The Perils of Suburban Life

There’s some sort of little-league football team that’s been practicing in the vacant grassy lot across the street from our house. Mind you, we live on a dead end, so when all the parents come to watch little Tyrone and Jamal play football, they park their cars / trucks / minivans / SUVs such that our comings and goings are challenging at best. They don’t seem to comprehend that it’s a big, open field, with plenty of room for you to park your vehicle. No, they have to park either on or in the street, often simply stopping to idle in the exact middle of the street, forcing me to come to a complete stop and glare at them until they get the idea and move to the side so I can get around their giant SUV and actually park in my own goddamn driveway.

We were upset on Tuesday morning, when the garbage men actually took the giant branch that had been sitting on our curb for two weeks; that branch had kept the annoying minivan fucker from parking in front of our house. Somehow, though, the inconvenience must have trained Minivan Fucker not to park in front of our house anymore, as she’s continued parking in front of our neighbor’s house.

We’ve had quite enough of the peewee football practice, thankyouverymuch. We’re ready for it to be over, or for it to move elsewhere.

This evening, they seem to be having some sort of cookout. There’s a charcoal grill puffing smoke and tables laden with buns and paper plates. The boys are playing football without their pads and uniforms, and someone is booming rap music out of their truck.

The good news is that this could conceivably be the end of peewee football season. The bad news is that I have to put up with rap music and hollering kids (and parents) for a few hours.

I think it’ll be worth it in the end.

I Give Up

I designed some stickers for Aaron’s podcast. They were adapted from the t-shirt design, which I also designed (with some editorial help from Garza).

The stickers were to be 4.25″ x 2.75″ big. The printer’s online instructions said to submit files at 300dpi. Since I’d resized the design from a larger t-shirt design, I opted to ignore their suggestion and submit the design at 1200dpi instead. This saved me from having to rework the entire design and optimize it for a smaller print size.

The stickers came in this week. All the fine detail is lost. The fantastic black background blends into the mascot’s hair and skirt, because my hairline divider stroke failed to print properly. The katakana surrounding the mascot is illegible. All because I can’t follow directions.

I spent two hours tonight reworking the design from scratch, which was harder than I’d expected. I created a layer of halftone dots (a la newspaper photographs) for shading, then went through the painstaking detail work of cleaning up said halftone dots around the edges of the drawing with the eraser tool. Only when I went to throw in the fantastic black background did I realize that I should have been painting in white instead of erasing. The mascot’s cute mug became akin to some sort of monster movie villain, being that half of it was suddenly filled in with black.

I wanted to have this done tonight. I wanted to tell Aaron I’m sorry, and that the next batch of stickers are on me, and here’s the new design. Instead, I’m going to bed without making my lunch. Again.

Excuse me while I go have a nice cry, then beat myself about the head until I fall asleep.

Life Is What Happens…

Original plans for the evening: 1.) Eat dinner. 2.) Go to Toledo Area Genealogical Society meeting. 3.) Edit and post podcast.

Revised chronology for the evening: 1.) Eat dinner. 2.) Go to two-and-a-half hour Toledo Area Genealogical Society meeting. 3.) Talk to Mom on the phone for half an hour.

Don’t think the podcast is getting edited and posted tonight. Good thing I put tomorrow’s date on it when I recorded it this weekend.

To-Do List

To Do Tonight:

  • Write report to LSM Board of Directors
  • Record podcast
  • Eat dinner
  • Start new game of Civ IV

Guess what’s getting done first?

Yeah. I’m gonna go kick some Incan butt.

Update, Post-Civ IV: Oh, yeah. I forgot I was going to do some kickboxing cardio to offset the two pieces of pizza and one piece of cheesecake I had for lunch. Oops.

Really don’t want to write my report or record my podcast, but I need to do both. Gonna go stall traipse around the house for a minute and collect my thoughts (and grab my iPod so it can charge), then come back down here and start on my Webmaster Report / Suggestions to the New Board of Directors.