Childhood Memories

Dr. C just reminded me of the Recycle Shop at the Children's Museum in Boston with a link to the Scrap Exchange in Durham, NC.

Their website says it best, "Long before recycling was a household word, the museum began selling an amazing variety of reusable fabrics, plastics, papers, and strings for everyone’s crafts and fine arts projects. The only limit is your own imagination!"

The Scrap Exchange says it opened in 1991, but the Children's museum says they have been doing this for "more than a generation" (which I will admit is vague, but I remember going when i was pretty young and as many of you remind me quite often, that was a LONG time ago).

Wow, I had a lot of great memories creating masterpieces with the bottle caps and assorted other materials that we bought. I imagine that the stuff I would choose to fill my bag today would be different from what I was attracted to when I was 10, but I could be wrong. I am definitely going to have to go visit the shop the next time I am in Boston.

Paperless world fits into newsletter

Well, I got everything to fit into the newsletter, but there was a tiny square of space left! Well, I don't know yet if it will make the final cut, but my coworker A laughed a lot when i showed to him. It occurred to me as I was saving the image for this post that my character looks a little like Mr. SD.

You can tell that i was actually engaged in my work today because yesterday at the end of the day there were only 22 unread items in my Google Reader (and those were from the NYT). Today, 80. Perhaps I am meant to be a cartoon artist instead of a designer? It is certainly more fun than newsletters (or at least this newsletter), but despite tying for #1 on Dr. C's funny list, being funny is pretty hard work.

Blog Addiction

I can't help it. I am totally addicted to checking my email and reading every article in my GoogleReader. I suppose it might be more of a desire to avoid the mountains of work that are piling up in my inbox. I have a whole bunch of things to do, but find myself so discouraged by the whole process of approvals that every time I look at my to do list I think, "Why Bother?" and so I just check my email/reader again. Projects that I started almost 6 months ago are still not approved, so nothing can really by all that urgent, right?

Well, the decree that we publish the internal newsletter once a month is troubling, but at least I have one project that goes to the printer consistently, and so I spent my afternoon shuffling the stories to try and have every story and every photograph fit in the weird 6 page layout that the outside design firm gave us (which is pretty ugly in my opinion, but they spent a lot of money on it, so I can't change it too much). I miss J with her compulsive organization. I am going to try and set up a meeting and see if we can make it a little more formulaic... something like keeping to estimated word counts would be helpful! Of course when it doesn't all fit perfectly there is space for cartoons :)

All is not bad though. I designed and got approval on a brochure in English and Spanish in about 2 weeks, so nice when other departments are cooperative in the process. AND I walked home today for the first time in quite a while. It has been too hot and my feet were too blistered, but today there was a nice breeze and i had a nice walk while talking to A. Working in The City would mean no walking home, so my job does have a few advantages. Trying to adjust my attitude. Wish me luck.

Vintage and Modern

Found this interesting blog, Apartment Therapy. It is sort of like watching all those home improvement shows without the annoying contestants. I love this dining room table and the GREEN chairs :)

Things I Learned at Work Today

1. There is someone who programs the Jewish calendar into about 75 lights in LA so that they will turn on automatically without someone pushing the button (also mentioned that this is not a problem in NY since most of the buttons don't actually do anything, which I already knew thanks to Mr. SD) There were other interesting facts in the book review for 'Traffic' in the NYT but you don't have to take my word for it.
2. It is hard to find the right photograph to fit into an arrow shaped window.
   
3. You can make ice cream in a ziplock bag without a fancy ice cream maker!
4. No matter where you are working they will always ask you at some point to fit an entire word document full of text into an ad the size of a business card.
5. Based on my Google Reader suggestions I am a sports loving stay at home mom (The sports I understand, but I don't really know where they get the mom part, but keep suggesting that I read blogs about raising children)
   
6. I need more than one project to work on at a time or I get bored.

on blogs and more typographical fun

I begin with ... Thoughts on blogging and this blog in particular

I have been contemplating the nature of blogging and what it means that this is a public blog and while I love my loyal readers, (all 4 of you!) I could just send you all an email with a link every time I find something that I want to share, and so that means that deep down somewhere I secretly hope that someone will stumble across my blog and read it.

I also am wondering how one decides what is important enough to share on a blog. What do I want to share? The dysfunction of my department at work? The random interesting images I come across during the day? Is it going to be about daily going ons or only when they are related to design?

Well, I don't have any answers right now, and I guess some of the answers will come with time, so don't go away 'cause we'll be back with more after a word from our sponsor.

And now ... a Link to More Typography

40+ Killer Typographical Posters
I especially like Beauty and Ink&Water

Mr. SuperDesigner (SD) would say about now, "They always say stay tuned for more after the break and there never is more!" so I had to add something after the link. Hope you will join us next time as our superhero battles through office politics and hopes that at least one of her projects can get approval for printing in the near future...

ABC3D Written & Illustrated by Marion Bataille

Thanks to swissmiss again for this one. I am going to preorder this today! What could be better typography and pop-ups?

My kind of play station

swissmiss linked to something else from this website, but I thought this t-shirt was just perfect.

Fava Beans... it's what's for dinner!

Ok, we will probably have this for lunch and not for dinner since A&R gave us their extra beans and we are eating lunch with them, but I finally got around to cooking the fresh fava beans from the CSA (Community Sponsored Agriculture). They are VERY green (the ones in the photo are shelled, but still in their skin) and I might have over cooked them a tiny bit (It was only for 3 minutes! But they seem a little mushier than I would have wanted them to be), so I don't want to cook them any longer. That means frying with garlic and onions, which was my plan for them is out. I think I try and make this instead (it will also use some of the over abundance of cucumbers): http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Fava-Bean-Salad/Detail.aspx
I am sure I will make some changes, but I will let you know how it turns out.