geekspeak

Branding

For the longest time, I used a simple blue square next to my name (in Avant Garde font) as a logo of sorts for myself. It was easy to recreate in various applications, like Word, but it still gave me some identity.

I’m jumping on the Photoshop bandwagon now, updating my cute little blue square into something a little fancier:

(The tagline may or may not change. I decided to go with the painfully truthful schtick for now.)

That was fun. Now to come up with some more thumbnails for the actual site.

geekspeak

Got The Bug Again

I think that the current incarnation of my portfolio website must hold the record for the longest-running web design I’ve ever created without redesigning.

That streak may be broken soon.

I’ve got the itch to redesign my site — especially since I’ve learned SO much more about stylesheets since I first designed my current portfolio site. I need to fix my freelance (aka “services”) section to reflect what I’m truly comfortable freelancing, punch up the design a bit, and update the examples of my wares. Maybe remove the stuff from back in 1998 that doesn’t look so hot compared to today’s standards. I also need to make sure everything works in IE, Netscape (I guess), and Firefox. Everything doesn’t right now.

I don’t think I’ll redo it in Flash, although I really should put some of that pricey (for me) Flash workshop to use. I get so much stupid blog traffic from Google, though, that I’d rather my portfolio site be indexable.

Sooo… I may be embarking on yet another project. Hopefully I’ll actually finish this one, or at least have the decency to quit it before I get in too deep.

Update, 10:40pm: I hate it when I get the design bug. For inspiration, I go and look at sites like Cameron’s, and then I wonder if I’ve really ever discovered my own design style at all. I never think my shit looks slick enough, no matter how much my husband assures me that it kicks ass. Damn.

Update, 10:45pm: I should totally make my own “blogroll” database. I could easily make one of those little popup windows and populate the current URL and add it to my own SQL database and even make little icons for my links later, if I wanted. And maybe even a “shoutbox” of my own, too, although I’d have to make sure I didn’t leave any security issues out there. …But I was talking about redesigning my *portfolio*, not tweaking my blog. Right…?

weight loss 3 Comments

Diet & Fitness Update, Week Ending 7/22/06

First order of business: my goals for this week. I’d said I was going to stick to the menu I’d laid out, exercise every everning, and arrive on time to work (which may not seem to fit in with the diet thing, but it really does. Trust me on this).

Menu: I did fairly well with sticking to it, considering that this was the first time since… well, ever, really, that I’d laid out such a menu an entire week in advance. I made a couple substitutions here and there, but it was usually simple stuff like swapping out ham for turkey, or making chicken wraps for dinner instead of grilled chicken with grilled peaches. On that task, I give myself an A-.

Exercise: Big steaming pile of poop. I did my PUSH workout on Monday, walked for an hour Tuesday evening, and slacked for the rest of the week. D+.

Arriving on time to work: Beat the timeclock every day. Clocked in at 8:05 one day, which is still technically on time per payroll, but I’d like to do better. Really, though, I’m pretty proud of myself. I can’t think of the last time I clocked in on time every day in a week. I give myself an A on this one.

Results: good. I weighed in at 210 when I declared my do-over, and I weighed in at 206 on both Friday and Saturday mornings. This surprised me, given that I failed to exercise as much as I’d planned.

(I weighed myself on Sunday morning, after a fun Saturday with Aaron and Amy, and I’m not going to disclose that number. I’ll just wait for my body to finish metabolizing that ice cream brownie sundae — split amongst three of us — and my chocolatini.)

Time to set myself some success measures for the coming week. Time to rework the goals I didn’t meet and tweak the ones I did. So, here they are, in no particular order:

  1. Complete 60 minutes of cardio total this week
  2. Drink a minimum of 64oz of water daily
  3. Lights out by 11pm, no matter what

Since my plan to exercise every weekday didn’t work out so well, let’s try a different tack. I know my problem is cardio, so let’s ramp that up a little. …OK, I guess anything would be “ramping it up,” considering that I’m not really doing any cardio at all right now, even though I know I should. Aaron was kind enough to hook up the Playstation (PSX) for me, so I can play Dance Dance Revolution, so I’ll do that at least one night. I plan to go out jogging one night, as well. Maybe catch up on some of my podcasts. Maybe if I don’t listen to music, I won’t have any time reference, and I can stop worrying about how long I’ve been jogging, and whether I should try to keep going or give in and walk a little.

I have the feeling I might not have drunk enough water last week, so I’m going to actually track my water intake this coming week. According to some calculations, I should be drinking even more water per day, but I’ll stick with the standard 8 glasses for now.

I’ve been doing well with getting to work on time, so let’s tackle the other end of the routine: getting to sleep. I’ve heard so many different ways of dealing with sleep habits, I don’t know what to believe. I’ll only know when I find out what works for me. So, the first part of my attempt to establish a nightly routine is to make sure I’m in bed WITH THE LIGHTS OUT by 11pm. Not reading, not playing solitaire or Dope Wars on my Palm, but relaxing and trying to get to sleep. The next steps after this will be turning off all electronics by 10pm and establishing a nightly ritual of relaxation before bed. For now, though, we’ll just work on the actual bed time.

Four pounds down. Go me. 😀

family 1 Comment

Sucked In

I can’t stop reading this diary.

I don’t want to go make my lunch. I don’t want to watch TV. I don’t want to exercise. I just want to keep reading.

It’s not even about me anymore — at this point in the diary, Memaw and I (except Mom called her Grannie then) have flown to Florida to stay with Granny and Charlie for a while, and Mom is hanging around Medina, staying with friends until the paternity suit against my father.

That was my first plane ride, and was my only plane ride until a few years back, when I went with Mom and Gary and Philip to visit Gary’s family in Fort Worth.

I love taking these one-page synopses of Mom’s days and trying to imagine what her life was really like. Moving out of the apartment to a couple other friends’ places. Missing me so much. Trying to get a job. Trying to “get her head on straight.”

We’ve both come so far.

I love you, Mom.

family

Every Little Freaking Detail?

Are you tired of it yet?

I blew one of my weekly goals tonight: I didn’t do my PUSH workout. Note to self: six almonds is not a sufficient evening snack if I intend to snack at 4:30pm and eat dinner at 7:30pm. So I ended up coming home and making dinner before my workout… which meant I never got around to the workout. No biggie. It’s a learning process. I’m still going to exercise tomorrow and Friday; I’m not going to blow off the rest of the week just because of one off day.

Made it to work on time again today. Almost didn’t — clocked in at 8:05am — because I had a minor emergency with my new seedlings. Had to flip them around close to the window because their grow light went out, and had to water them because I removed their cover, so they lost their little greenhouse effect. But I digress.

I’ve been doing pretty well with not adding extra snackies into my day, and sticking to my prescribed menu. Today I substituted spinach for the salad I’d scheduled for myself — mainly because I didn’t want leftover spinach sitting in the fridge, and I know Aaron won’t eat it. He hates spinach.

A lot of my evenings lately have been spent reading Mom’s journal (ostensibly my “baby diary”, but also Mom’s “I’m lonely and want a man” diary, too). At age 22, she had all the guys looking, even with a baby at home. I don’t want to air Mom’s 30-year-old dirty laundry to the entire world, but suffice to say that it seems she was always lonely, but rarely really alone.

As a parallel: when I was 19, there was one semester when I went out with five different guys. That’s the closest I can come to understanding what my mom went through in the late 70s. I really feel for her, as she was back then.

If I write any more on this, I may as well just write Mom’s memoirs myself and post them to the internet. So I’ll shut up now. 🙂

Truth be told, I’m going to be disappointed when I get to the end of this diary. I’ll be jonesing for Volume II. Guess I’ll have to get Mom to sit down and actually write me some memoirs… although I promise not to post them to the internet.