sad. Sad to leave such a beautiful city, filled with amazing and unforgettable people and characters of all sorts. But, all in all, I was excited to get to Houston to see a dear friend and her baby girl.

I got to Houston just in time for rush hour. But, turns out, I wasn’t going far so that worked out okay. Houston is the fourth largest city in the U.S. A fact I wasn’t really aware of at the time, but figured out rather quickly upon entering this enormous metropolis. I got to Rae’s house, played with the dog for a moment and then we all went on our merry way to this great little Mexican place for some delicious food. That basically concluded the evening. We got back to the apartment, put Tinsley to bed and then began a couple hours of catching up from our long hiatus from face to face conversations before falling asleep.

Sunday morning I woke up with a sense of stale excitement. While I was really looking forward to our afternoon adventure, I had finally reached the end of my time in Texas. It’s like I had reached the finish line where everything just ends. But I brushed all the sadness aside and enjoyed my day. We drove our busy little selves over to the Houston Museum of Natural Science. They have this really amazing thing called the Cockrell Butterfly Exhibit. I know, butterflies, I sound ridiculous, but trust me when I say it was a great time. It’s not like a bunch of dead butterflies all pinned to a board like a science experiment. Not even close. They have this, indoor atrium, about 3 stories high, that basically stands as a giant arboretum. It’s humid as can be. Think oversized greenhouse kind of humid. But it’s filled with tons of tropical plants, trees and flowers and inside the arboretum, are thousands of live butterflies. Hundreds of species just flying around in their pseudo-natural habitat, landing on people and doing whatever it is that butterflies do. It was amazing.

But, much to my dismay, after the tour of the museum and a dinner that seemed more like procrastinating than anything else, I said my goodbyes and headed to home. By this time it was going on 7pm. It’s a 15 hour drive back from Houston, and that’s if you speed. That would get me home somewhere around 10am the next day, driving straight through with absolutely no sleep whatsoever. But on top of it, I got stuck in traffic just outside of Houston. It was raining so hard it was nearly impossible to see and traffic was crawling along the interstate at such a slow pace that I could’ve pushed my car, uphill, faster than we were driving down the road. So, in an attempt to drag my feet just a little bit longer, I skipped my exit and headed straight back to Dallas. It wouldn’t be much, but the 5 hour drive to Dallas, combined with sleep and great company from my Starbucks friends, sounded much more appealing than driving 15 hours through the night.

By the time I arrived in Dallas, the sky was black, but clear. The rain had stayed South, but the effects of it meant that it was a perfectly cool evening in Dallas. I got into town, made a stop at Starbucks to get a drink and surprise my new friends with a final visit, and then headed to my sisters for one last hoorah in the state that stole my heart. Come morning, the sun was up, warming my face as I stepped out onto the mezzanine. I brushed my teeth, stretched my muscles, yawned and took my sweet time before saying my actual final goodbyes. I hugged the family, grabbed my stuff and began the sorrow filled drive home. For the record, driving through Oklahoma is equally as scary in the daytime as it is at night. Even though the sun was up, I still felt like I might get murdered. And all the signs that said “Don’t drive in smoke” made a lot more sense when I saw 4 fires on the side of the road on my way home. Oklahoma sucks. But I’d drive through it every day if it meant I got to go to Texas.

Austin…not brief at all

Published on 30 June, 2008 in friends and vacation. 0 Comments

Oh my God! That’s really all I need to say and this blog will have served its purpose. There’s nothing else that can really be said to explain the sense of finally finding your place in the world than “Oh my God.” By far, of all the places I’ve been in my life, Austin seems like home. Bobbi had warned me for a good year and a half now that if I go, I won’t want to leave. Mostly I just thought this was because Bobbi was there and, thus, I’d want to be there too, but turns out she’s not the only amazing thing about Austin!

I don’t really know where to begin. I don’t want to sit here and chronicle every day of my trip, but I don’t think there was really a dull moment. I spent 4 days in Austin, I saw some beautiful places, I did so many fun things, managed to acquire one of the worst sunburns I’ve ever had and I met some of the most amazing, no-way-I’ll-ever-forget-you, hope-we-stay-friends-forever kind of people. Running in Austin is like a gift from God. There was ice cold water all along a beautiful running trail, which winds through a park, which extended along a beautiful river in the heart of downtown Austin. The people were out in full force, surprising for a Tuesday. Surprising in general really. How often do you see a ton of people exercising in Illinois anyway? Well, Austin is full of people who care about taking care of themselves. And I couldn’t stop smiling.

Most importantly, I have to mention the real reason I went to Dallas. The whole reason I went to the state of Texas really! My friend Bobbi. Most of you don’t know her. In fact, I’m not sure how many of you that read this blog know her at all. But either way, you’re missing out. She is, by far, one of my favorite people in the world and made my trip all the more worth it. I could go on and on about why I love Bobbi so much, but no one really needs to hear that. I will say that she’s beautiful, intelligent and a huge bundle of fun and more than likely the person I talk to most on a day-to-day basis. And no, I’m not in love with Bobbi…at least that’s what I tell myself.

To save you all the plethora of details and intricacies about my week, I’ll just spout off some of the highlights from my time in Austin. First and foremost, because it’s me and I love people, I’ll start there. I know I said it once already, but I met so many great people in Austin. But there were a handful of people that left a more than lasting impression on me. First there’s Priscilla. She’s Bobbi’s crazy friend, but fun-crazy, not crazy-crazy. This girl is a firecracker and kept me laughing the entire time she was around. She’s definitely someone that most people will never forget, but in all the best ways. I met a guy named Michael, but everyone calls him Cheech. We floated the river together, and I’ll talk more on that in a minute. Cheech is a cool guy, that I’m rather envious of for the fact that he doesn’t have a job right now. Not that he’s lazy, he just worked hard for a long time so that he could afford to take some time off. It sounds like a great thing to me. I met Justin and Morgan. Justin being a Landscape architect and all around good southern boy. We had a great time and he was my tour guide for the burlesque show. Morgan is this feisty little rock star of a girl, with a daughter whose personality far outweighs her little kid size. I don’t think I ever stopped smiling that night they were around.

Next, I met Raul, Bobbi’s roommate. In a lot of ways, he’s kind of like the Mexican equivalent of me. Super nice guy, incredibly thoughtful and easy to get along with. He’s from Monterey, a medium-sized city in the heart of Mexico. I’ll be going to Monterey next time I go to Texas I hope. Mostly just to say that I went there. I heard all about Monterey from both Raul and my new second favorite person in Texas, Alondra. Oh God, am I fascinated with Alondra. I’m going to save you all the overly amorous details of why I think Alondra is so great, but let’s just say that I’ve never been so love struck by a first impression in my life. And the second and third impressions were quite fantastic as well. I was almost as sad to say bye to her as I was to say bye to Bobbi…almost.

But to avoid getting started on that subject, I’m going to move on to when we floated the river. When I first heard about it, my initial thought was “Okay, so we just float? On a river? Really?” But I wanted to do what people in Austin do, and I had heard it was a lot of fun. Turns out they were right. Floating the river was a blast. Relaxing in all the right ways, you basically get on your tube, tie yourself to the people around you, kick back and just relax with your beer (or water in my case). It was just Bobbi, Cheech and myself, and our cooler if you count that. Besides us, everyone else on the water had this sort of white trash appeal to them that made us all the more happy that we just kind of stuck to ourselves. But to see Bobbi carry on a conversation with people that I knew she didn’t want to talk to was rather endearing. The relaxing 5-hour tour down stream is interrupted with short bursts of tiny rapids that are just enough to keep you on your toes, but not enough to drown you if, like me, you can’t swim.

But there are two things that make this little moment in time worth mentioning. The first being my lobster-red sunburn that I acquired during my float. I even wore sunscreen too. You have to see it. It’s ridiculous. The second noteworthy event came at the end of our time on the water. We docked our innertubes just in time to catch what basically looked like an unsanctioned amateur UFC championship. Some ignorant, drunk hillbilly decided that he should let his fist do the talking and seriously knocked some guy out. But here’s what makes it extra white trash: his whole family was there. So not only did he start assaulting a guy in front of his kids, but the guy he knocked out had his family there too. Kids, nieces, nephews and a whole lot of people that just had their whole day ruined. So the story continues like this: Drunk punching guy decides that he needs to leave before the cops get there. Just what any self-respecting person would do in that situation, right? So Bobbi and I, being a couple of vigilant 20-somethings, decide that there’s no way this guy should get away for what he just did, so we start stalking after him. At the least, we can get his license plate number to give to the police.

Nevermind the fact that this guy just assaulted, and knocked out, someone bigger than Bobbi and I put together. None of that mattered. We were on a mission. Now that I’ve built this up, I’ll end it by saying that neither of us got hurt at all. Bobbi went one way to flag down the police and I followed the guy to his car where said police met up with him. If you’ve ever seen the show Cops, when white trash people get arrested, then you know what the following scene looked like. A bunch of drunk people saying that nothing happened and no one did anything at all and running their mouths like it was the last day they were able to talk. It was kind of funny, but a little bit sad too. I hope the other guy is okay.

The rest of the week was mostly filled with good food, good drinks, fun times and great people. It was low-key, but that’s exactly how I like it. I left on Saturday and, I have to say, I’ve never felt like this before when I’ve left a place. I’ve been to places that I loved, but it was always nice to come back home. But, when I left Austin, I felt physically sad and upset. Like I had fallen in love and now it was gone. I found a city that felt more like home than any place I’ve ever been before and now it’s gone. I’ve already made plans to go back in a few months. I’m already counting down the days and looking forward to that time. But I want to start working on more permanent plans. I want to move to Austin. I know it will be a major change, and there’s a lot that weighs into that decision, but I feel a strong draw to that city that I’ve never felt before. Whether I move or not, my heart will break. I already know this. But I still think the move will be worth it. I just have a lot to figure out before that will happen.

Dallas, in brief…well, maybe not brief

Published on 30 June, 2008 in friends and vacation. 1 Comment

It took me 14 hours to drive to Dallas. The same trip which only took me 11 to get home.

I left Friday the 20th, about 2 hours late per usual, but this is my vacation and I didn’t want to do anything based on a schedule. It’s just not me. I’m a fly off the cuff, hyper ball of spontaneity. I leave when I feel like leaving and I drive however fast I feel like driving. The trip down, I made a lot of stops. Most of them consisted of lengthy pauses in the middle of the interstate along with about a thousand other cars. I think I hit traffic in almost every major city I drove through, no matter what time of day it actually was, there seemed to be a couple gross of people all with someplace to be, but with no haste to actually arrive. The only boring part of my trip was driving through Oklahoma. I think the only reason the US wanted Oklahoma is so there wouldn’t be a hole in the middle of our country. Because, other than that, Oklahoma seems kind of pointless. And dangerous! I felt like I was going to get murdered the whole time I was in the state. Needless to say, I arrived in Dallas and then fell immediately to sleep. But my adventure started bright and early the next morning.

Saturday morning, kids and all, I woke up somewhat early for a guy on vacation. But I had a mission: run. I arose, I dressed, I stretched and said my goodbyes and then headed out the door. I walked out into a heat that reminded me of Illinois, just better. It wasn’t the kind of heat that makes you go, “Damn, why am I outside today?!” Not at all. I walked out, the sun shone down and lit the path in front of me and I realized at that moment that this would be a hard place to leave. I fell in love with Dallas…and the day had just begun.

My run was amazing. I didn’t know where to go, seeing as though I’d never been there before, so I just aimed myself at the tall buildings in the neighboring downtown and started to go. The first place I found was a sculpture garden that served as more of a door way to the entire Dallas Arts District. This beautiful district, bustling with activity and full of life, yet clean, which was a big change from the dirt and grime of any Chicago street. I ran all over downtown, about twelve miles in all. Passed the zoo, the Dallas Maverick’s stadium. Passed the confederate museum, complete with soldiers clad in Civil War uniforms waving flags outside the building, posing with tourists and their point-and-shoot cameras. I found a Farmer’s Market where they just hand out pieces of fresh fruit, which stood next to a floral market that basically put me into gay-straight-man heaven.

After my morning exploration,  I had lunch with the family at a great little local joint. The food was great, the atmosphere was relaxing and it reminded me that I was on vacation and that life was good. Lunch was followed almost immediately by my second favorite activity: shopping. I found this mall about 25 minutes away. Nothing fancy, but for some reason I loved it. This mall would turn out to be my favorite Dallas hang out, complete with bad ass new friends. While shopping, I decided to head into the Starbucks to get myself a tasty beverage (ie: water). This is where I met Carla, a sassy Puerto Rican who immediately starts harassing me for ordering water at a coffee shop. We were instant friends. This is also where I met Jess, a 26 year old runner with a great sense of humor and take-it-or-leave-it bluntness when she spoke that made me anxious to get to Austin and see Bobbi. We chatted for a bit, made some plans for that night and then I headed out to dinner with the family before going back to spend some time with my new Southern friends (neither of which said “y’all”, thank God).

Sunday was rather uneventful. Church in the morning, which was a lot like a small Riverside, and a slew of family time and relaxing by the pool. Monday morning, I woke up, took some pictures with the family and said my goodbyes. I stopped at Mockingbird Station on my way out of town to say my farewell’s to Jess and Carla and then headed to see the love of my life (and I’m not referring to Bobbi…mostly).

10 things I learned working at Cat

Published on 5 June, 2008 in pointless lists and work. 0 Comments

So, about three months ago, I get this job at cat. It’s not a bad gig, just not exactly a creative position. Luckily though, there are 8 cool people out of the 1,400 in the building and they all work with me! So I can’t really complain that much. But you don’t become one of the biggest multi-national corporations in the world without being able to instill some knowledge into the hearts and minds of your employees.

So, in light of all the wisdom one can learn from working at Cat, here are ten things I’ve learned thus far:

  1. If you really want to fit in, you have to dress as ordinary as possible and walk around staring at your shoes like they’re about to do something incredible.
  2. At Cat, you’re encouraged to talk to people, network, make friends and enjoy your job. However, you are NOT encouraged to talk to people, network, make friends or find any joy whatsoever in any aspect of what you do. I know it’s a paradox, but you’ll just have to deal with it.
  3. There are attractive girls that work at Cat, however, not a single one of them works in your building. I don’t care what building you’re in, all the hot girls are in a different building. The only people in your building are jaded, hairy, overweight men. It’s just how it has to be. Deal with it.
  4. You know the saying, “It takes all kinds.” Well that’s crap. There are all kinds, but it certainly doesn’t take all kinds. We could all get by a lot better without most of them.
  5. If you’re ever needing to hear the most pointless, self-indulgent talk and flat out bold faced lies, hang out in the men’s bathroom. You’ll hear some pretty ridiculous crap at any given minute of the day.
  6. At Cat, they care about you and your family. They care about you and your health. They care about the wellbeing of their employees. Oh wait, that’s just corporate rhetoric. They only care about dollars and cents.
  7. Whenever you’re walking around your building, try not to say hi or make any sort of noise to the people you pass in the corridor. Apparently it scares them and they’re not sure how to react to a social situation.
  8. Apparently, the best way to announce your commitment to going “green” is to make a public statement about your concerns for the environment, and then turn around and cut down 68 trees the same day just so you can mulch them. It really screams “environmentally friendly” to anyone paying attention.
  9. You can really miss a lot of work. No one really seems to notice. I guess their robot brains weren’t really programmed to pay attention to the people around them and calling in several times a month really just goes unnoticed. It’s kind of great.
  10. Professionalism? What’s that? In all honesty, the less professional you are, the more personality you have and people will notice that. Plus, the better you are at proving that you can do a little work, but B.S. your way through the rest of your day, the more likely you are to be deemed management material anyway. So get to it.

So that’s my list. I’m sure I could go on for days about this crap, but I’ll just stop there and leave my ranting and raving for another time.