Domestic Geek

Wow, things are really weird here at work. It's like everybody knows something that they're not talking about. Nobody seems to be doing any real job-associated work. The art director worked on his resume again yesterday (yes, I'm nosy). He and one of the owners has been talking in cryptic sentences around me. Art files are being put on CDs for customers to come get. A couple of other employees are working on starting their own business. It's like everybody is getting affairs in order. It's kind of creepy. I personally have been surfing job boards and playing with Wordpress all morning. If I ever get the nerve to start my own design business, I need to know more than just MT and EE.

I'm back. I had planned to return in a couple of weeks, but cut my hiatus short because I just had to share this little bit of news:

I got the following in my inbox early Tuesday morning and didn't think much of it. The art director was working on his resume on Monday and I chuckled to myself that maybe he was planning on leaving and I was going to get a promotion.



Well, guess what happened at work yesterday? I was given my two weeks notice that my job at the screenprinter is being eliminated. Sales are THAT BAD. When the art director broke the news, he informed me that he was looking for other work as well. I wonder if the company is finally going under. Anyway, as of November 1st, I am again underemployed. So much for leaving on my terms, eh? Oh, well. At least I got some art production experience under my belt. Like the horoscope said, I'll probably be better off because of it. We'll see.

Even though I was expecting something like this eventually, the shock didn't hit me until I was standing in the aisle at King Soopers. I suddenly went numb and would've started bawling had I not been in public. I had to fight the urge to buy every comfort food within the place. I had to remind myself that I had I finally fit into my smaller pants last week. I've been bike riding with Marcus every weekend since my birthday and I'm finally firming up. Did I really want to sabotage that? No. So, everything went back on the shelves except one bag of M&Ms. Yay, me! Besides, if I don't find other work soon, money will be really tight and I would have felt really shitty about blowing money on junk.

In other news, my poor old dog has had explosive diarrhea for the last three days. Even though I had planned on milking the screenprinter out of every dollar possible the next two weeks, I took today off to tend to him (and me since he's kept me up the last two nights). I'm not sure if the Immodium I gave him is working or not as I don't want to follow him outside in the rain to see if his poo is runny. The poor guy is exhausted, though. I feel so bad for him. I also hate cleaning up poop out of the carpet. How do you moms do it? I don't think I could deal with so much poop on a daily basis. You women are saints.

Well, other than that, my life has been the same the last few weeks. I've still been slowly going through my junk and throwing stuff out. Why do I own so much freakin' junk?

I was playing with the Google Maps API last week at work. I had planned on implementing it into the company website before I got the news I was canned. That thing is really cool. It's too bad there's no reason to put that on any of my personal sites, but it's still a cool thing to know. I wish my javascript skills were better. I'm sure I'd pick the scripting of it up a lot quicker if they were.

I'm also trying out a new font manager. I haven't had one since my free trial of Suitcase and Font Reserve ran out a looooong time ago. I found a post about it over at Mezzoblue. It's put out by the folks over at Linotype and it's called Font Explorer X. Supposedly a Windows version is in the works, as well. It's very iTunes-ish. I haven't had much time to mess with it, but I like what I see so far. I hate Suitcase with a passion and swore never to waste my money on it. Speaking of fonts, I wish foundries would lower the price for their fonts. Offer fonts for $.99 like the Apple store does music and see how many people would actually buy legal copies of fonts instead of pirating them. I bet the foundries would make more money. I know I would have less of a problem buying a font for a couple of bucks as opposed to $25 or more. It's working for iStockPhoto. Just a thought.

Speaking of iStockPhoto, I'm seriously considering getting myself on there as a contributor. I can do vector illustration just as well as anybody on there. It would never make me rich, but hey, everybody could use a little residual income here and there, eh?

Well, guess that's about it. I'm sure I'll have a lot of posts coming in the next two weeks because the screenprinter probably won't get a lot of work out of me. My motivation is totally shot. That's why I'm all for severence packages and being let go on the spot. Let's hope the next company that hires me can actually afford to provide the benefits that I was promised after 3 months.

Found this link today to Colr.org. Will have to explore that site when I get a chance.
Also found this great tutorial for creating color palettes.

According to this article, if I want to generate more income, I need to lose weight.Interesting, huh? I wonder if it is because thinner people have more confidence in their ability to get more money, if society pays more for thinner workers or a combination of both. So, an interesting experiment to try, huh? I want more money, let's see if losing weight helps.

I have tons of little pieces of paper all over with names of fonts I want to eventually purchase. I'm going to start posting them in this entry for future reference.

• Swaak Centennial
• Ballpark Script
• Crillee
• Express