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The Blizzard That Wasn’t

February 11, 2010

Lots of snow. A blizzard of snow. School closed all around Boston (about 18 hours ahead of time). Plows were at the ready. People stayed home from work. Drivers took public transportation so they would not get stuck later in the horrible conditions.

the only problem…

NO SNOW

Boston ended up with about an inch of snow. Seriously.

The Cape got more but the point for me is where I live… no snow!!!!!

I think I need to change proffessions. If we make a mistake there are seriously things to account for and fix. But a weather(wo)man can be off about a 1′ of snow and no sweat, things changed. Their warns can close the publis school system ( I wish I had that power) and if they are wrong they just say “Oh the snow storm got to big it started to get warm. So, no snow.”

Pictures of the “Snow” when I left my office late last night.

Date night

January 31, 2010

Dear James Cameron-

Congrats on creating the highest grossing piece of crap. Price and I went to see your movie last night. We both knew nothing about your movie- no joke. Neither of us looked into what it was about at all prior to going. So we happily forked over the $25.00 (plus service fee) to see your movie in 3D at an IMAX theater.

I guess you should be glad that we knew nothing about the movie because if we had we would have saved our money and stayed in and played some wii. About 15 minutes into the movie I realize that it really is going to be SOOOOOOO predictable. Good guy, bad guy, save the earth message. We care about the earth- we recycle, use reusable bags, compost, etc- I get it. It’s an important thing that everyone can relate to. Anyway, my problem was the predictability plus I kept thinking that I had seen the movie before, just with a few changes.

This nagging feeling continued on until I remembered FERNGULLY: THE LAST RAINFOREST. That cartoon that came out in 1992 with tone loc and tim curry- as the creepy sexy slim thing. You have kids- granted they were born after this movie came out but you are in the MOVIE BUSINESS. I would think you see a few of them for work related research. And If not, why did no one have the balls to tell you that Avatar is a future version of Ferngully?? Also, both movies were released by 20th Century Fox, did no one there consider the similarities???

Hoping that you are satisfied with having the top 2 grossing movies of all time and you retire now. With your new found free time you should sit down and google “Avatar Ferngully” or ” James Cameron Ferngully” and you can find things to the liking of this.

Signed-

Nicole and Price

Most exciting part of the night was getting jellybeans (juicy pear is my all time favorite) and then going home to write this. Oh yeah and watching a clip of Tone Loc rapping in Ferngully.

The Facts of Life

December 3, 2009

You take the good, you take the bad,
you take them both and there you have
The Facts of Life, the Facts of Life.

That theme song perfectly described my day yesterday…

Good- wake up early to do homework.

Bad- I suddenly realize that I left my chicken soup out of the counter at work. The story behind this is that it was still completely frozen at lunch on Tuesday even though I put it in the fridge on Monday to defrost. Planning on taking it out for a few hours would help it thaw so I could have lunch on Wednesday. However I realized I never put it away.

Bad- I wanted to toast bagels for Price and myself. Our toaster oven has a mind of its own so it can either take a long time 1 day or go quickly the next. The smoke detector going off before 8am is a sign that 1) it toasted quickly yesterday 2) I burned the bagels. But I ate it anyway, yep I did. Burned bagels are awful.

Bad- Get to work. Fears confirmed that my soup is ruined. Throw out a big container- like 3 lunches- of soup.

Good- I’m getting faster at doing Photoshop. I really struggle with it so things seem to be looking up. I love learning new things and pressure but I was hating on Photoshop yesterday.

Bad- Right before leaving for class I hear people discussing the meeting tomorrow, the meeting all this struggling in Photoshop is for. Although the client accepted the invite for 4pm they can’t do it then. I have to leave for class before finding out the new time.

Good- although I had to ‘listen’ to my crazy teacher for an hour and a half I enjoyed class because 1) I got to read magazines in class. 2) Today for some reason he mentioned space shuttles and the technological faults behind them (Challenger and Columbia), except he was wrong and someone told him that. That does not seem like a big deal but no one speaks in class, well we just mumble to ourselves when he says things like “WWII demolished Japan” and “You know what I’m trying to say…” 200 times a class.

Good/Bad- My boss emails me that the meeting is now at 10am. FML. Sooo glad to know so I can get in early but damn that’s a big loss of prep time!

Good- Get home- vent to Pricer about my day and go through the mail…. Christmas/birthday presents I ordered arrive, check from my dad, and Liz Kartchner’s new book!

Good- While doing homework I watched the tree lighting at Rockefeller Center and then Glee. (Aretha Franklin needs a new stylist)

Bad- Go to bed way too early at 11.30 but I decided that I needed to survive the day getting up at 5 and not having a meltdown because of Photoshop and Revit. Now need to stay up even later on Thursday and just about everyday until the final review.

I think that is crap, stress, and mood swings lead to my dream of being held hostage by Kirk Cameron. Yep, Growing Pains’ Kirk Cameron. So here goes…. for some reason I am being held hostage. He is the guard for this operation. He tells me that he really does not want to see anything bad happen to me, since he is a Christian. Things even get to the point that he tells me he is willing to let me go if I agree in Creationism. I really want to go but I can’t agree. So I beat him with his crocoduck poster (seen above) and escape.

Let’s see what today brings.

Out of Africa

July 26, 2009

Yesterdays trip to the zoo was interesting. I had not been to the Franklin Park Zoo in a few years and the last time I went I was chasing after an 18 month old so I was not really take it in. Emily and I decided to go since there has been a big stink lately about the economy hitting the zoo’s state funding. The zoo director played dirty by going public and crying out about the drastic cut in budget by saying the zoo might have to close and as a result euthanize animals. Needless to say, Governor Patrick has been attacked for putting the zoo in such as hard place and the zoo has been chastised for saying it would euthanize animals. (Lineham did come back and say that he was incorrect about euthanizing the animals).

Well, we took this as an opportunity to fork over $13 each to visit the struggling zoo. I use struggling nicely. As a designer, it was really hard to embrace a place that uses laminated sheets of paper tacked up to posts telling people that the Andean Condor saying that the bird was born in the 50’s and acquired by the zoo in the early 90’s (I forgot the exact dates). A zoo is an education place that is to teach everyone about the animals. Did you know that the condor is the largest flying land bird in the Western Hemisphere? No? Well, you would not have known that about the condor going to the zoo for it was not posted on the 1 sign of info about them (I looked it up the the nifty Internet).

I know that I am being really harsh about the zoo and its appearance now, especially when it is facing budget cuts. It just makes me wonder if others even notice what the zoo is lacking or they just view it as a place for them to take their kids to kill a few hours on a Saturday morning? Thoughts?

Enough ranting…

They had quite a few zebras that were in two parts of the zoo. I love their short manes…. mohawks!

We did get to see the lion quite a bit and even hear him roar. He sounded more like the cowardly lion than the ling of the jungle. Still really cute. Check out my video.

Moving along the ill-marked paths we came across two hornbills. We watched them for awhile and one became so comfortable with us there that he? dug up a chunk of dirt and grass, walked over to the enclosure fence and put it down to give to us. Well give in the sense that we were still two feet away from it. Then it stuck its beak out of the fence as far as it could and sat there for awhile watching us.

We also saw flamingos, kangaroos, a tiger, giraffes, butterflies, and more.

Post zoo visit we walked back to my house- 5.5 miles. Sweet.

All in all I know I will go back but I just hope that they get the funding they deserve and outfit the zoo to properly house their animals and educate the public.