The last couple of sunday afternoons we've been hanging out outside. For example, this past Sunday Jeremie was at the skatepark, and I hauled my bulky self over to take photos of his death-defying stunts. Or, at least, they're death-defying to me, since I'd surely break something trying to get this much air, let alone doing a grab at the same time. Scary stuff! We then headed off to the parking lot at the civic centre, where a bunch of our friends head for a few hours of street hockey. I brought my semi-comfortable lawn chair and played spectator for the afternoon. It was good to get some sun and fresh air, and fun to chat with the other girls who came. Skyla was drawing 'tattoos' on our feet with a gel-tipped marker, and I must say that I liked tehm quite a lot.
Tuesday was thrift shopping with Britt, we headed out in the afternoon to $2 Tuesday at the salvation army. I bought several pieces of clothing for the fabric alone - I'm on this apron kick. I haven't sewn any yet, but I've started drawing out ideas on this cute little template I made in Illustrator. I think it would be fun to make a bunch of wacky/creative (and a few prettier for the more normal people) aprons and see how they sell at the farmer's market or some craft show. I'll post pictures if I ever do get around to making them. So if you have a crazy idea, let me know!
I spent another afternoon at the church this past week, adding about 30 books to our collection. I'm glad to see that we have some donations and new items for people to check out - there were even a few that I'd like to check out for myself. I also bought a comedy DVD from the Bananas gang - I saw them in Edmonton once and laughed my head off. So good. Hopefully the DVD is as well!
Last night I went to our local movie store to rent some DVDs. Their older titles rent at 3 for $7 for 4 nights, and I felt like watching some that I hadn't seen in awhile. I watched My Girl last night, Shallow Hal this morning, and still have Stardust left over, which I'm quite looking forward to watching.
I haven't gottten that far on our digital photo album for 2008 - I've got maybe 1/4 of the year done. But I'm not planning on ordering it until I have my next months' spending money anyway, so it's no big rush.
I just received a confirmation from Amazon that my order is being shipped - the latest Jason Mraz album (I hope it's good), the new Tinted Windows album (just came out, I can't wait to get it), and a book - The Host, by Stephenie Meyer. I've read that book before, and quite enjoy it. It was also on sale :)
The baby room is ready, I just bought a nursing pajama for wearing around while we have company over the next month or so, and there's only 2 days left 'til the due date. I'm trying not to be impatient, but we're both ready for our new one to arrive. Our bags are packed and ready, the car seat is installed, and there's really nothing more left to do. We even cleared out all the recycling that's been stacking up in the basement to make more room for our guests. Can't wait!
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Thursday, April 16, 2009
This one's for you
Shelley, here are all three paintings together, as requested by the always-fabulous you!
Baby news: we're at 38 weeks and a few days, so less than 2 weeks left! The ultrasound last week went well, and it looks like everything's how it should be, which is great. The doctor said that if, for some reason, baby is late, we'd probably induce about 1 week after the due date. So the longest we'll have is 3 weeks until baby is here, and life changes forever... or so I hear.
I spent a lovely half hour this afternoon on a walk with Robyn, who I bumped into halfway through. I ended up at the skatepark, and took some video of Jeremie doing his thing. He just bought a new complete (deck, wheels, bearings, trucks, the whole bit) and so wasn't landing as many tricks as he wanted to, but I'm sure the new board will be worn in & ready to rock in no time.
I'm also happy to say that I'm finishing off my print photo albums this evening, and will never again have to do more than add a few items that are given to me. From now on, we're going digital all the way. Next project: making a digital 2008 album and sending it off to the printer's.
Ciao!
Baby news: we're at 38 weeks and a few days, so less than 2 weeks left! The ultrasound last week went well, and it looks like everything's how it should be, which is great. The doctor said that if, for some reason, baby is late, we'd probably induce about 1 week after the due date. So the longest we'll have is 3 weeks until baby is here, and life changes forever... or so I hear.
I spent a lovely half hour this afternoon on a walk with Robyn, who I bumped into halfway through. I ended up at the skatepark, and took some video of Jeremie doing his thing. He just bought a new complete (deck, wheels, bearings, trucks, the whole bit) and so wasn't landing as many tricks as he wanted to, but I'm sure the new board will be worn in & ready to rock in no time.
I'm also happy to say that I'm finishing off my print photo albums this evening, and will never again have to do more than add a few items that are given to me. From now on, we're going digital all the way. Next project: making a digital 2008 album and sending it off to the printer's.
Ciao!
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Friday, April 3, 2009
Web Design
I finished the Dueck Brothers website awhile back, and finally got signoff on it. It's officially done. I am happy to say that it turned out fairly well. Most important is that the Duecks love their new site. I created a skin for a CMS called Dot Net Nuke (pain in the butt, after using the software I'm not a big fan), then rewrote/reformatted all the content, added a flash gallery, and just made everything a lot more cohesive. Seems to work fine in Firefox 2 & IE6. Check it out at http://www.dueckbrothers.com/
No matter how often I say that I'm not going to do any more design work for awhile, another little contract always seems to pop up. It seems like spring is working her wiles on me, and sending creativity breezes my way. Just can't say no!
I took a couple of hours 2 weeks ago to evaluate a friend's website and make suggestions for him to implement, so that wasn't a lot of work. I've also been asked how much it would cost for 3 t-shirt mockups / 1 final design for the town fair coming up. It sounds like kind of a fun job, so I've given them a quote. We'll see where it goes from there. I really was trying to stop working though, especially since it's almost to the point where baby could arrive any day and I won't have much design time. Not getting jobs done on time = bad.
Question of the day: why do people still make websites where you have to choose Flash or HTML? You're duplicating your content, which leads to content differences and errors. You're forcing your users to think, instead of just using the website intuitively. You're wasting homepage real estate! Forcing users to choose is such a designer's-way-out option! Grr.
You need options? Run some stats on the browsers surfing your site, and choose either all flash or all HTML, based on your users. Better yet, integrate both: just make sure the navigation isn't flash if you've got a lot of old-browser nonsense going on. You could also do a browser/bandwidth-detect to decide which site to send them to if you absolutely must have the two separate options. Invisible is best! Let people use your website without thinking so hard, and let the code do the work.
Rant over.
Almost.
My other pet peeve of the day: a design company who makes a website and does a shoddy job. Our town spent some dough to get this website, and it's not living up to the task. The WYSIWYG editor control (word-type-editor) isn't saving changes and frustrates the users who have to update the site. They don't get consistent support or timely answers to their emails in response to problems they're having. And to top it off, the site is visually ugly, has poor navigation, lacks content organization in a bad way, and could really do with a ton of UI changes. It looks like a poorly-customized frontend template to me. Joomla backend - at least they did that right! Many bah-humbugs go out to the design company.
Poor websites are just something that gets me up in arms. Can we ban them? Or at least start a TV Show like the home makeover ones. Introducing... *insert drumroll here* Extreme Website Makeover! Watch us peel away those ugly layers of bloated code, heavy graphics, and poor UI. We'll start with surgery, then stitch it all back together and leave it with a gloss not topped by any wax on the market today!
Life and Dick VanDyke
The photo to the right is the final painting in the set of 3 that I've been meaning to do for several years. It's now complete, with Dick VanDyke, Audrey Hepburn, and Sean Connery. I'm quite pleased with the way this one turned out. Now one more wall in our house looks a bit less bare! So huzzah for that.
The baby and I are still doing well: we're nearing the end of the 36th week now. At my doctor's appointment this week my stomach was apparently measuring a bit small, so I've got an ultrasound scheduled for next Tuesday afternoon. I'm not too worried though, since baby is moving around a lot and seems to be fine otherwise.
In library news, I seem to be putting in a lot of hours, but it doesn't really feel like work. The shelves have now been re-ordered, due to the help of three lovely ladies, and are labeled, with room on each shelf for new books. We have a few display shelves to show off our newer items, and the music and DVDs are all out and organized to a T. It makes me quite happy. Maybe I'll take pictures sometime. I'm also pleased to note that of the bulk of the books and items I purchased awhile back have been circulating. It's a relief, since this is my first time doing anything like this and I'm not 100% sure what people want.
Jeremie's job isn't stressing him out quite as much these past couple of days. Why might that be? There's an overtime ban, so he gets off around 5:30pm every night. I can definitely see how the extra time off is helping him out. The week before he worked 6 days, and often until 10 or 11pm - so we're quite thankful that he has some more time to chillax, get things done, and have a bit of space.
In novel news, I've also been reading up a storm - I've read about 6 or 7 novels by Ted Dekker, really enjoyed The Host by Stephenie Meyer, tried out some of the Yada Yada novels, was quite impressed with a novel by Sharon Shinn. I think I'll try to track down a few more of her books. I'm also embarking on a 'read my way through the authors in our library' quest. One book per author, just to get a feel for them. And if I don't like the book, I'm not going to force myself to read all the way through it. We'll see how it goes!
The baby and I are still doing well: we're nearing the end of the 36th week now. At my doctor's appointment this week my stomach was apparently measuring a bit small, so I've got an ultrasound scheduled for next Tuesday afternoon. I'm not too worried though, since baby is moving around a lot and seems to be fine otherwise.
In library news, I seem to be putting in a lot of hours, but it doesn't really feel like work. The shelves have now been re-ordered, due to the help of three lovely ladies, and are labeled, with room on each shelf for new books. We have a few display shelves to show off our newer items, and the music and DVDs are all out and organized to a T. It makes me quite happy. Maybe I'll take pictures sometime. I'm also pleased to note that of the bulk of the books and items I purchased awhile back have been circulating. It's a relief, since this is my first time doing anything like this and I'm not 100% sure what people want.
Jeremie's job isn't stressing him out quite as much these past couple of days. Why might that be? There's an overtime ban, so he gets off around 5:30pm every night. I can definitely see how the extra time off is helping him out. The week before he worked 6 days, and often until 10 or 11pm - so we're quite thankful that he has some more time to chillax, get things done, and have a bit of space.
In novel news, I've also been reading up a storm - I've read about 6 or 7 novels by Ted Dekker, really enjoyed The Host by Stephenie Meyer, tried out some of the Yada Yada novels, was quite impressed with a novel by Sharon Shinn. I think I'll try to track down a few more of her books. I'm also embarking on a 'read my way through the authors in our library' quest. One book per author, just to get a feel for them. And if I don't like the book, I'm not going to force myself to read all the way through it. We'll see how it goes!
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
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